In high school, our English department has never been a strong point. Writing research papers and papers over books we had read was about all we did. However, they did teach us to write more than one draft, only because it was usually for a grade. We would hand them in and get them back the next day with red marks all over them. She would want us to go home and make the corrections to our papers and then bring in the final copy. We would never go over the mistakes one on one so I always kept making them. This is how I was taught up until my senior year. It was not until I was in dual enrollment at our local community college that I learned more about writing and drafting.
In class we would read other students papers and correct the errors and then give the papers back to the student. I never liked it because someone else saw your mistakes but it did help me fix my own. Proofreading another’s paper did help me in the long run. Our teacher would let us take the paper home and the next class the final paper was due. In some cases, we would do three drafts instead of two to make the paper be the best it could be. The papers that I wrote in my college class were different than those that I have done in high school. I felt that I was learning how to actually write a good paper. I have always put off writing my papers until the night before. It is a bad habit that I need to get rid of, especially now that I am in college. Writing has never been a favorite of mine. Maybe because the lack of teaching through the years or maybe its just not my thing, but I am willing to try anything new to better my writing.
I usually found that whenever my teacher would hand back a paper with marks all over it, i would only correct those errors because I was lazy. But then in my junior and senior years, my teachers would just write a resoponse, saying that there were several gramatical errors, or that I need to refocus paragraphs such and such. It was really helpful. And I need to stop procrastinating too! Haha.
ReplyDelete