This week I asked Cheryl and Sophie to read chapter 3 of Williams’ Sin Boldly and an article by Maria Popova on various famous writers’ writing processes. I then assigned a 2-3 page thoughtletter in which they were asked to reflect on what they learned about effective writing processes as well as whether and why they consider their own writing processes to be effective (or ineffective).
Cheryl’s assignment was much better proofread than last week’s, so I hope my insistence on the need for thoroughly checking over one’s writing and the provision of a proofreading checklist were useful. She did still have several instances of awkward phrasing and article misuse, so I planned to go over these things during our meeting. However, she woke up feeling too ill on Thursday to make our meeting. We’ve rescheduled our meeting for next week.
Sophie’s assignment was turned in very late, which gave me very little time to look it over before class. She said the assignment was so late because she became obsessed with the proofreading process and couldn’t find a point at which her writing was “good enough.” We discussed the fact that all writers deal with the same thing, and she seemed mollified. The major problem in her writing is using proper tenses, with a secondary concern being sentence structure. She also has only a weak grasp on where to use commas. I showed her the Perdue OWL site and we went over some grammar rules and did some exercises. I recommended that she work on improving sentence structure and grammar by keeping her sentences short and concise, although she still seems worried about oversimplifying her writing and sounding dumb.
For their next assignment, Cheryl and Sophie have been given articles relating to their topics; they’ve been instructed to identify the main argument, the author’s most important pieces of evidence, and determine whether the authors’ arguments are convincing. I’ve also assigned selections from chapter 7 of Sin Boldly for reference.
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