Teach Editing and Proofreading Strategies
After students have revised their work, encourage them to edit and proofread their drafts. Instructors may suggest that students:
- Ask a reader to help "find" errors rather than correct them;
- Read the draft aloud. Some aural learners may understand their own work and find errors by hearing the paper read by themselves or a friend;
- Keep a log of writing errors or problems that they find (or those that readers find), and questions about how to correct the errors;
- Highlight certain features that they want to attend to:
- Word search for repetition
- Passive verbs and sentences
- Read their drafts multiple times and focus on a different editing issue each time;
- Experiment with the "track changes" feature on word processing program.
