essay editing checklist

essay editing checklist

Importance of Using an Essay Editing Checklist

1. Introduction

Essay writing often seems like a daunting task among students. Whether the essay is for a class, a contest, a scholarship, or even a contest, many students often find the task overwhelming. After an extensive amount of time and effort put into an essay, many students often wish for a sense of reassurance. This crucial reassurance in essay writing could come from an essay editing checklist. An essay editing checklist is a great way to ensure that a student’s essay is as good as it can be before they hand in their final copy. Use of a checklist assists the student in improving and polishing their essay. This is crucial because when a student takes the time to put effort into their essay, obviously they will want it to be the best it can be. An essay editing checklist will provide vital support first and foremost in proofreading. Proofreading is an imperative step in essay writing. Proofreading is there to check for any grammar or punctuation mistakes that may have been overlooked and it also ensures that there is a sense of fluidity in the essay and that the content is understandable. Proofreading is also used to check and compare the written work with the requirements of the assessment and it ensures that the essay has stuck to its original topic. An essay editing checklist will also provide the student with a sense of self-assessment. Self-assessment is a crucial element of every single essay. Many students fail to realise that self-assessment is a requirement in order to get a good mark for their work. Self-assessment involves the student looking through their essay and comparing it with the assessment criteria or rubric. A checklist will break down the elements of self-assessment and give the student clear guidance and an understanding of what exactly they have to compare and change within their work. By persistently keeping these ideas in mind throughout the whole essay, self-assessment also affects the quality of editing and proofreading.

2. Benefits of Using an Essay Editing Checklist

An essay editing checklist entails giving you details on all the steps that you need to take when you are editing an essay. This will guide you as it will take you through a step-by-step approach. Although it is pleasant to think that a good piece of writing simply flows out of you in one fell swoop, this is almost never the case. In just about every instance, a great essay starts out with a terrible first draft. No matter who you are writing for, or what your publisher may say, you should always write your first draft with one thing in mind: writing to yourself. Although this may sound ludicrous, it is a good way of hastening the process of getting your ideas down and on paper. An essay editing checklist is just the ticket to get you to this sort of writing. Writing in such a manner would entail writing an essay that is littered with spelling and grammatical mistakes all the while as you attempt to get your ideas on to paper. But that does not matter. No one is going to read it. Now this is where an essay editing checklist comes into play. A common and fatal error for many essayists is to get bogged down by the weight of the essay in whole. What I mean by this is that due to an essay’s organic nature, it is possible for the point, or the thesis, to never really be clarified, and for the essay to sort of lose its way as the writer wades through the various points that he or she wishes to make. Now an editing checklist will guide your step-by-step through your essay so that you will not only be able to check for errors, but also you will learn a good way to do it on the tips given by editing checklist. With no circled or highlighted lyrics others will not know what message you are trying to communicate. With the current state of public schools and other educational avenues, everyone is missing the ship on good grammar. An essay editing checklist will allow you to build a concrete and understandable stile guideline for your entire document. With well-written steps it will be easier to digest. This may take more revising, or extensive notes on your editing checklist, but in the long run it is the best thing you can do to get your point across. With this thorough step-by-step guidance, you will be able to very easily take your point and rework your essay to best say what is that you are thinking. A dual sided benefit of this will be that not only will you understand what it is that you truly are trying to communicate, you will also have a clearer idea on where the essay is taking you. This will allow you steer the document in a direction that better suits the idea and the audience, as well as doing wonders for the coherence of the document. The best part of using an essay editing checklist is the fact that this is the best way to make your work area improve permanently. With the advice that your editing checklist gives you, you will learn some surprising lessons. These will stick with you the next time you are writing or an essay, and you will not make the same mistakes that you did before. This will save you a lot of time in the long run, and will make your written communication a very good asset.

3. Key Elements of an Effective Essay Editing Checklist

Types of checklists: Hierarchical task analysis is used to design a task self-regulation checklist. This is to be used both during and after the specific task. The checklist targets specific goals in the task, sequencing them so that the student can complete parts of the task simultaneously with the overall goal. This is useful in the case of essay writing where the assignment is given over a number of weeks. Self-efficacy can be monitored by the student comparing a checklist or model of a successful outcome to their own checklist model of their current task. This will help the student evaluate their own work and determine and attribute their successes and failures to the outcomes of the task. Outcome checklists are more global and check for a variety of complex production activities both during and after a given task. Developmental checklists assess the gradual increase in the quality of students with developmental tasks. An essay writing checklist would be considered a developmental checklist when the students and teachers keep the same checklist to write several essays working to improve a specific skill in the task. This would contrast the single-use outcome checklist typically using different forms through the task and the final assessment.

First and foremost, it is important to understand that an effective checklist will vary from one person to another, although there are some general essay writing guidelines that can be considered while creating one. Begin with the basic conventions of writing and essay form, and then move to the more specific features of any given assignment. It is important to include the student in the learning process for the checklist to be effective. The more comfortable and familiar the student becomes with the self-regulation method, the more likely it is that they will continue to use it in the future. The values of self and peer assessment have been proven to be greatly effective in thinking about one’s work critically and taking an evaluative stance towards the work in order to make improvements. This being said, the checklist should be open to editing and changing. It’s necessary to assess the effectiveness of the checklist through frequent use, with an end result.

4. How to Create and Implement an Essay Editing Checklist

Make the appropriate changes as you are going through. If it is on a computer, you may find it easier just to leave the changes until a later date. You will need to read it again in a few places, so it is wise to wait. Once you have read it through, you should go through each individual point on your editing checklist. Any specific areas on your essay that your checklist will tell you to look for should be assessed and changes can be made.

After this, you should read through your essay for general content. If it is written with a pen or printed in ink, you should annotate it with a pencil. This is the first time you may consider using your checklist. You can give it a brief run-through to see if there is anything glaringly obvious that you will need to check.

If your essay has been written on a computer, it is a good idea to print it out. Redrafts are also best done with a pen, so if your essay is already in ink, you may need to write it out again. Now, you should leave it for a day or so, depending on how much time you have before it is due. This will act as the first stage of separation between you and your writing.

Once you are convinced of the advantages that you stand to gain from an essay editing checklist, you will need to learn how to create and use one. Although it will also depend on the type of essay you are writing and the assignment itself, there are some basic steps you can follow to get you started. First, you will need to find a rough copy of the essay you want to check. Your essay can be on a computer or it can be written in pencil on rough paper. Now, you need a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for a reasonable length of time.

5. Conclusion

An editing checklist is a great tool to have if you’re ever assigned the task of writing an essay. An editing checklist lets you go through a systematic method of taking a look at each sentence in your essay to determine if it’s grammatically correct, if it makes logical sense, if it is relevant to your topic, and whether or not it truly fulfills the assignment. An editing checklist can be found from a wide variety of sources, but its real worth is not in where it came from but in how it is used. An editing checklist can come in handy for revising a rough draft and also when you have a final draft that you want to ensure will be free of grammatical errors.

Would you send your car out on the road without first checking its brakes, lights, and signals? Do you send your children to school without making sure they have done their homework or revision? Or have you ever been about to prepare a special meal for a special occasion only to realize too late that you didn’t have an important ingredient? It is human nature to want to do the best that we can. We want to ensure that our efforts – whether it is preparing a dinner, sending off the kids to school, or writing a college essay – are not in vain. Thus, it is only natural that in writing an essay we take the time to use a checklist to ensure that we’ve covered all the important details.