By: Robin Day
An ESL Student's Checklist for Systematic Self-Editing of Written Work (aimed at high school and university but should be used earlier). Writing is difficult for the beginner and doubly so in a
An ESL Student's Checklist for Systematic Self-Editing of Written Work (aimed at high school and university but should be used earlier).
Writing is difficult for the beginner and doubly so in a foreign language. My checklist covers the basics. This page was developed in South Korea, at Honam University, but can be adapted for writers the world over.
Korean English teachers (and the droves of instant ESL teachers) do not have the time and often do not have the skill to edit (correct and critique) their students' written work. This is a fact of life in crowded high schools, colleges and universities. Editing written work is so time consuming because the quality produced by students is often very low. A full re-write is often needed and that is not the teacher's job. The problem is being passed through the school system and goes uncorrected. Yes, class size is too large in the high schools and universities but I see the main problem being teachers who are not organizing students to self-edit their own and their classmates' work. Every class should make and boldly display the following checklist on the wall, and every student's notebook should have a copy pasted on the first page for reference. Teachers cannot expect students to guess their way through the editing process. Let's all be systematic.
1. Use spell-check or a dictionary.
2. Capitalize: names, countries, states, provinces, county, business names, 1st letter of a sentence, days, months, etc.
3. Punctuation marks: .,"!?/{[(:;
4. Plurals: leaf/leaves horse/horses this/these a/an.
5. Check sex/gender: My mother he is a hard worker.
6. Check positional (prepositions) and article words (in, on, under, at, of, to, a, an, the).
7. Tense: present, past, future (or general past with had and have). Simplify: Avoid using have and had as it is more complex.
8. Eliminate redundancy: e.g... It was a big, large, gigantic, sizable house.
9. Shorten sentences: Avoid long rambling statements; old fashion and may confuse.
10. Avoid overuse of a word. Check the thesaurus and avoid being a bore.
11. Avoid too much generality. Give specifics. Give useful data in your compositions.
Wrong: I have a brother and two sisters.
Right: I have three siblings, Jennifer 2, Cindy 5, and Bob 14 years.
12. Your composition (story/ report) must have logical flow. Check logical order (see #11 next).
13. Use paragraphs and headings. Headings will give logical order and flow. They are like an artist's sketch lines or a movie maker's story boards.
14. Avoid ambiguity (words with 2 or more meanings). Ambiguous words/expressions confuse your readers. Eg.. article means a thing and a story in a magazine.
15. Think of your readers, your audience, when you read your own work. Who will read it? Will they be confused?
16. Think of the tone or message. Is the writing meant to be funny or serious?
17. Korean grammar is quite different from English so students cannot construct common English grammatical sentences unless they read, listen to and use 2-step translations.
E.g.:
Korean: Ad-u-she, kim-bap du-gay jusa-yo.
step#1 Direct translation: Mister, rice-rolls two give me.
step #2 English grammar: Mister, give me to rice rolls (please).
Students get mixed up when they try to go directly from Korean to step #2.
Poetry often breaks all the rules, so disregard the above!
About The Author
Robin Tim Day is an English teacher with experince in Asia and the Middle East. Robin publishes articles and lessons at the
http://www.eslteachersboard.com/ (free access to ESL resumes, jobs and materials). See more articles and lessons by Robin by visiting: http://www.eslteachersboard.com/
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