[I_teach_writing]

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What is the biggest or most common error that students make when writing?

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Not leaving enough time to proofread. This means you need to let the paper sit for 24 hours before you do the revision, which means you need to have it done a day in advance (who am I kidding??). When students meet with me in the writing center, I’ll have them read their paper aloud. Again and again, students are able to catch most of the errors by themselves, simply by reading the paper aloud. It helps.

What if you finish the paper and you only have an hour left before class? Spend all of the time working on the thesis statement (if it is a paper with a thesis). Make it longer; make it more complex; make it read smoother. I don’t care what you do as long as you put an hour into the thesis. Why? Because reading student papers is a very labor intensive process. And by the time an instructor gets to your paper, if he or she is overworked and tired of reading papers, he'll be on tilt and will have a good idea of what your grade will be after he gets through the thesis—I would say to within 10 points or so.