Proofreading is painful for students. They feel they’re through with the writing process when they write their first draft and then want nothing more to do with that essay. Students tell me that writing the first draft and proofreading it is like writing their paper twice.
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However, the skill of proofreading their own papers is essential to the writing process.
Why proofread?
- First, by catching their mistakes or finessing the points or flow of the essay, students learn to write more effectively.
- Second, they show respect for their teachers by handing in a well-thought-out paper with few mistakes.
- And third, students begin to understand through the editing process that there is an audience at the other end of their essays. They aren’t writing simply to keep themselves busy; they are writing to communicate, educate, explain, persuade, or entertain.
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What methods can we teach our students so they can proofread their work by themselves?
3 Best Proofreading Tips
1. Resize the font.
This is an easy way to catch mistakes of grammar, wording, punctuation, and so forth. Things students normally would read right over on the computer screen pop out at them when they resize the font.
2. Print off the essay and read it from the paper.
If students never read their essays from a real piece of paper, they are missing out on a wonderfully effective way to proofread. Mistakes they don’t see on the screen somehow become visible on the paper.
This is an important method for me, and I use it consistently when I write textbooks.
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3. The most effective proofreading tip: Read the paper out loud.
This is a powerful method of proofreading. It catches mistakes in grammar, meaning, too few or too many words, the logical flow of the points, and so forth. Many times students who have skipped this step are totally embarrassed when they read their papers out loud in my class and see mistakes that would have been easy to fix at home.
Listen as your students read an essay aloud to you. I’m sure they will catch mistakes or see potential changes as they read.
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4. Bonus tip
Students should write their papers a few days before they are due. I can see the eyes rolling now, but it’s true. This way, the essay won’t seem as perfect to them; the cool-off period will enable them to catch more mistakes of all kinds when they approach the paper with a more objective eye.
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Yours for a more vibrant writing class,
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