Regardless of major, there are many tips and strategies students can use to improve their writing ahead of midterms.
First, make sure that you are familiar with the prompt and rubric of the assignment. Remember that some professors will drop your grade for formatting, while others will favor other aspects.
Rubrics often lay out the specifics of the assignment and how each aspect of the assignment will be graded. It’s important to look at the rubric because the rubric will indicate what parts of the assignment are the most important or most valued.
For some students, starting is the hard part. Pre-writing strategies, such as brainstorming, outlining, and free-writing, can help writers both start and organize their documents.
Francesca King, the interim director of the UW Writing Center shared what she and her consultants do at the Writing Center to help students get started.
“Having somebody be able to listen to your ideas and ask questions enables the flow of thoughts without just stifling yourself and hitting a brick wall,” King said.
“Students really can come in with nothing. It’s really okay to not have any writing on the page and to come in, that might alleviate some students’ concern,” King said. “I know so many of them suffer from writer’s block and are just terrified of people judging them, but this is a judgment-free zone.”
Some students will find that they have no trouble starting a paper but may come to find that their papers aren’t receiving the grades that they had hoped for. In this case, revising strategies will be most beneficial.
There is a common misconception that revising, editing, and proofreading all refer to the process of reviewing a document for grammatical errors.
According to the University of North Carolina’s Writing Center website, revising is the overall process of looking over a paper again, literally revisiting a document, while editing and proofreading are smaller tasks within revision.
Proofreading is what most students think of when they hear the term revision. This asks that the writer read their document in search of grammatical errors.
Editing, on the other hand, asks writers to read their sentences, paragraphs, and essays to strengthen arguments and check for meaning and comprehension.
Reverse outlining is one editing strategy that King says is used regularly in the writing center.
“Reverse outlining” asks writers to critically analyze their drafts by reading over their work and pulling out the main points they’ve made in their draft. Then, the writer creates an outline based on the points they’ve gathered.
This process allows students to check the logic, organization, and argument of their draft.
When revising, it’s also important to check that the thesis in the introduction of the paper matches what the body paragraphs have said and what the conclusion reiterates.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, use the resources available to you.
There are numerous sources online, including Purdue OWL and the UNC Writing Center, that provide comprehensive handouts that show how to format a paper, cite sources, brainstorm a paper, and more.
Students may also schedule an appointment with the Writing Center in the Coe Library. The consultants are available to help with all forms of writing, as well as all stages of writing, from idea development to final drafts.
