Lessons learned from 1st Graders

So, after years of teaching middle and high school students, I now find myself working with first and second grade ELL (English Language Learner) students. I never pictured myself as an elementary teacher, and the truth is that there are days when I adore my students and days when I want to tear my hair out.

Regardless of the particular lessons of the day, however, I find that I am learning a great deal from my students. Many of these lessons are about socialization and how young children view the world, but others are more directly related to my lessons on grammar, vocabulary, and reading skills. Since I have little-to-no training in how to actually teach reading and writing to kids who don't even know how to read in their native language, I have been learning on the fly, and my students are helping me.


One recent lesson was an important one, and it pertains to all writing, whether you are 7, 17, or 70. Whenever my students are asked to proofread their writing, they are told to ask themselves three questions about words or sentences that don't seem right in some way:

1. Does it look right?
2. Does it sound right?
3. Does it make sense?

They are told that these questions will help them to self correct, and it's true - whether you're an elementary student or an adult. Those three simple questions will help fix most errors in our writing. This is especially true for adults, with our much greater mastery of words and sounds. Each question has its own function as a proofreading aid.

Does it look right?

Words that are misspelled are probably the most common error in writing, but since the majority of writing (even rough drafts) is done on a computer these days, spell check can usually help with this problem. However, there are still plenty of times when the appearance of a word can tip us off that something isn't quite right.

One example if this is doubled words - when we reread our own work, we can look for times when we have accidentally doubled a word. This often happens with connectors such as "and," and is often due to getting distracted in the middle of sentence. With practice, a good writer can learn to scan quickly through their work for instances where a doubled word causes a sentence or phrase to look wrong, and fix it.

Another issue of misspelling that won't be caught by spell check is homonyms, such as "too," "to," and "two." Especially in the case of "to" and "too," it is very easy to hit the "o" key twice and not notice, spell check won't fix it because the resulting error is a valid word. Therefore it's up to our own human proofreading to see that the word doesn't look right, and correct it.

Does it sound right?

As I've said before, reading your writing out loud can be an invaluable tool for finding errors. Some people go so far as to record themselves reading their work, although many find it just as valuable to simply read it quietly to themselves. This reading technique is where the question, "Does it sound right?" comes in to play.

Let's take an example from the books my students read. Here is a sentence from one of them:

"My wings are getting stronger -- a lot stronger!"

Now, some of my students incorrectly copied this sentence to read "My wings are getting stronger -- a let stronger!" This is an easy mistake to make, especially for young readers and writers, but for adults as well. There is only one letter difference, and this is an error that spell check wouldn't catch. However, if we use the reading technique to ask ourselves, "Does it sound right?" we can find this error immediately. This is an error type that is easy to make, but also easily corrected, if we just take the time to read to ourselves.

Does it make sense?

Oh, boy - I could go on and on about the errors created when we don't bother to proofread and ask ourselves this question. They drive me crazy, and are an almost sure sign that no proofreading was done on a piece of writing. Most often, these take the form of a sentence that starts off to say one thing, the writer gets distracted in the middle, and the sentence finishes as something else. Take this sentence:

"Each morning you should try walking is a great form of exercise, even for people who aren't in good shape."

Clearly, this sentence started off to be something like, "Each morning you should try walking for thirty minutes." However, the writer became distracted or got ahead of themselves, and continued on with a different thought about walking as a form of exercise. If they spell-checked this sentence, it would pass without any problems - and yet it makes very little sense. Reading this out loud or asking others to proofread it will immediately turn up the problem, allowing the writer to rewrite this sentence as two new sentences, each of which make sense.

Another error of this type that comes up a lot is repeating phrases at both the beginning and end of a sentence. Here are two examples:

1. Mom said, "Please take out the garbage," Mom said.

2. A few days ago, we played a great game of soccer on Tuesday.

In the first example, the exact phrase is repeated. Its placement would make sense in either location, but certainly not in both. In the second, the phrase is not repeated, but the sentiment is. The reader needs to choose between the two time indicators rather than using both. These errors are often the result of initial proofreading - a writer goes back and decides to change a sentence, and forgets to delete the original statement. They can be easily fixed in a final proofreading. This is a good reason to do multiple rounds of proofreading. Not only is it possible to miss errors the first time around, but you may have created new ones which will then need to be corrected!

This third question is also a good one to ask about an entire writing piece. I cannot even begin to count the number of essays, stories, and articles that I've read which start on one topic and then slowly diverge onto another. I'm guilty of this myself. I sometimes reach the end of a blog and realize that what I've been writing about for the last hour has little or nothing to do with my title - meaning I need to either re-title the blog and rewrite the beginning, or split it in two and write each on the appropriate topics.

The best and easiest way to see if this is true for a piece that you're writing (or have written) is to read the title and first paragraph, and then the last paragraph. Do they make sense together? Are they truly on the same topic? If the answer is "no," or even "not really," you need to rework your piece.

Use them early, use them often.

Many of us who use computers for the majority of our writing have heard the phrase, "Save early, save often" when it comes to computer documents, thanks to the tendency for programs to crash just as you type your final words. Saving early and saving often prevents you from needing to go through the tedious process of retyping your entire piece.

I use a similar mindset when it comes to the use of these three questions - if you check each paragraph as you finish and ask the questions, you will find that your piece requires a lot fewer corrections when you finish. If you wait until the end, it can be harder to spot errors, and may require more time and effort on your part.

Never the less, you should never consider a piece completed and ready to hand in or publish without proofreading it at least twice in its entirety. Good writers check and recheck!