Now's the time. We were reminded in class today that if it's time to drop and take this course next semester do it now.
For the first half hour or so we went over the importance of revision. And the most common mistakes that are made by students. Revision comes at the end of the writing process, without it our marks are below average or just skimming the surface. Here's what Derek told us to watch for..
Presentation and Style
This is a really important one. The presentation or style of the paper is specified by the instructor or discipline. It refers to the overall look and presentation. This includes the cover page/header, Font & font size, Paragraphing (including clean breaks), citations and references are proper, and word counts. Derek always wants word counts. We disscussed how this is also stressed so that we can better undestand our own writing style. When we're assigned a certain anoumt of words in a project it's easy to visulaize after getting used to word counts and gathering the idea as to how many words make up our paragraphs.
Grammatical Errors
The most common made Grammatical Errors made by students are:
Shifting verb tenses To avoid this common mistake try and be aware of the verb tense the story is and be consistent. Verb tenses are especially hard to notice in the heat of the moment while writing. That's why revision is so important.
Syntax-Run,on,sentance
To catch these suckers read slowly, out loud and sentence by spread out sentence when revising. If a sentence read aloud makes the reader windless it's probably a run on sentence, and could use some doctoring. Starting in the middle and going on shuffle with sentences to check them is the best way to go.
Syntax Run-on: Comma Splice
Warned not to use to many commas, use the natural rythm in all of us humans create well beat sentences.
Semi Colons are only to be used when there are two independent clauses that cannot be seperated from eachother.
Other common problems were vocabulary issues, parallelisms, and verb agreement.
Assignment 2 - Informative Essay
Choose a topic of interest to yourself. Avoid topics that something is right or wrong. Avoid opinion pieces. Avoid topics that are not supported by an existing body of knowledge.
So the Bibliography and the proposal paragraph are worth 10 % and due next week. The Bibliography is not an annotated one and requires 8-12 sources. No more then 2 sources can be internet sourced. Utilzing the GBC site articles and data research is encoraged. Getting a Toronto library card is encouraged as the Toronto Library has the best resources.
The bibligraphy can be stapled to the front of the proposal which will be in short doc form and include a 8-12 sentence description of the points you`re interested in researching.
Next week we'll come in at time's specified on the important dates section of this forum under the 5th of Monday, look for the first initial of as last name.
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