Writing Assignment Two, Week of Monday, 30 June-Sunday, 6 July.

Researching Your Worst Grammar Issue

Over the past few weeks, you've had a chance to get familiar with your personal grammar error list. This week, you are going to learn what to do about them. As always, my advice is based on process and Kaizen. You gain control over grammar the same way you gain control over other aspects of writing or, for that matter, over your life. You:

1) Identify a problem which you want to fix. Personally, the problems I pick to work on next are the ones which will have the highest impact for the least amount of my effort.
2) You research the problem to figure out how others deal with it successfully.
3) You find a working solution, that is, a solution you think is worth trying out.
4) You implement this solution and practice it.
5) You review/assess the results.
6) Once you are satisfied, you identify the next problem on which to work. Rinse, repeat, and let the little fixes accumulate.

Over time, using a combination of this technique and better proofreading, you will have fewer and fewer grammar issues about which you need to worry. This won't happen overnight, but if you practice, it will happen.

This week's writing assignment has you learning how to research and fix your worst grammar problem. It is based on the truth that, if you know a topic well enough to teach another person, you have learned your topic. In this assignment, you are also going to draft a process paper in which you teach someone else how to recognize and fix your worst grammar problem in their writing. (If you don't know what a process paper is, you will learn in the first writing assignment for the week.) For examples to illustrate the process of recognizing and fixing the problem you discuss, you will pull from the drafts you have written this semester.

Here's what you do:

1) Go back through the work your group mates have proofread for you. Look at your personal error list. Talk to your group mates. Through this process, you are to determine your most annoying or significant grammar problem. This is the grammar problem about which you are going to write.
2) Google the question of how to recognize and fix the problem on which you are working.
3) Read at least five of sites you find which offer advice on your problem. Take notes. Make sure to record where you found which advice. Here, you are looking for effective advice on how to recognize and fix your problem.
4) Summarize the advice you found most useful in the form of a process paper. In this paper, you should explain how to recognize and fix your problem. Base your advice on that you uncovered in your research. Make sure it is effective by trying it out in your own writing. That is, proofread looking for your error using the advice you found on how to recognize it. This advice might be as simple as, "this is the problem..." If the advice allows you to recognize a problem you had once not noticed, assume it is worth passing along. Next, offer step by step instructions on how to recognize and fix the problem. Use examples from your own writing as illustrations.
5) Finally, document where your advice came from--footnotes work well for this last, and include a set of links in your paper to the sites you found most useful. Taking notes about where you found what advice will allow you to document the sources of your advice and to avoid plagiarism.
6) Create your process paper in google docs, and share it with me and your group.

(Note: You will be revising this paper for style next week, so don't get caught up in revising your document for anything but content and clarity.)

Now, sit back an pat yourself on the back. Not only have you learned a new genre--the process paper--and crafted a draft of a potentially successful message in this genre, you have learned how to recognize, research and fix grammar problems without needing a teacher. Apply what you have learned. Practice it. Give yourself permission to improve over time, and eventually you will no longer need to worry about grammar.

Steve