Effective Editing

We sometimes lament that our students are not great editors of their written pieces. Let's face it, we are generally speaking, the worst proofreaders of our own work. To compensate for this we need to approach editing in the same way as we approach any other aspect of writing. Editing needs to be taught just as we teach into drafting and revising. It also needs to be clearly separated from the act of revision to be most effective.

'I learned from Donald Graves (1984) and Nancie Atwell (1998) that writing is best taught as a process, and it is by writing that young adolescents develop as writers. I felt that I was doing a good job with teaching my students to use the craft of writing through drafting and revision. After all, my students wrote a lot and were learning ways to re-enter their writing and deal with sensory detail and leads. But where was the editing part of the process? Editing wasn’t fitting in the way I wanted and was often getting overlooked.'

So said Jeff Anderson in his article on editing, ‘The Express-Lane Edit: Making Editing Useful for Young Adolescents.’

If you are interested in reading more about editing, I invite you to follow the link and check out Jeff Anderson’s article. Jeff Anderson is the author of ’Mechanically Inclined-Building Grammar, Usage and Style into Writer’s Workshop,’ (Stenhouse Publishing)

http://www.stenhouse.com/assets/pdfs/vm0154express.pdf

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