Succeeding with Writing Assignments
A general guide for writing a paper in any course
Review and Edit
Leave yourself enough time to take a break, get some distance, and then come back and review, edit, and proofread.
Big picture questions to ask yourself about your draft
- Are you addressing the assignment requirements and purpose?
- Is the structure of the paper correct? Is the central idea clear?
- Are the key ideas well developed and logical?
- Does the paper read well with transition words and sentences that help the reader follow? A good way to check this is to read it out loud.
- Does each paragraph have one key point, and all evidence in the paragraph supports the key point?
- How are you using sources in your paper? Are they relevant and credible?
- Have you included the relevant parts like a title page, introduction, conclusion, reference list?
- Have you considered getting feedback from a writing tutor?
Check the details of your draft
- Check grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Sites like grammarly.com have a free service that may help you edit your paper by identifying unclear sentence structure. You can even make an appointment with a writing tutor to talk through the Grammarly.com comments and suggestions.
- Check your reference list? Are you using the right citation style?
- Are the pages number?
Use this general writing rubric to help you make higher order and lower order changes to your paper. A rubric is a guide that lists the specific criteria for grading. We use this instructional writing rubric as a tutor training tool for providing feedback on student writing. You can use it to help you review your paper. Following are also additional resources that tutor.com created to help students with common grammatical errors.
Additional Resources:
