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How to Improve English Grammar in Writing Step 1 Shitty First Drafts

So this may seem to go against what you think you should be learning in this article but the first step to a well-written essay is to write a shitty one. Anne Lamott coined the term Shitty First Drafts in Bird by Bird. In this essay, she outlines that we often think the best writers always write amazing work but all these writers write shitty first drafts.

Writing a shitty first draft is what makes it possible for you to write a great second draft and an even better third draft. Great writing starts with crappy writing.

If we get so hung up on everything being perfect and profound, then we might not write at all. I can hear my high school students now getting hung up in their own minds about how everything needs to be perfect. They would say, “But I need to write something amazing, not something that is crappy.” They would probably also continue on about how I am wrong or insist on their way.

My response is to write the crap because maybe just somewhere in that crap there is a profound thought that would have never got out if you were too busy worrying about being perfect.

How to Improve English Grammar in Writing Step 2 Revise

Now that we have that shitty first draft out there we can revise it. You can go through and say you know this doesn’t belong or I want to move this here. This is also a time to do some initial proofreading.

If you spelled something wrong fix your spelling. If you forgot a capital at the beginning of a sentence fix it. If you know that this sentence is a run on sentences because it is a whole paragraph in one sentence fix it. This is for initial grammar fixes that you know but we will revise more grammar in step 3.

The revision process is when you make your second, third, fourth, etc draft. There are going to be many drafts of this paper before you are done and guess what there should be if you are going to be the best writer you can be. Great writing doesn’t happen overnight it takes time.

How to Improve English Grammar in Writing Step 3 Use Grammarly

In this step, you take the writing beyond just you into another realm. You still are not sharing it with other people yet but it is helpful to do a more in-depth computer grammar check.

So a great computer grammar checker did not use to exist it is not something that you could fully come across even 10-15 years ago. You had to learn all the grammar rules or hope there was someone to read your paper that knew all the rules. Enter Grammarly, if there is new technology that will help you why not use it?

Grammarly is a grammar checker that will revise your essays for you. You just copy and paste your essay into their checker and they will check it for you and you can take their suggestions or not take them.

If you want to have them help you while you are writing your paper you can add their Microsoft word add-on, or even type directly into their checker. There is also an extension to chrome where Grammarly will check your grammar as you are typing on several different websites.  That way you can improve as you are writing.

It checks for 100 different grammatical errors, punctuation errors, spelling errors, and misused words. The premium version checks for 400 different types of errors and is a step up from the free version. (I personally have not tried the premium version but am planning to and will update you on its features)

I use Grammarly for my writing and have to say I am impressed. I teach grammar, but it has been really useful for catching rules that I know but that I don’t always catch when I am proofreading. Those mistakes become very easy to see when I am using Grammarly.

For someone, who know less about grammar than me it will be even more useful because it knows the rules and will make your paper follow those rules.

I absolutely adore the chrome browser add-on because it makes me look more professional in social media posts etc. Where I may be writing informally, but I still want to have correct spelling and wording. It helps me be conscious of what I am writing even when I am writing in a hurry.

The only thing that saddens me about the chrome add-on is that it doesn’t work on every site. The most disappointing thing is that it does not work with the Google suite. Considering that most students work off of google docs, or google classroom. It is so sad that this amazing grammar checker does not work on these. This seems to be because of Google shutting Grammarly out from what I have read. There are ways around this though if you write in the Grammarly editor and copy it over to google docs or the other way around.

*Update good news when I logged on to google docs today (9/6/2018) I found out that Grammarly is beta testing with them right now, which is super exciting so far it seems like it works like Grammarly on other websites. So excited for it.

Grammarly is not a foolproof system. It will get you far in terms of your proofreading but it won’t get you all the way hence step 4 and 5.

Want to Read More on High School Topics?

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How to Improve English Grammar in Writing Step 4 Read Out Loud

Step number four is to read your whole paper out loud. There is something about hearing your work that helps you catch mistakes. It has been proven that if you read your paper silently your brain often will fill in words to make the sentence make sense when they don’t actually make sense in their current form.

Reading it out loud gets rid if this brain trick. It will make it so you actually hear the mistakes easier. When I have students do this they are often able to catch what is wrong without me even having to say anything.

Reading out loud is a great last way to see if there are any grammar mistakes before letting someone else see your work.

How to Improve English Grammar in Writing Step 5 Have Someone Else Read It

The last step before you turn in your essay is to have someone else read it. If your teachers allows you to turn things in and get feedback before a final draft is due, take advantage of that. If a friend in your class can read it for you, or your parents, etc. This person is a fresh set of eyes and they will often be able to see things that you can’t.

Next, this person may also give you tips on content. They may say this isn’t clear or I’m not sure what you are trying to say here. Their feedback can help you revise it so everyone understands the meaning of your paper.

Revise, Revise, Revise

The main thing that it boils down to is if you want to know how to improve your English grammar you are going to have to revise and proofread your essay several times. The best writers in English are not the best writers because they write perfectly all the time. They are the best writers because they revise better than others. They continue to put work into their writings even when they are seemingly finished. They know there is always room for improvement. So the answer to how to improve your English grammar in writing is to write more and revise more.

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