Education Writing Advice from Individual CC Faculty Members
Dr. Sandy Ayers
Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education
When writing—whether for my class or for any other reason—you will want to keep in mind the following advice:
What is your purpose for writing this piece? For a formal class assignment, are you comparing, reflecting, or reporting?
Who is your audience? For a class assignment, I am your audience.
What form will suit your writing? For a class assignment, follow the directions provided.
What information do you need to gather and organize before writing the paper?
What steps in the writing process do you need to follow? Remember that you will expect your students to follow these same steps, which include
brainstorming,
drafting,
revising,
editing, and
publishing (final finished papers—for an assignment, “publishing” means that the paper is ready to be turned into me).
My pet peeves:
Shifting tenses inappropriately in your writing
Misuse of pronouns (For example, saying “Me and Jane” rather than “Jane and I” when a subject pronoun is appropriate or saying “Jane and I” instead of “Jane and me” when an object pronoun is appropriate. Here are sentences in which the pronouns are correct: Jane and I were excited about the election. I was glad when my father gave the keys to his new car to Jane and me.)
Confusing contractions with possessive pronouns (For example, its vs. it's, whose vs. who's, your vs. you're or inappropriately using an apostrophe in the possessive pronouns theirs, ours, yours, and so forth)
Subject-verb agreement
Pronoun-antecedent agreement (Example: "Every student who completed her work," not "Every student who completed their work")
