Lesson 13 Prompt: Consulting Others

Write about your experience consulting with someone about your writing.Include what that person told you about your writing. You can email me the name of the person who read your paper if you wish not to include that name here.

I decided to consult two different sources to help me revise my essay. First I contacted the writing center last week to get a little help from them. I had a little trouble as they were very busy and had to cancel my appointment last Thursday last minute. We rescheduled for this Monday and things went fairly smoothly. My instructor was pretty helpful although it was a little difficult to do over the phone. He helped me find various small mistakes that I had made in my writing and also suggested that I break up a few of my page long paragraphs into smaller paragraphs. A lot of mistakes that we found together were simple errors that I should have found myself if I had have proof read the essay. There was a little trouble with matching up pages over the phone. As I added and deleted phrases and sentences, the page numbers no longer matched up but that was only a minor problem. We talked a little bit about proper citation and when to use quotation marks and when not to but I am still not feeling totally comfortable with them. I am calling the center again tonight and hopefully someone there will help make things a little clearer. We talked on the phone for about fourty minuets and being that it was a long distance call it might hurt my phone bill but it was well worth it. All in all I was really grateful for the writing centers help, it really is an awesome service and its free! I should have consulted the writing center before now but next year I will definitely take advantage of the opportunity.
The other person I turned to for help is my mom. Although she didn’t study English in school she is a great writer and always helped me with my writing in high school. We don’t live together any more so I had to email her it and we talked through the paper over skype, which is much easier than over the phone. Using skype you can share your computer screen with the person you are talking to so she was able to walk me through all her editing. She found more mistakes with my paper than the writing center and it was a slightly longer process. Most of the problems she found in the paper were wording mistakes that might confuse the reader. We decided to add a little more background information in the introduction to help the reader keep pace. Many of my mistakes were made because I rushed through writing my essay and did not notice. I did not proof read the essay after I was finished and if I had I think I could have found many of the mistakes myself.
Having others proof read my work has been very helpful through my writing education. My mom has always been the one I turn to when I am stuck or need a little help. One great thing she has taught me to do is to say the point I am trying to make aloud to myself and then put it down on paper afterward. This helps to make your points clear to readers.