David Lang
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Mission
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Home Error Log Workbook
The Error Log and WorkbookIn order to work on your grammar errors, it is useful to set a goal of identifying and learning to correct by the end of the term your three most significant and common errors. The Error Log Chart (see the Error Log Chart link on the homepage) is a record of all the errors you make. Use it to select the three you will work on this term. The log will also tell you of your progress throughout the term toward eliminating those (and other) errors. The Error Workbook is where you work on eliminating the three errors. The Workbook should have three sections, one for each of the three errors you are focusing on. Within each section, each entry should contain the complete sentence in which the error occurs (the error should be marked), your explanation of the relevant grammar rule, and the correction of your error (with the correction marked). A notebook or papers stapled together can be used for the Workbook. Here are directions for using the Error Log and for creating your Error Workbook: 1. Record on the chart the types and number of the errors you make in your papers each time you receive a draft on which I have identified errors. Use the correction guide at the back of the handbook to understand the meaning of the symbols I have placed on your draft. 2. Identify your three most common serious errors. For example, you might choose tenses, agreement, and fragments. Other serious errors include verb form, comma splices, fused sentence, pronoun reference, unclear sentence, mixed sentence, incomplete sentence, and awkward construction errors. Get my approval of the three you choose to work on. 3. Reserve several pages in your notebook for each kind of error. For example, you might reserve several pages for an Agreement Error section. (You will probably be adding to each section throughout the term, so you need to leave this space for later additions.) This method of organization is required. 4. Write a heading for each section (e.g. “Agreement Errors”). 5. Find among the errors identified on your paper one of the kinds of error you have chosen to work on. 6. In the section you have created for that kind of error:
7. Find other errors of the same kind and follow the #6 directions for each one, writing the error, the rule (if it varies in any way from the rule for the first error), and the correction in the same section. In other words, you include all agreement errors in the same Agreement Error section. 8. In your writing, find examples of the other two kinds of error you have chosen (see #2 above), create sections for them in your notebook (e.g. a Tense section), and do Workbook entries for them (see #4 - 6 above). 9. Once you have completed this exercise, get feedback on your Workbook entries from someone in the LATC, from me, or from another writing expert. This is required. Example of a Workbook entry for an agreement error: Agreement Errorsagr Error: My mother, as well as my father, are from Britain. Rule broken (in my own words): words between the subject and the verb don’t affect the agreement of the subject and the verb. A group of words introduced by the phrase “as well as” is not part of the subject. It is called an intervening word group. Therefore, because “mother” is singular, “are” should be singular. Correction: My mother, as well as my father, is from Britain. Updated: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 at 3:02:39 PM by David Lang 12/4/2008; 1:48:15 PM |
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