Planeamiento del stand

Reading is the flip side of writing. What makes something work for you as a reader is the same thing that helps your writing make sense.

Think about something you really enjoyed reading. Anything at all—a newspaper or magazine article, a short story, a book. Maybe you just finished reading it. Maybe you read it last year. Write in your note- book what it was and why you liked it.

Now think about what you expect as a reader from anything you read. Write in your notebook whatever comes to mind.

Maybe your list looks like this: • Has to hold my interest • Must make sense

• Must get my imagination going • Order of events has to make sense • Has to use language I understand

• Has to use correct spelling and punctuation

Refer to this list every time you are about to begin a paper. Make sure your writing meets the expectations you have for other authors. Planning your essay before you write will actually save you time in the correcting phase.

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If your answer doesn’t raise any further questions, and if it brings a clear

Find Out!

answer. How close is your question to the real question? You may want to review Chapter 7, “Knowing What You Know”; and Chapter 8, “Knowing When You Don’t Know.”

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All writers find that they think a lot faster than they write. This means there are often words missing, or extra words, or word endings on the paper that the writer did not plan to put there. As you know, nobody can write as fast as they think! So once you’ve written down your answer to an essay question, you should go back over it to correct it. It’s usually OK (and expected!) to mark up the exam book, showing where you want a sentence or paragraph to go, crossing out words you don’t want, and the like.

Use Your Learning Style to Polish Your Writing

In the revising and editing phase of your essay test, you can still use your strongest learning style.

• If you learn best by hearing: Read what you’ve written softly to yourself. Read slowly and carefully. Listen to your own voice. Pretend you’re the exam grader. Is what you’re hearing the mean- ing you meant to convey?

• If you learn best by seeing: Carefully and slowly read what you’ve written, looking carefully for spelling, grammar, and content errors. • If you learn best by order: Grammar probably comes to you more easily than spelling. Check your spelling by reading softly to yourself; take it word by word so you don’t miss any subtle mistakes. • If you learn best by using images: You’re on order alert. First check that the descriptions you’ve written follow a clear order, before you check grammar and spelling. As you read softly to yourself, compare what you see with what you hear.

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• If you learn best by doing or moving: Check your grammar by softly tapping your foot to the rhythm of what you wrote, feeling for when the beat doesn’t match what’s familiar. This is another way of associating what you see with what you hear. Check your spelling by following along in writing with a pencil eraser and reading softly to yourself. Also look out for missing words—you might have been writing fast, in an attempt to keep up with your thinking!

Remember—your own learning style is a combination! You might also have discovered other ways of writing and correcting that work for you. For example, let’s make up a sentence someone could have written on an imaginary test question about steam-engine regulations. Maybe you were thinking, and thought you wrote, “Those rules don’t apply any- more.” But, since the writing was trying to keep up with the thinking, what you wrote was something like, “Those rules aply anymore.” By read- ing out loud carefully and slowly, you could hear the missing don’t and see the missing p in apply. Whenever you say to yourself, “That doesn’t sound right,” or “That doesn’t look right,” go back and check. Check for any- thing on the paper that is different from what you are saying. You want to make sure what you’re reading is the same as what you were thinking!

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On an essay test, you’re answering specific questions. First, you need to understand what’s being asked of you. Then, you need to come up with specific answers. You focus on the meaning, on the idea, of what you want to say so the reader knows what you think and feel. After you’re satisfied with what your writing is saying, you then check that what you’ve written looks and sounds the way you want it to. Since it’s a test, you’ll first answer the questions you know for sure, and save the more challenging ones for later. This will save you time and energy!

Practice Tips

Practice writing “on call,” without having much time to prepare. Write several questions you could imagine being asked on an essay exam. Cut each one into a strip, putting all the strips in a jar. Make a note of the time. Pull a strip out of the jar and answer the question written on it, using some of the suggestions in this chapter. Remember to:

• Use your learning style to help you come up with an answer. • Answer it fully.

• Check that the images and order make sense. • Check your grammar and spelling.

Note the time again. How long did it take you to finish your answer? Are you likely to have more or less time on the real test? On another day, repeat this exercise, choosing a new question and also timing your answer.

Now’s the time to retake the TEST YOUR STUDY SMARTS SURVEY, if you’ve read all of this book through this page. If you’ve been reading according to what interests you, or what you feel you need, WAIT until you have completed the entire book before retaking the survey.

If you answered the questions on the first survey carefully and honestly, you’ll get a clearer picture of what you know about how you learn—and what you now do about it—by waiting until you have finished the book. It’s comparing your answers to the same questions, before and after reading the book, that shows you the progress you’ve made! (What’s tricky is that if you answered the questions quickly, with- out much thought the first time, and now, the second time, you answer them carefully, you may not have an accurate register.)