Essay Editing Strategies for ESL Students

Here is a simple strategy from Writers-House.com. Our tutors recommend this strategy for students who want to learn to edit their own papers.

1. Think of what mistakes you make most often. If you have no idea, start your error log, recording mistakes that you make repeatedly. This is a simple and effective way to keep track of your errors. Sort your mistakes into two categories: mistakes related to the meaning and those that don’t affect meaning.

2. Write down three most common mistakes related to meaning.

3. Read your paper to detect the most common error that affects meaning. Focus on this type of errors and read your text line by line. Highlight or underline these errors while reading. If you choose this approach, the editing process won’t be so overwhelming.

4. Repeat the previous step again and again, with the second and the third most common types of mistakes related to meaning. Use different colors for different types of mistakes.

5. Once you’ve detected all the most common errors, read about them on the internet or ask Writers-House.com for help.

Common Types of Errors

Incorrect word form — problems with adjectives, adverbs, infinitives, and gerunds

Incorrect: He is a patience person.

Correct: He is a patient person.

In the first sentence, the noun form is used instead of the adjective.

Subject-verb agreement — problems with subject-verb agreement

Incorrect: She like peanut butter.

Correct: She likes peanut butter.

In the first sentence the word “like” does not correspond to the singular subject.

Incorrect verb form — sometimes, verbs can be formed in the wrong way (especially common when combining two verbs).

Incorrect: He was read the book during the ride.

Correct: He was reading the book during the ride.

“Read” is a simple present form so it can be used only when describing actions that happen on a regular basis. In the second sentence, the form is changed to past progressive, which indicates that the action was in progress at a certain time. It’s easy to remember that the word “was” is never used before the simple present form.

Checking for Common Verb Errors

If you want to focus on editing, underline or highlight all the verbs. After this, check every verb, answering the following questions:

Modals (should, can, would, may, must):

Did you follow the modal with the base form of the verb?

Subject-verb agreement:

Does the verb agree? Did you use a singular or plural form?

Tenses of “be” words:

Did you change the tense? Is this an appropriate choice in the context? Did you use passive voice? If so, was it necessary?

Another piece of advice: After you’ve completed all the steps above, ask your friend to read your paper, looking for any problems. You can also find many professional editors on Writers-House.com. Our experts will make sure that your paper is perfect in terms of grammar.

While self-editing your papers, you may use the Longman Dictionary of American English. This is a great option for ESL students because this dictionary also contains lots of useful grammatical information. Dictionaries intended for native speakers usually lack such features.