Writing is one of the first skills that children are taught when they start schooling. There are children who learn first but there are others who struggle for some time before mastering the art of writing. Sometimes it is difficult to know if your child is doing well or is making a lot of mistakes.
All in all, writing is generally a personal experience. But most students often struggle with writing mistakes that can affect them in the future. For example, your child may fail to understand the difference in meaning between different words.
For young children, writing can be difficult to master if there’s no adequate teaching and practice. The most important thing is to ensure that you are following up with your child and helping him or her point out the mistakes.
Below are 5 common writing mistakes children make:
1. Treating writing linearly
Most people make the mistake of taking writing as a linear process. Some students think that it is all about sitting down, start writing and everything turns out perfect. But the truth is that even average writing requires some time to produce something logical.
Students should be made to understand that writing is not all about putting words or paper or typing on a computer. Writing requires a lot of brainstorming and commitment in order to end up with sensible content. You need to spend enough time going through assignment instructions before getting started.
2. Failing to proof-read
Proofreading is part and parcel of writing. But many people tend to ignore or postpone proofreading their work. It doesn’t matter how much experience you possess, you are likely to make mistakes in the course of your writing. You don’t have to finish writing before you start proofreading. The best option is to go through your work after every few paragraphs.
3. Misspelling words
Spelling is not only challenging to kinds but also adults. There are certain words that are commonly misspelled and at some point, people get used to the mistakes. It could either be through writing or conversation; your child can get used to the wrong pronunciation or spelling of certain words. For instance, some children are used to putting apostrophes where they are not supposed to. Others don’t understand how to use homophones.
4. Divided attention
Divided attention may not sound like common writing but it is when looked at from different angles. As mentioned earlier, writing requires a lot of commitment and planning. You cannot write when your attention is divided among several activities. Unfortunately, most children believe they can multitask with other things.
5. Wordiness
Being wordy means using more words than required to pass across a particular message. Wordiness makes writing confusing and boring. Some learners use too many words in order to attain the required amount of words for an assignment. But what they don’t understand is that they are lowering the quality of their work by doing that.
Writing is an art that anyone can learn. There are several learning resources such as the 5th grade writing worksheets from Adobe Education Exchange that children can use to improve their skills.