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Headquartered in the beautiful community of Rancho Palos Verdes, California, SLK Learning Center, Inc. is a proven leader among South Bay academic tutoring organizations and test prep centers.
SLK is equipped with a highly qualified and experienced staff of teachers amassing decades of experience in the fields of instruction and education.
We have recently expanded to include a new tutoring facility in Torrance, California, to better serve our clients.
Essay Writing Pitfalls to Avoid
"You have an essay due." These words are enough to make most students tremble. What might surprise students and parents is that most teachers who collect essays are just as frightened by what they might find in them.
Come grading time, teachers tend to find that most students similar difficulties when writing for school. Here are some of the most common:
1. Informal style.
In this age of text messaging and blogging, many students have adopted an extremely informal style of writing, which includes abbreviations, lack of punctuation, and incorrect grammar. This kind of writing is fine for brief messages for friends, but when it finds its way into a school assignment, it is entirely inappropriate. 
Essay assignments (or any class writing, for that matter) requires a formal style: correct punctuation and mechanics, complete sentences, and academic vocabulary. When students can't differentiate between the two kinds of writing (known as code-switching) they will find their grades lowered, even if what they say is accurate and insightful.
2. Lack of analysis or original ideas. Generally, when teachers give a writing assignment, they want to see how the student thinks and how well they understand the material. What they do not want to see is their own ideas parroted back to them. Part of being a student is thinking for oneself and expressing one's own original ideas in writing. Teachers are looking for deeper thinking, not summaries. It's fantastic if you can recite the plot of The Great Gastby, but can you discuss the symbolism or irony in it? True comprehension involves reading a text and forming original ideas about it--analyzing the text and forming educated opinions. Students need to feel comfortable taking risks when writing and giving their own thoughts a chance.
3. Disorganization or off-topic writing. Nothing is more frustrating for a teacher than reading an essay and having no idea what it is about. Generally, that means that the student didn't, either. Essays have structure for a reason: a logical structure allows the reader to follow the writer and understand the ideas expressed. What is writing for, if not to communicate? If your meaning gets lost because of a lack of organization, you have failed to succeed at writing's basic purpose. To this end, writers need to focus not only on what they say but how they say it. Prewriting generally prevents a lack of cohesion in organization and keeps the writer on topic--and keeps the teacher in the loop!
SLK Learning Center, Inc. offers a variety of writing classes for all grade levels. We can help your child fix any of the mistakes above, or avoid them entirely! Call us to find out which class is right for you!
From: February 2010 newsletter
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