If you’re a student with dyslexia, you might find it difficult to write essays and assignments. In a previous post, we looked at the first 5 steps for writing an assignment with dyslexia. You can find that here: Writing Assignments With Dyslexia – Studying With Dyslexia. Let’s take a look at 5 more steps for writing assignments with dyslexia.
Step 6 – Proofread the First Draft – How to Write With Dyslexia
With a first draft finished, you should now read through it at least once. At this stage, keep an eye out for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors – you don’t want your work to contain any mistakes you could spot the second-time around. Here, you can also get an idea of how your work flows from point to point. If you think some bits don’t work properly, or something doesn’t fit, make a note of it and then you can find a solution when you write the second draft.
Step 7 – Write the Second Draft – How to Write With Dyslexia
Writing the second draft is less a case of re-writing your whole assignment, and more of looking at the entire piece critically and trying to re-write parts so that they’re even more concise. You might feel as though this is unnecessary, but going through and rewording things can help with clarity.
Step 8 – Proofread the Second Draft – How to Write With Dyslexia
As with the first draft, it’s important to re-read your work to make sure there are as few errors you can catch as possible. You may also want to ask someone you trust to help you out at this stage to get their opinion on grammar and punctuation.
Step 9 – Complete Referencing and Formatting – How to Write With Dyslexia
Hopefully, you’ve been referencing as you go along. If so, there should be little to do in this section when it comes to referencing. Just make sure that you’ve followed the referencing system that your university and department have specified, such as the Harvard Referencing System. You will probably also need to write a bibliography – do this at this stage.
In addition, you should make sure that the formatting of your work meets the specifications of the department. If your work is word-processed, they might specifically request certain fonts, font sizes, and line spacing. Check the guidelines set by your department since some universities will dock points from assignments that aren’t formatted correctly.
Step 10 – Proofread and Check for Plagiarism – How to Write With Dyslexia
In this final stage, you want to proofread your work and specifically check for plagiarism. Ensure that whenever you’ve used supporting evidence from a source, you’ve cited them properly. The aim of this is to make sure that you aren’t passing off someone else’s work as your own.One way to check for plagiarism is to copy and paste sections of your own writing into a search engine.
If this leads to results of places where you might have gathered ideas from, then you need to cite it as a source or remove the suspicious piece of text from your work. If you do remove it, make sure to replace it with your own work. Of course, plagiarism is taken very seriously, so take no risks at this stage.
Conclusion – How to Write With Dyslexia
So there you have it: the ten steps for writing an assignment with dyslexia. All you’d need to do now is hand in your work (on-time!) and then wait for your results. Congratulations!
If you’d like more tips and advice for how to write with dyslexia, check out our guide: How to Study with Dyslexia.
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