Ordering text logically, organising paragraphs and checking spelling

Speaker 1: I’m back! And I have a gift for you.

Speaker 2: We’re going to do some colouring in to take my mind off this course application?

Speaker 1: Sort of! You're stuck, so I thought we could do a mind map.

Speaker 2: Cool!

Speaker 1: (TO AUDIENCE) The purpose of the piece of writing goes in the centre of the map. Applying for a design course.

The important ideas that will support that purpose go around it.

Qualifications, personal skills, work experience, reasons to be a designer.

Then add detail to each of those ideas.

For reasons to be a designer that could be… enjoying design, computer skills, liking challenges, collaborating with other people.

This helps turn a jumble of ideas into a plan with the ideas moving outwards in order of importance, in categories that will help you organise the piece of writing.

Speaker 2: (TO OTHER PEOPLE) So, purple for qualifications, blue for personal skills, black for work experience and green for reasons to be a designer.

Speaker 1: And what's the orange?

Speaker 2: I think that's baked bean sauce.

(THEY LAUGH)

Speaker 1: I’ve done a draft of my application letter for the design course. What do you think?

Speaker 2: It’s great… you just need to break it up a bit, make it so each new topic has its own paragraph.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you’re right.

That will help me organise my writing as well, making sure it’s focused and I’m writing about one thing at a time.

It’s a bit all over the place at the moment.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so these sentences are all about your personal skills, but you want a new paragraph for when you start talking about why you want to apply for the course.

Speaker 1: You know, I used to think paragraphs had to be a certain length, like, four lines and then a paragraph break.

But it’s more about when you introduce a new topic, isn't it?

When you introduce a new place, time, person, idea?

Speaker 2: Yeah, and each paragraph should start with a sentence introducing that new idea or subject.

So you could start this paragraph about your experience with 'During my time at college, I gained experience of…'

Speaker 1: Good one. And I can start my last paragraph, 'To conclude…'

Speaker 2: Right, let’s make these changes on the computer.

Speaker 1: The deadline of the design course I’m applying for is in an hour.

So I’m putting it to good use - proofreading.

And, just in case I miss anything, I’ve got an extra pair of eyes.

Speaker 2: That should be 'experience'.

Speaker 1: I’m using a dictionary and spell-checker.

It’s good for grammar and punctuation too.

Speaker 2: But you should check it yourself too, just with your eyes.

Because spell-checkers can miss things sometimes.

There you go: it says 'form'; it should be 'from'.

Speaker 1: How about if I read what I’ve written out loud so you can spot any missing words or repetition?

Speaker 2: Yeah, and to check punctuation too.

When you need to breathe you need a comma or a full stop.

You can usually hear when a sentence is too long or the meaning gets lost with too many words.

You read and I’ll make the changes on here.

Speaker 1: 'I’m applying for a place on this design course because I’m very interested in…'

(TIME PASSES)

OK, so we’ve checked spelling, punctuation, grammar, missing words and sentence length.

And we’ve checked that it makes sense. Does it make sense?

Speaker 2: It does. It’s good.

I think you should just add one thing, under skills.

Speaker 1: What’s that?

Speaker 2: Attention to detail.

Speaker 1: Check. Better make sure I spell that right.