Writing A Paper
| March 1, 2010 | Posted by Brenda under School |
I have an article whose deadline is today, March 1, 2010. It’s about half finished. Lucky for me, the person I have to submit it to understands ADHD very well, so when I finally get it in around midnight, she most likely will be OK with that.
Learning to write a paper, whether for work or a school assignment, is a skill that all of us should possess.
When you have ADHD, though, writing an acceptable paper can be a big challenge.
Well written papers are organized in a logical manner with a clear beginning, middle, and end. The sentences are grammatically correct with proper punctuation and spelling. They start with a point and they stick with the same point throughout the paper.
People with ADHD (and some without ADHD) can be overwhelmed by the sheer rules and organization required to put a paper together. My daughter Sarah, who is an excellent writer, can write a wonderful paper as long as no one asks her to outline it first.
My son, Andy, used to struggle with writing papers, but he’s a college student now and has no problems at all. Here’s how I helped him:
When he was younger, he would dictate his paper and I would type. I did my best to punctuate it as he was speaking it, so if he ran on talking for some time, I added no periods.
Once he was done, I would print it out and he would proof it. We would make the changes he wanted, and then I would proof it.
I tried to make my suggestions in a manner that helped him learn. For instance, if he jumped from point A to point C or D, I would ask him about it. Maybe his readers would not see how he got there. Then he could make more refinements to the paper.
Another thing that I did was to show him the basics of a paper:
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The beginning is where you introduce your topic and what you’re going to say about it.
For each point that you are going to make about your topic, you need at least one paragraph to talk about that point.
In the conclusion, or end, you summarize all that you’ve said.
Having a simple template helped immensely.
Once he got the hang of those things, we worked on learning to use certain words to transition from one paragraph or idea to another.
Of course, the best way to learn to write a better paper is to practice as much as possible. In addition to all that I taught Andy, he also got the benefit of all of his teachers and all of the papers they assigned over the years.
Learning to write a decent paper can be done; sometimes you just need a little help.
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