The Stance You Should Take Toward Your Own Grammatical Practice
Probably the best approach is to not worry about grammatical correctness in the early stages of the writing process. When inventing, invent. When writing, write. Don't get bogged down in minutiae.
But, when it comes to revising, when you're both sharpening your meaning and translating your prose from writer-based to reader-based . . . that is the time to give some conscious thought to grammar.
Most Guilford students, especially after first-year English, have adequate grammatical knowledge. When they make errors, it is usually because they have not exercised proper care. In other words, they have not proofread carefully (a task best performed separately, when the prose is cold on the page).
It is also safe to say, however, that all students, whether incoming first-year students or seniors, have grammatical glitches in their writing. No surprise there, because English grammar is amazingly complex. For the good writer, the problem may be one that most readers will never notice--incorrect comma use with introductory sentence elements, for example. For the less experienced writer, however, the problem may involve more serious errors that diminish the writer's authority and may even interfere with meaning. At the least, such error represents unnecessary and unwanted distraction for the reader.
It should be every student's goal to eliminate this sort of distraction from his or her writing. And that means eliminating the glitches.
One profitable use of first-year English should be to look at your writing objectively and, with the help of your instructor, to identify and eliminate distracting grammatical choices.
If not now, when?