Writing Focus – Revising

student with a laptopBelieve it or not, most of the work of producing a persuasive research paper is already done. You have a working draft of your paper and have given it time to "rest" so that you can come back to it with fresh eyes. Now take a moment to revise your paper using the guidelines provided to you in this topic. Make sure to consider the following aspects in your revising process:

  • Organization
  • Unity
  • Flow
  • Clarity
  • Logic
  • Relevance
  • Sentence variety
  • Word choice, or diction
  • Tone

After revising your paper, you will submit it to your instructor, who will then distribute it to a coursemate for a peer review. You will also receive a peer's rough draft so that you can practice reading and giving constructive feedback. When you give comments, make sure that they are constructive in nature. In other words, your feedback should not only identify the strong and weak points in the paper but also offer suggestions for improving the paper. For example, you can say,

"The introduction has a really good hook that makes me want to read the rest of the paper. The thesis, though, does not tell me what your specific opinion is on the subject. Consider taking a firm stance on the topic and writing that into your thesis."

Do you see how that comment offers a compliment as well as a suggestion as to how to improve a part of the paper?

Before you begin, review the Revising Checklist to make sure that you include all of the items required for full credit.

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Once you have completed your revised draft, please submit your work to the dropbox.