Chapter 5: Revising

Chapter 5: Revising

This chapter goes over revising your first draft. When beginning to revise your essay look over whole-paper issues, remind yourself of your purpose and audience. Check your overall approach; check if the topic is worn out, the approach is stale, the voice is predictable or fake, the draft sounds boring, and the essay is formulaic.

Prepare yourself to revise. Think globally. Check your ideas; check thesis, focus and theme. Check your organization; look at the overall design, ideas run smoothly and logically. Check your tone of voice and attitude.

Revising for ideas and organization, examine your ideas by checking for complete thinking and clear thesis. Examine your organization; check your overall plan, opening ideas, flow of ideas, and cosign ideas.

When revising your voice and style, check your level of commitment as well as your intensity of writing. Develop an academic style; personal pronouns, technical terms and jargon, level of formality, and unnecessary qualifiers. Know when to use a passive voice. Weakness of a passive voice is it can be impersonal, wordy or sluggish. Strengths of a passive voice is it can be tactful, you can use it to stress something or something can be understood,, unknown or unimportant.

When addressing paragraph issues remember the basics; is the paragraph organized, is there supporting sentences and a closing sentence, and what is the specific function of the paragraph. Keep your purpose in mind, check function, flow and fit. Check for unity by looking at topic sentence, placement of topic sentence, supporting sentence, and consistent focus. Check for coherence; effective repetition and clear translation. Check for completeness, supporting details, and specific details.

Revise collaboratively; know your role, provide appropriate feedback; basic description, summary evaluation and thorough critique. Respond to plan by using OAQS method: Observe, appreciate, question, and suggest.