Thursday, March 9: Revision

Hello all!

First off, here's today's lesson: Lesson 8.

For today's class, we discussed where you are in the writing process for your draft 1.1, and we also discussed how revision is *not* the same thing as editing/proofreading.

Remember, in revision, you should start out by giving yourself some distance from your first draft, and then you focus on rereading for conveyed meaning, recalling your own purpose in writing your draft, reconsidering your rhetorical stance, considering your audience, and evaluating your organization. These are big picture issues that you want to get squared away before you work on smaller details through editing (you don't want to do all that work editing only to find you need to change directions on a big idea of your paper, right?). Again, these steps in the writing process basically ensure that you are conveying exactly what you mean to convey about a topic--that you are expressing your argument effectively.

I encourage you to keep looking at the differences in the sample drafts from draft 1.1 to 1.2 in the back of your book (pgs. 471, 478). Look for the author's identification of audience/purpose and rhetorical choices, organization of ideas, adherence to the assignment, etc. (other big picture ideas).

Homework:

• Reading: St. Martin's, Ch. 2 (pgs. 23-39)
• Bring a HARD COPY of your working rhetorical analysis to class after spring break (Draft 1.1 assignment is on RaiderWriter under the syllabus--take a look at it and make sure that you adhere to the assignment). The due date for your rhetorical analysis is coming up (March 28th), so you need to begin drafting! 
• You have already done a good chunk of the work here--you have gathered information, identified audience/purpose, structured a thesis statement, and you have even started a bit of analysis here and there. I am asking you to take your first swing at putting this into paper format. 
• BA6

Brief Assignment #6:

Description: To complete this assignment, you will read the initial draft provided on RaiderWriter and then write an initial paragraph in which you discuss the problems that you see in the current draft. 

Next, read the revised draft and write another paragraph in which you discuss:
1) Whether the problems that you saw in the first draft were addressed.
2) Whether the revisions fixed other issues that you hadn’t noticed in the draft.
3) Why the revisions are or are not an improvement over the first draft.

If you believe other revisions should be made to the draft, conclude your assignment with an explanation of what those are and how the revisions should be made.

Your discussion should be 500 - 650 words in length.

Let me know if you have any further questions. Have a great spring break!