Middle School Revision Strategies

In his article "Coming to Terms", Joseph Harris takes the opportunity to share his knowledge with his readers and discuss things to keep in mind when drafting, revising, and editing assignments. In this specific chapter, Harris explains the revision process and suggest possible preliminary steps to take when formulating an essay. He emphasizes revision as a knowledge practice, in which there is a consistent set of questions you can ask yourself at any point while working on a draft (page 99). In addition, Harris refers the term "writer's project" throughout the section.

In Joseph Harris’s chapter “Revising” which was originally published in his book, Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts in 2006, Harris emphasizes the importance of the revising process, how to revise and improve effectively, and informs us about the fact that revising is overlooked and rushed by writers today. He shares tips on how to effectively revise and demonstrates using excerpts within his chapters.

The checklist titled “Checklist for Revising and Editing”, in The Little Seagull Handbook, provided eight great tips for revision of a paper. The tips ranged from appealing to a specific audience to punctuation errors. The biggest issues I have with writing are sentence structure and punctuation and mechanics.

Once a writer has completed the writing portion of an essay, it is often considered to be done. However, no one, even a professional writer, writes a perfect draft on the first attempt; in fact, it is often this revision stage of writing where a good writer separates himself from other, less experienced writers. A good writer understands the importance of revision and spends as much time as possible during this stage to craft the essay into the ideal state. Moreover, what exactly revision is? Revision refers to the changes that occur in an essay once

The assignment I chose to revise, is our first assignment of the semester. The audience analysis assignment. I chose this one because I had the hardest time with it. It also had the most grammatical and technical errors so I decided to go back and revise so I can get a better understanding of what I did wrong and how to fix it for the next time.

In Nancy Sommers’ article, “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers”, she addresses how to different groups, students and experienced writers, go about revising their paper. Sommers method of taking the results of her experience could have been much more effective if she would have added details about certain thing. How did the group’s final papers turn out? Where there significant difference in the final papers, and if so what were they. Did both group turn up with nicely written papers? These questions would have helped to understand the importance of revision toward the creation of the paper, then just the revision stage itself. Sommers mention of how most students repeat themselves in their writings by just

Have you ever given much thought about revising your paper? We correct the spelling, fix the grammatical errors, and give it one last read through then we hand it in. Revision is one of the most important pieces when writing an essay, but do we overlook it? I most certainly did until I read Barbra Tomlinson’s essay, “Tuning, Tying, and Training Texts: Metaphors for Revision”. Tomlinson opened my eyes and I see a whole new light when it comes to revising my papers.

Throughout the revision process, I had the opportunity to discover my voice as a writer and engage in the conversation that is academic writing. In my final paper, I tried to reinforce the idea of a roadmap to guide my reader along my thought process. During my Embedded Writing Consultant appointment, I walked through the guidelines of a roadmap with Amarachi, and she emphasized the importance of a roadmap in reorganizing my paper. I realized that I could clearly articulate what I wanted to state by explaining it to her out loud, but when I translated such ideas to my paper, the main point oftentimes became lost. You mentioned something similar in your feedback, as many of the points I made did not connect to my central claim. Recognizing that I needed to emphasize my plan and then carry it out, I rewrote my paper with this in mind.

My revision strategy is to use both large and small-scale revisions. I believe by using both, I will be able to create a better-written essay. Starting with a large-scale revision of my thesis and some of my paragraphs, this I will do to give my readers a complete insight into why I agree with the author of "Some Lessons from the Assembly Line" and the reasons he wrote the article (Braaksma 17). First, by using a large-scale revision to give my readers a clear understanding of my thesis statement. Then by using small-scale revisions to make sure the syntax and grammar are correct, it will assure my claims do not get lost in the process. give the readers clear details of my claims. My goals are to present the author's claims for "Some

In “Revising”, an excerpt from his book Rewriting published in 2006, Joseph Harris, a University of Delaware English professor, highlights common misinformation about revision, pointing to the popular media depiction of “one-draft” writers. In actuality revision is a vital process of “rethinking, refining, and developing [a] work in progress”, which differs from editing by locality(452). That is, editing carries little impact on surrounding prose, while revision leads to global changes .To better explain, Harris identifies four aspects of the revising process: Coming to Terms, Forwarding, Countering, and Taking an Approach. Ultimately, Harris hopes to provide a clear process in which readers build upon compositional strengths, consider topic

While it was more difficult to incorporate my authentic voice into a critical analysis essay, I believe I managed that a little by writing about a topic that I believed in, which is the cost and extremities one would go to belong. I learned to focus more on the essay and its elements for deeper and more coherent analysis. Those are just some of the things I have learned; this semester I have also learned different views of looking at the world and using my authentic voice. This revision process is just a small glimpse of my continuous growth as a

In the editing stage,the impact of my sentences, eliminating needless of my writing, spelling, proper fromat,phrase,enhancing the style and clarity of my writing, spelling, pagination,margins is what I have to get down,right, and a lot of work on. I feel that the reasons I will keep on making these types of errors are until I get it down and know what I am doing . I have to understand this. I will be the first person to tell you when I don't know anything. My editing style is to reread it more than once over again until I learn it. That go for my editing and proofreading. If there is another way or style. I have not learn it yet. but, I will. The steps I need to take to improve my editing and proofreading is keep on trying it again and again

The hardest part when editing and revising is not anticipating what you wrote. I had gone through the letter several times and was satisfied with the flow and my points. Once I got feedback I could look at the letter as if I had not wrote it. I saw exactly how the feedback comments applied to my letter. I’m starting to understand that one of my biggest weakness is that I assume everyone can see how I got to my point. But I never actually get the true point out. It is always embedded in my embellishments. Early in my writing career I realized I was to direct, I just stated the point but never show how I got there. Now it seems like I’m the reverse. I inform the reader how I got there and never state the thesis; in my revision my thesis

I will provide as much feedback as I can on the essay. It will not only include grammar and punctuation corrections, but I will address relevant feedback that comments on their analysis. I will ask questions on the paper to guide inquiry, for when the student receives their paper back and reviews the comments. I will write a paragraph describing their strengths and weaknesses that were visible, and what they will need to work on in order to improve for the next time. I would definitely require students to revise their papers, and hand-in a rewrite. If I did not require them to rewrite their essay, I would require them to do peer edits using the read aloud protocol. After they have mastered the approach, I would provide them with a new prompt and excerpts. Using what they have learned by revising or editing their papers and their peer’s papers, I would ask them to rewrite their essays using the same prompt and excerpts they just wrote on. This will allow me to assess their improvement from what they knew, and what they know now to make a more effective analysis. ]

I chose to revise assignments number two and three because they were my two favorite assignments out of the three we did during the semester. I felt that they were unique in the sense that I had never been asked to do something like this in an English class before. It is important to enjoy the assignments that you revise because the process takes a lot of time and effort. A writer must be fully engaged with his pieces to be able to revise effectively. I also think that they will allow me to work on two completely different aspects of my writing. In project two, my revisions are focused around incorporating sources and supporting evidence. I also look to improve development and new perspective in this piece as well. I plan on addressing these areas in a variety of ways through out my revisions. I will look at the way I incorporate sources to make sure that they flow smoothly and are needed and effective where they are currently placed. I will also look at the frequency at which I incorporate sources to see if there is opportunity to incorporate more. As far as the areas of development and new perspective go, I will look into my analysis and see if that can be strengthened in any shape or form. For project three, my focus is on the section of the rubric that deals with So what/who cares as well as global organization. I also am looking into improving focus and interpretation. For so what/who cares as well as focus and interpretation this is another area where I can look into