Week Eleven: Planning Revision

1. Week Eleven: Planning Revision

2. Class Overview • 1.1/1.2 Conference Time Sign-Up (Required!) • Short Quiz • Brief Assignment Seven • Review: Identifying Higher-Order Concerns • Structuring Your Revision Process • Practice of Revisions • Participation Assignment

3. 1.1/1.2 Conferences • Over the next two weeks, I will be meeting with each of you for 15-minute discussions concerning your Draft 1.1: these meetings are required. You are only required to sign up for one session. (Please come on time: we will not make these up!) • Conferences will count as two participation grades. • Please bring with you a paper copy of your draft 1.1 that you have annotated in preparation of revisions. • Please read over your instructor and peer feedback before coming to the conference. • Finally, prepare at least two questions or concerns you have regarding your revisions. • Office: English Building 413, 4th Floor

4. Quiz (Please answer in complete sentences unless otherwise noted.) • What is the difference between revision and editing? • Identify the common error in the following passage: “By giving this example, the author humbles himself before his audience. Producing the desired effect of a sense of learning between the audience and author.” a) comma splice b) fused/run-on sentence c) sentence fragment d) missing word • Correct the error in the above sentence. • What does coherence mean in the context of a rhetorical analysis paragraph?

5. Brief Assignment Seven • Objective: To demonstrate your ability to apply principles of revision to your own writing • Purpose: In BA6, you identified the elements that needed revision in someone else’s paper. In this assignment, you will do the same thing for your paper. • Description: First, write a short summary of the strengths and weaknesses of your current draft. Using instructor feedback, peer critiques, and your own analysis, identify the specific elements that work well for your intended reader and those that do not. • Next, write a plan of action. For your plan of action, begin by identifying three specific areas or elements from your draft that you intend to revise and explain why you chose each one. Then, using the recommendations from chapters 6 (see pp. 118-124) and 10 from First-Year Writing and chapter 4 of the St. Martin’s Handbook, explain the steps you will take to revise each one. For example, if a particular paragraph is too vague for your reader, what are you going to have to do to make it more specific? If your topic sentences do not represent the main idea of each body paragraph, what will you do in order to better understand the main idea of each paragraph prior to revising each topic sentence? • This should be submitted in an essay of 500-650 words.

6. BA7: More Advice • In the first paragraph, please include a sentence that indicates which article you analyzed for your 1.1; there are multiple ways you could go about this. (e. g. “In my 1.1 analysis of Diamond’s “The Ethnobiologist’s Dilemma,” the strongest elements were …”) • Be specific in your references: don’t simply refer to the audience as “my audience” or the purpose as “the purpose.” Always be clear about the choices you make as a writer. • Make sure in your paragraph summarizing your draft’s strengths and weaknesses that you are identifying both specific strengths AND weaknesses (look for higher-order concerns if possible). • When identifying strengths and weaknesses, try to reference issues brought up by your instructors and peers as well. • When identifying the three elements for which you will devise written revision strategies, make sure to be clear about the elements as they correspond to your work. For instance, if you have an issue with topic sentences, be clear about which topic sentences are not working, “how” they are not working, and which specific elements you would need to revise. • Essay format means PARAGRAPHS: organize your work in a logical manner. It would probably be wise to give the summary of strengths and weaknesses its own paragraph.

7. Identifying Higher-Order Concerns in the Draft 1.1 • What are the most significant elements in a rhetorical analysis, and why do these matter? • What are the most significant elements in: • Introduction • Thesis • Body Paragraphs • Conclusion • How do purpose and audience affect each of these elements? What about rhetoric and persuasion?

8. Higher-Order Concerns • Refer back to the “checklists” and to Ch. 4d and 4e (really, all of Chapter 4) in your St. Martin’s Handbook • Prioritize the big three first: purpose, audience, and rhetorical choices. If these are not clear or accurate, you’re ability to write an accurate analysis will be diminished. • Next, focus on the clarity and precision of your thesis: make sure that your thesis will lead to an analysis of how rhetorical choices are fitted to and persuasive for a particular audience. • Focus on structural elements after these issues have been addressed: a topic sentence should act as a “thesis” for the body paragraph of analysis. • Always keep the “larger” structure of the analysis in mind: introduction, analysis, conclusion. Which sections are most developed in your current draft? What does this suggest about your writing and thinking process in terms of this article?

9. Structuring the Revision Process • Make sure to reread your draft multiple times and utilize annotation techniques for your own purposes. • Read over your instructor and peer comments (prioritize instructor commentary) to guide your revisions, but do not allow these to substitute for your own decisions as a writer; fixing or addressing only what someone suggests does not constitute qualitative revision. • Take your revisions one step at a time: start with the introduction, purpose, audience, and thesis before moving on to body paragraphs. Body paragraphs have many intricate parts. • Reconsider organization before moving forward with sentence-level revisions: make a plan and prove to yourself (through critical thinking) whether or not the order you have chosen for your analysis is logical. Find ways of improving this structure, and try to new techniques. • Check your current draft for coherence: read your thesis against your topic sentences, and check each sentence of the body paragraphs against their respective topic sentences. Are you developing a consistent and logical analysis? Furthermore, are you demonstrating how the author persuades a particular audience (using rhetorical choices) in conjunction with the text’s purpose? • Are purpose and audience thoroughly and specifically connected throughout your body paragraphs? • Examine the clarity of your sources and how you present each rhetorical choice. Are you consistent and accurate in your analysis?

10. Practice of Revisions Thesis: James Gee uses video game content terms and personal experiences with video games to convince contemporary educators that situated meaning is necessary in learning to both illustrate complex ideas and show students how to apply knowledge. Content language from video games demonstrates how confusing technical language can be to learn outside of its original context. Not knowing how to apply words like “active augmentations” is compared to testing and the sort of words students wouldn’t be familiar with in test booklets. (548-9) Showing how video games relate to education. Gee makes the comparison to educational phrases like “chemical changes,” which could seem complex to a reader or possibly hazy because if out of context. If a teacher cannot figure out how a term in a manual is applied, then a student will be unable to follow their textbooks. Gee’s point is that knowledge has to be applied in order for it to mean anything. This is persuasive for his reader because the device shows us exactly what he as a reader is going through. Content language only matters if it can be applied in a specific situation.

11. Participation Assignment READ: Reading 11 WRITE: (12 pt. Times New Roman font) Reread your introductory paragraph, and note the technique you use to introduce the article or its main idea, where you define the article’s main idea and audience, and how you fit that to your thesis. (Bring a copy of your most recent intro paragraph to class next week.) For the assignment, (in two to three paragraphs) describe the main idea of the article you analyzed and how your current introduction corresponds with that main idea. For instance, how do your sentences address or introduce the article? Also, how does your introduction as a whole prepare the reader for your actual body paragraph analysis? Are these elements connected in your draft? Did you account the whole article, or only one of the main arcs? Last, evaluate the quality of your introduction and make a plan for revision.