Week 3B4 - Draft a Research Paper

Activity 1 | Activity 2 | Activity 3 | Activity 4 | Activity 5 | Activity 6 | Activity 7

Activity 4: Revision Document

The second thing you will be asked to do for Task 4 is a revision essay that details how you will revise your paper toward the final paper.  This is a short essay that details how you will revise your final paper and the strategies you are using in order to do the revision.  You can also enumerate your strengths and weaknesses in this task.  For instance:  

• Are you consulting APA information and checking your citations and reference list?   Are you doing additional research for a weak area of your paper?   
  
•  Are you checking grammar and sentence structure?     
• Are you checking your body paragraphs to see if they match your thesis statement and either prove or elaborate on it?        
  
• There are many other areas you can comment on in your revision document including your strategies, strengths and weaknesses.
  
• Remember to label this document as a Revision Document
  

Draft with Revisions

The third document for this task is a Revision Document. 

After you have drafted a version of your paper, you will then begin revising and editing it. Generally, working with a draft involves both revising and editing. Either process can take place at any time and as many times as you feel is necessary. Revision includes taking something out, adding something, rearranging the order of the presented information, substituting something by taking something out and putting something in its place, replacing entire sections, or starting over.

Editing includes checking for writing conventions such as punctuation, spelling, grammar, and APA document and citation formatting.   You can make this process very visible by using Track Changes in Word under Review or by inserting comments in Review.  Turn on Track Changes and then watch as your revision document becomes clearly marked in another color.   You can also use strike-through, highlighting, embedded comments, bolding, or italics -- whatever editing method makes the most sense to you.  

If you are unaware of how to use Track Changes, you can simply write up your comments and scan in you revision document with handwriting into Word and submit this scanned version as your Revised Draft.

REMEMBER:  You will be turning in four documents for this task:  a draft with errors that are apparent to the grader, a draft that uses track changes or is hand-written and scanned, a revision document (that details your changes, how you did them and strategies you used for editing and revising), and a final paper with no errors.

As you read through your draft and watch for places that need revision and edits, consider the strength and consistency of your central point about the paper’s topic. Ask yourself: Do each of my main points relate clearly back to my thesis? Are each of my main points supported clearly by research? Does my introductory paragraph give a brief overview of the topic and main points to be covered in the essay, as they relate to the topic? Is my thesis clear and focused? If my main points have changed, has this been reflected in the thesis so they are still aligned and related to one another?

Do I provide at least one research source in each of my body paragraphs? If I need to add in more information or citations, have I found new research sources that will help me better support my points?  

Be sure to cite any information that is not common knowledge. Watch for any words that might be misspelled and consider if you have any grammatical problems that you can look up in the learning resources to revise any errors.

After you have revised and edited your draft, share your draft with someone you know. Let your reader know your intended audience. Ask your reader(s) for comments, questions, and suggestions and write down their suggestions and comments.  This will help you work on writing a revision summary later in this task. Ask your reader, “Does my topic and the point I am making about my topic make sense to you? What are the strengths of my draft? What information is unclear?" 

Talking with someone else who has read your draft is one of the most useful strategies toward revision. All writers need an extra set of eyes to help them look for information that needs more clarification, needs more or less information, and for organizational issues. Please note that course mentors cannot review your draft!

It is also a good idea to put your draft aside for a day or two so that when you come back to it, you will see your draft in a new light. Writers often report that when they come back to a draft after a few days, they see new opportunities for revision. Once you have finished revising and editing your draft, save your document as an *rtf OR Word file. Then, label and head this document as “Draft with Revisions.”