1. Weekly Overview
The last week of this course covers improving your writing. You will work on writing strong introductions and conclusions, as well as proofreading and editing. If you are participating in the live online course, you will submit your final essay for evaluation.
2. Excerpts from the Online Materials
The following is a sample of key materials from this week’s lesson:
Revision is the process of looking at your writing and making important changes to it in order to improve it. Those changes could be in content, organization, sentence structure, and word choice. As Charles A. MacArthur has stated about revision: “[Writers] have opportunities to think about whether their text communicates effectively to an audience, to improve the quality of their writing, and even to reconsider their content and perspective and potentially transform their own understanding.”
Editing is the practice of fixing mistakes. You should revise before you edit – it might save you some time. For example, if you decide to delete a sentence when you revise, there is no point in editing it first.
As you revise and edit, consider the comments that were made and consider the points in the following revision checklist.
8 point Checklist for Revision
- Does your essay have one clear and concise main idea? Is this idea addressed in a good, arguable thesis statement?
- Does your introduction create interest in the topic and make your readers want to read more?
- Is your essay well organized? Did you use an outline or other tool to help with the organization?
- Is the main idea of each paragraph clear? Have you developed each paragraph with supporting information?
- How have you transitioned between paragraphs? Have you used key words and pronouns to create connections between sentences and paragraphs?
- Are the sentences clear and well written? Have you varied your sentence structure? Can you improve any sentences by combining or rewriting them?
- Is your vocabulary accurate? Have you used precise words to express your meaning?
- Does your essay have a strong conclusion? Does it bring the essay to a satisfying close, and give your reader something to think about?
Sources for Improving Essays
Websites:
• Revising Drafts: http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/revising-drafts/
Books:
• Revising Prose, 5th edition, by Richard A. Lanham, Pearson, 2006.
• Writing as Revision, by Beth Alvarado and Barbara Cully, Pearson, 2011.
3. Freewriting
Write without editing yourself. Get a pen and paper, or write at your computer on the following idea (or any idea you want). Try again this week for 10-15 minutes without stopping. Do not edit yourself for grammar, spelling, or any other reason. Let the thoughts just spill onto your page or screen, without thinking about whether they are right or wrong, good or bad.
Freewriting topic 5: What is the most important thing you’ve learned in the past five weeks, either from the online course, or anywhere else?
4. Controlled Writing
In controlled writing, pay close attention to form and structure, editing yourself for grammar, organization, and clear ideas. Again this week, try to write three paragraphs on the following topic.
Controlled writing topic 5: What positive changes have you seen in your community recently? What caused these changes to come about? How have they helped your community?
5. Editing
The following essay has several errors in it. Identify the errors, and rewrite the essay correctly. Go to the back of this book for one possible correct way to write the essay.
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life is the first published work of the British writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who was also the author of Frankenstein. Published in 1787, Thoughts offers advice on female education to the emerging British middle class. Although the book focuses strongly on morality and etiquette, it also contains basic instructions, such as how to care for an infant.
Like other conduct books of the time, Thoughts adapts older genres to the new middle class ethos. The book encourages mothers to teach their daughters analytical thinking, self discipline, honesty, contentment in their social position, and marketable skills (in case they should ever need to support themselves). Her aim is to educate women to be useful wives and mothers, because, she argues, it is through these roles that they can most effectively contribute to society. The predominantly domestic role Wollstonecraft outlines for women— a role that she viewed as meaningful— was interpreted by 20th century feminist literary critics as paradoxically confining women to the private arena.
6. Vocabulary Check
Here are some words from this week that were used in this week’s course mate- rials. Check (√), highlight, or note the ones you already know. Look up the ones you don’t know. For the ones you don’t know, write them out on cards, or add them to a notebook, along with the definition, written in your own words. Indicate the part of speech. Then write an example sentence in your own words.
___ an arena
___ burgeoning
___ conduct
___ confining
___ contentment
___ domestic
___ to dominate
___ to emerge
___ ethos
___ etiquette
___ to excerpt
___ a genre
___ an infant
___ a manual
___ marketable
___ a narrative
___ paradoxically
___ predominantly
Remember to share your work and comment on others’ work on the course website at http://edX.org.