Steps for Revising Your Paper
When you have time to revise, use the time to work on your paper and to take breaks from writing. If you can forget about your draft for a day or two, you may return to it with a fresh outlook. During the revising process, put your writing aside at least twice—once during the first part of the process, when you are reorganizing your work, and once during the second part, when you are polishing and paying attention to details.
Use the following questions to evaluate your drafts. You can use your responses to revise your papers by reorganizing them to make your best points stand out, by adding needed information, by eliminating irrelevant information, and by clarifying sections or sentences.
Find your main point.
What are you trying to say in the paper? In other words, try to summarize your thesis, or main point, and the evidence you are using to support that point. Try to imagine that this paper belongs to someone else. Does the paper have a clear thesis? Do you know what the paper is going to be about?
Identify your readers and your purpose.
What are you trying to do in the paper? In other words, are you trying to argue with the reading, to analyze the reading, to evaluate the reading, to apply the reading to another situation, or to accomplish another goal?
Evaluate your evidence.
Does the body of your paper support your thesis? Do you offer enough evidence to support your claim? If you are using quotations from the text as evidence, did you cite them properly?
Save only the good pieces.
Do all of the ideas relate back to the thesis? Is there anything that doesn't seem to fit? If so, you either need to change your thesis to reflect the idea or cut the idea.
Tighten and clean up your language.
Do all of the ideas in the paper make sense? Are there unclear or confusing ideas or sentences? Read your paper out loud and listen for awkward pauses and unclear ideas. Cut out extra words, vagueness, and misused words.
Eliminate mistakes in grammar and usage.
Do you see any problems with grammar, punctuation, or spelling? If you think something is wrong, you should make a note of it, even if you don't know how to fix it. You can always talk to a Writing Lab tutor about how to correct errors.
Switch from writer-centered to reader-centered.
Try to detach yourself from what you've written; pretend that you are reviewing someone else's work. What would you say is the most successful part of your paper? Why? How could this part be made even better? What would you say is the least successful part of your paper? Why? How could this part be improved?
Do your sentences "hang together"?
1. Readers must feel that they move easily from one sentence to the next (coherence).
2. Readers must feel that sentences in a paragraph are connected with each other (unity).
Does the sentence begin with information familiar to the reader?
Does the sentence end with interesting information the reader would not anticipate?
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Will your reader be able to identify quickly the "topic" of each paragraph?
(Adapted from Jaclyn M. Wells, Morgan Sousa, and Mia Martini, Allen Brizee @ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/)
CHECKLIST FOR EDITING
| Aims | Techniques | |
| Editing for academic rigour | · check that you have explicitly written down what you intended to do, and what you did do in your research · ensure you have a clear, logical thread running · back up all claims and interpretations with evidence | |
| Reducing redundancy | Identify and remove unnecessary duplication, explanation, and interesting but irrelevant material. | |
| Editing for consistency | Check consistent use of tenses, voice, style. | |
| Signposting and linking | Let the reader know what to expect, and summarise what has just been read. Keep the structure clear. | |
| Proof reading | Check details of spelling, grammar, numbering. | |
Exercise 1 (B1/B2)
Revise and make necessary corrections to the text below using the marks made by the student.
Presentation
The recent history of the Central American region has been affected by the sharp increase in violence in towns and cities of all countries in the area. The lack of opportunities and the difficulty of improving the living conditions of its inhabitants, have contributed to the illegal activities have become a solution for many who find them not only their livelihood but their personal identification, especially in the case of so-called gangs or ‘maras’. These organizations, getting stronger, which could scare off investors become generators of development, which makes the options more scarce, creating a difficult circle difficult to break.
Given that reality, for years, several governments wanted to use strategies to attack and extermination (super tough and tough) against these groups generate violence, but the results have been far from the goals originally set. Rather, the chaos and the consolidation of criminal organizations have expanded and much more violent actions.
Exercise 2 (B2/C1)