About this week
In this final week of Unit 3, you will focus on revising your Argument or Persuasive Paper for submission. To assist you in this process, you will also review a number of resources related to editing, proofreading, and revising. And, while you should spend the bulk of your time working on your paper draft in its entirety, you will also devote a bit of time to the local issues of your writing. As such, you will produce an Error Checklist; this assignment asks you to identify the most common sentence-level errors you make in your academic writing, to correct those errors, and to cite the related rule or guideline. This way, you will have a guide to help you as you write future papers; you will know which errors to look out for and how to fix them. Finally, the week will culminate in the submission of your second draft of Project 3.
Learning Objectives:
- Review and implement editing and proofreading strategies
- Understand and implement revision strategies
Task List:
- Consume this week’s required readings and media
- Submit Low-Stakes Assignment #8: Error Checklist
- Submit Project 3: The Persuasive Essay
Required Readings
- Revising and Editing: When you revise, you try to “re-see” the paper as a whole, considering changes you might make to your thesis, supporting points, organization, evidence, etc. This is distinct from editing or proofreading, where you are looking for “local” errors and mistakes. Read this resource for more information and to ensure that you are truly revising your paper, and not simply editing it.
- Revision is Writing. That is All: This source reminds us that revision is not the quick review you do of a paper before you turn it in. Revision is an essential part of the writing process. Revision is writing as much as drafting is, which is writing as much as planning is, which is…you get it.
- Grammar, Rhetoric, and Style: This chapter reminds us that grammar is about more than remembering what a semicolon is (or when to use it!); grammar itself is rhetorical and constantly in flux. Read this before you start to work on your sentence-level edits.
Diving Deeper
- Purdue Online Writing Lab (Purdue OWL) and Excelsior Online Writing Lab: Both of these online writing labs are excellent sources for all issues related to academic writing, but they are especially useful for finding information about sentence-level concerns such as grammar and punctuation rules.
- Excelsior’s 20 Most Common Grammar Errors College Students Make.
- Writing for Success, chapters 2-7: We have read a few chapters from this textbook already, but see chapters 2-7 for specific information about all things related to the sentence and paragraph.
LSA 8: Error Checklist
You have worked repeatedly over the course of this semester not only on the “global” issues of academic writing (identifying a topic, creating a thesis, conducting research, structuring a paper, etc.), but also on the “local” ones as well—the sentence-level work that communicates your ideas and brings your writing to life. For this assignment, you will look back at all your assignment drafts and identify and correct your most common sentence-level mistakes.
See the assignment sheet, LSA-8, above for the full assignment instructions. Due by Sunday, 11:59pm.
Submit Project 3: The Argument or Persuasive Essay
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