In this paper, you will employ revision strategies by revising a page from your Rhetorical Analysis paper. In addition to this revision, you will also compose a reflective memo that details the changes you’ve made in the revision and how they reflect your development as a writer and thinker over this semester. That is, in the memo you want to explain to me not just what you revised but why you revised in the way you did.
Your Revision
You will choose a page from your Rhetorical Analysis essay. To guide your revision, you will consider the writing strategies you’ve learned throughout the semester, review the feedback I’ve given you on your essay, reconsider the suggestions students have made on your drafts, and reflect on your own ideas and concerns that you articulated in your reflection assignments. You will then decide which feedback to incorporate and which of your own new ideas to incorporate and revise your draft in way that – to the best of your ability – addresses the core issues in your first draft. Your revision will demonstrate your assessments of your writing and your mastery over the skills you’ve identified as critical to the revision. The idea here is that you demonstrate how you’ve continued to fine-tune your writing skills over the course of the semester and that you can now use these new understandings to revise your work. Your revised essay should reflect your end-of-the-semester knowledge and rhetorical expertise.
Understand that this will entail doing more than simply fixing spelling mistakes and grammar – you need to substantially change the page you’re revising, whether by changing the organization, adding key information, or rewriting segments all-together. If in doubt, consider reading the original page once, then putting it away and rewriting the page entirely – this may show you how your instincts as a writer now have changed compared to you instincts at the start of the semester.
Reflection
The three-page memo is your chance to justify these changes, as well as your chance to show me how your writing has evolved over the semester. If you find that you’re unable to come up with 3 whole pages when it comes to reflect on your changes, it means that you haven’t done enough to change your draft and you need to go back to the drawing board. This should be a substantial and thoughtful attempt at growing and evolving in your writing and self-reflection. However, those three pages do not need to be entirely about your revision specifically – you can use this as a springboard to talk about how your writing and thinking has evolved overall this semester. Just make sure that you’ve explained your revision enough so your reader clearly understands what you’ve changed and why that change was so significant.
What to include to receive full credit:
The original page that you’ve chosen to revise, looking the way way it looked when you submitted it earlier in the semester
The newly revised version of that page (clearly labeled). This revision must be substantial and be more than small fixes.
A three-page (minimum) reflection on both your reasoning behind those changes and how they reflect on your evolution as a writer and/or thinker over the course of the semester. This reflection can talk about more than the revision itself, but it must clearly demonstrate why the changes you’ve made are significant.
