When I first started off the school year, I had no idea how to correctly revise a paper. I just thought revising a paper was “hey you forgot this” or “you spelt too many words wrong”. I was so apt to fix the easy things I saw like grammar and spelling. Then I learned that wasn’t helpful to the writer at all. If I just told them to fix a few mistakes it didn’t really change the outcome of the paper. I realized that to really revise a paper you needed to offer good advice, like adding complete sentences or taking away sentences, whether or not their thesis statement is strong enough, being sure they add good textual engagement, and even offering quotes to help jog their memory. For example, when I was revising Nick’s paper at the beginning of the year I wrote, “fail. Him and his team were”. I just simply added a period in this sentence with no help to the actual essay itself. Later on in the year when I was revising Connor’s paper, which was the last paper we had to do (American Values) I wrote, “For example, I used how I hunted as a way to engage with my text. Maybe you could say something like that (maybe you’ve gone fishing). This will then make the reader see very clear engagement with the readings.” I noticed Connor didn’t have deep textual engagement, so I gave him an example that I used in my own essay and even gave him an example that he could use. I did this in hopes of jogging his memory. In our peer review discussion later on, he told me that he was thankful I gave him the idea of fishing to add into his essay because it made it a lot better. I’ve become better at revising people’s essays and I have come to realize that just adding periods and correcting grammar doesn’t help someone in the long run.
First revision:
Second revision:
