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Information Literacy and Library Instruction: What Do I Look For When I Revise?

Use Information - Part Nine: What Do I Look For When I Revise?

Learning Objectives

  • Researchers will understand how to revising can dramatically improve their research paper
  • Researchers will know how to make global revisions, including looking at their argument, main ideas, and organziation
  • Researchers will learn ways to improve transitions, paragraphs, and sentences
  • Researchers will understand the importance of formatting their paper according to an assigned citation style

Why Revise?

  • Revision is a central part of the research and writing process
  • Introduces global revision and local revision
  • Beginning level
  • 0m 48s

The Hard Work of Global Revision

  • Explains global revision
  • Beginning and intermediate level, if not previously introduced
  • 0m 57s

Basic Ideas

  • Focus during first revision: ideas
  • Reviewing thesis, subclaims, and evidence
  • Beginning level
  • 1m 38s

Organization

  • Focus during second revision: organization of the paper
  • Beginning level
  • 0m 59s

Cutting

  • The importance of cutting out extraneous information
  • Beginning level
  • 0m 52s

The Benefits of Local Revision

  • Improving the "small stuff" to increase the clarity and persuasiveness of your argument
  • Beginning level
  • 1m 3s

Paragraphs

  • How to effectively transition between two paragraphs
  • How to analyze a paragraph for effectiveness
  • Beginning level
  • 1m 0s

Sentences

  • Correcting sentence structure
  • How to use an active voice
  • Beginning level
  • 1m 59s

Words and Phrases

  • How to use metadiscourse and avoiding empty words
  • Spotting commonly misused words
  • Beginning level
  • 1m 16s

Formatting

  • Correctly formatting your paper
  • Beginning level
  • 0m 49s

When Are You Done?

  • You are never done
  • Beginning level
  • 0m 34s

Checklist

  • Start with your paper's ideas, making sure your thesis statement matches your subclaims and that you have sufficient evidence to prove your main claim.
  • Check your paper's organization to make sure it includes the six essential elements ad that they are ordered in a way that makes sense.
  • Look at your paragraphs to make sure transitions between them are smooth and each is focused on one main claim that connects to a subclaim.
  • Revise sentences that are unnecessarily long or contain passive constructions.
  • Check to make sure you're precisely using metadiscourses and avoiding empty phrases and words.
  • Correct any commonly confused words and misspellings.
  • Properly format your paper according to the assigned citation style.

Terms

  • Global Revision
  • Local Revision
  • Passive Voice

Tools

  • Revision Aid