English Composition 2

OPTIONAL Revision

IMPORTANT: This assignment is optional. On Thursday, April 28, you will be able to see your final course grade. If you are pleased with your course grade at that time, you could skip this optional assignment, and what you see as your "Course Grade" in Blackboard will be your final grade for the class. But if you want to try to raise your course grade, then you could submit an optional revision.

Important: as explained on the course syllabus, "The college requires that students who earn a failing grade on the Research Paper cannot earn a 'C' or higher in the class. A failing grade on the Research Paper must mean a 'D' or 'F' in the course even if the course grade would be higher using the percentages" for assignments given on the syllabus. Therefore, anyone who earns a failing grade on the Research Paper should revise the Research Paper.

Due Date

The optional revision is due by the end of the day, Friday, May 6.

Just submit the paper in the area for it in Blackboard.

The Optional Revision

You can revise one of the first three essays for the course: Essay 1, Essay 2, or the Research Paper. Only an essay submitted earlier for a grade can be submitted as a revision.

If you choose to revise a paper, please read the information below carefully. It is especially important to note the information about how the grade of a revision will be lower than the grade on the earlier draft if the writer only corrects errors in the essay. Of course, make sure to ask questions if you have any.

How Much Does the Revision Count?
If you earn a higher grade on a revision than you earned the first time you submitted the paper, then the higher revision grade will replace the earlier lower grade. Essay 1 counts as 15% of your course grade, Essay 2 counts as 15%, and the Research Paper counts as 40%.     

If the grade you earn on the revision is lower than the grade you earned the first time you submitted the essay, the revision grade will not affect the grade earned the first time the paper was submitted.

What is Expected of a Revision?
The revision must demonstrate attempts to strengthen the paper through both deep-level revision and surface-level revision. Just correcting the errors in an essay will result in a lower grade on the revision than the essay earned the first time it was submitted. Please keep the following in mind:

A suggestion: An essay will reflect deep-level revision if supporting evidence is added to each body paragraph. Supporting evidence involves facts that you use to support your ideas. For example, if you are revising Essay 1, you could bring additional quotations from the story into each body paragraph; if you are revising Essay 2, you could bring additional quotations from the play or comments from secondary sources into each body paragraph. Deep-level revision should also involve deleting material from the earlier draft that might not work so well in helping you support and developing your ideas, but if you make sure that you at least add some supporting evidence to each body paragraph, then you can be assured that you are making some kind of deep-level revision to the essay.

What Should You Consider as You Revise a Paper?
Everything. When you revise a paper, you should give consideration to all aspects of the paper, including the following

The checklists linked below provide information about aspects of an essay that you should consider as you revise:

As you revise your essay, you may be tempted to start by identifying and correcting the errors on your graded version. Avoid this temptation. If you spend time at the beginning of the revision process correcting the errors, you probably will not want to delete anything that you have corrected, even if your essay could be stronger if you deleted some of the sentences that you corrected.

Writers are most often successful with their revisions if they begin with the deep-level revision--including work to the thesis, the organization, and the support and development of ideas--before beginning the surface-level revision.

When I evaluate the revisions, I do check to see if errors are corrected, but I think it’s more important that the writer demonstrates fewer problems with errors than he or she may have had earlier in the course. It’s one thing to correct an error that has been pointed out to you, but the real evidence of learning comes when a writer can revise a paper substantially and have fewer errors in the revision than were in the earlier draft.

For example, if comma splices have been a problem for you, it would be good if you could correct those errors that have been pointed out on your paper, but it would be better if you can demonstrate in your revision that you understand what comma splices are and that you can avoid them as you revise sentences and write new sentences.

Should You Make Changes Based on the Comments on the Graded Version?
Yes. When I write comments on an essay, I try to identify what I think is strong about an essay and what I think could be more effective. These are your essays, of course, and you must decide how to make them stronger, but the suggestions I have written on the earlier draft of each essay indicate ways that I think the essay could be better, and, if those aspects of the essay remain unchanged in the revision, I will still think that they could be more effective.

Should You Just Follow the Comments on the Earlier Graded Draft, and That’s All?
No. As suggested above, you should review all aspects of an essay as you are revising it, not just what I pointed out. In the comments on graded papers, I try to point out what I think is most important, but I do not point out everything that I think could be done to a paper to make that paper more effective.

Please note that, when I make comments about how the organization and the support and developments of ideas could be stronger in an essay, I often give specific examples from the essay, but these examples should not be regarded as the only parts of an essay that could be better organized or developed. Strengthening only those parts of an essay that I specifically noted in my comments does not suggest thorough revision of an essay.

Often, the most impressive work on revisions involves changes to aspects of the essay that I did not comment on when I evaluated the earlier version. For example, some students have rewritten introductions to their essays even though I did not make any comments regarding the introductions. Those students discovered on their own ways that the introductions could be more effective than they were in the earlier drafts.

Can the Grade on a Revision be Lower than the Grade on the Earlier Draft?
Yes. One of the main reasons that the grade on a revision can go down is a lack of effort from the writer. A revision that demonstrates only a few minor attempts to strengthen a paper will reduce the grade of that paper.

A revision should also demonstrate that the writer has mastered a few basic concepts concerning essay writing, such as the effective use of a thesis statement and an understanding of its purpose, effective use of topic sentences, well-focused body paragraphs, well-supported and well-developed ideas, a logical progression of ideas, an avoidance of stylistic weaknesses, a mastery of the "mechanics" of Standard English usage, and, if applicable, the effective use of sources. The grade on a revision will be reduced substantially if any of these aspects of the essay is weak.

The mere existence of changes to a paper does not guarantee that the paper will be assigned a higher grade. To earn a higher grade, the revision must be stronger than the earlier draft in terms of the content and must show evidence of both deep-level and surface-level revision. Note that significant problems with grammar and punctuation errors substantially lower the grade of a revision.

The Grading Criteria
I still follow IVCC's Grading Standards for Student Essays when I evaluate a revision. However, because a revision is a second attempt at writing a strong essay with feedback on the earlier graded draft to help guide you, weaknesses or errors in a revision tend to reduce the grade more significantly than the same weaknesses or errors in the earlier draft may have reduced the grade of that essay.

Questions?
Of course, please ask if you have any questions.

Copyright Randy Rambo, 2022.