English Composition 1

OPTIONAL Final Revision or Revisions

IMPORTANT: This final assignment is optional. You will see your grade on our Exam within one day from the time you turn it in. If you are pleased with your course grade at that time, you could skip this final 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 one or two optional revisions.

Due Date

One or two optional revisions are due no later than 10:50 a.m., Monday, May 9.

Important Notes

By the due date, you may submit one or two optional final revisions. These will be revised essays that you choose from Essays 1, 2, 3, or 4. Only essays submitted earlier for a grade can be resubmitted as final revisions. The Diagnostic Essay, from the beginning of the course, is not one of the essays that you can submit as a final revision.

The final revision or revisions can make a big difference in the final course grade, so please read this page carefully. Pay special attention to the following resources and review them thoroughly as you work on each final revision:

Important!
A final revision should not be just a corrected version of your essay. Correcting errors alone is not revising. The grade will be significantly lowered if a final revision is submitted that is only a corrected version of an essay and only includes "surface-level" changes (such as the rewording of sentences).

A final revision must demonstrate deep-level revision: significant attempts to strengthen the content of each essay--the thesis, the organization, the support and development of ideas, and the insights into the subject. If a final revision does not demonstrate attempts to strengthen these aspects of the essay, then the essay will earn a lower grade than the grade of the earlier draft. 

This page presents some questions and answers about the final revisions. Read this information carefully, and make sure to ask questions if you have any.

Are the final revisions required?

No. The final revisions are optional. If you choose not to revise an essay or essays, the "Course Grade" you see in Blackboard after you receive your Exam grade will be your final grade in the course. If you want to try to raise that course grade, you may submit one or two final revisions.

How much do the revisions count toward the final course grade?

If the grade you earn on a final revision is higher than the grade you earned the first time you submitted the essay, that higher grade will replace the lower grade on the earlier draft. For your course grade, Essay 1 and 2 count 15% each while Essay 3 and 4 count 20% each.

If the grade you earn on a revision is lower than the grade you earned the first time you submitted the essay, the grade on the earlier draft will not change.

This is a good opportunity, so please take advantage of it by doing your best on the final revisions. I think it’s important that you finish the course writing strong papers. If you wrote one or two weak papers in the course, I don’t think your grade should suffer if you can demonstrate strong writing and revising skills at the end of the course.

Sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it? Well, it is, but . . .

Can the grades on revisions be lower than the grades on the earlier drafts?

Yes. A final revision will be evaluated not just as an essay but as a revision. When I evaluate a revision, I compare the earlier draft with the revised draft. I look both at how good the final revision is and at what kinds of improvements you have made to the earlier version. In other words, I look to see how effectively you have revised the paper. If a final revision does not demonstrate attempts to strengthen much of the essay, or if most or all of the changes are at the surface level (with the correcting of errors and the rewording of sentences), then the grade will go down.

The other reason why the revision grades can be lower than the grades on the earlier versions is because we are at the end of the semester, and the final revisions should demonstrate the best work you can do. All aspects of the revisions should be strong, and the papers should be the most "polished" you have submitted in the course.

This is important! This is repeated a few places on this page, but revising involves much more than simply proofreading, correcting mistakes, and rewording sentences. A final revision that is only a corrected version of the earlier graded draft or that demonstrates only surface-level revision (such as the rewording of sentences) will receive a lower grade than the earlier version.

One of the main reasons that grades on revisions sometimes go down is a lack of effort from the writer. I would much rather see you try to make effective changes to your papers and maybe not be completely successful instead of not trying to do much with the papers.

A final 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, and a mastery of the "mechanics" of Standard English usage. If any of these aspects of a final revision is weak, then the grade of the paper may go down. The items listed above represent the main things that everyone successfully completing English 1001 should have mastered.

What should I consider as I revise my essays?

Everything. When you revise a paper, you should consider all aspects of the paper, including

  1. Thesis and the thesis statement
  2. Organization
  3. Use of topic sentences
  4. Support and development of ideas
  5. Use of material from sources (if applicable)
  6. The logical progression of ideas
  7. Use of transitions
  8. Stylistic matters (word choice, tone, sentence variety, etc.)
  9. "Mechanics" (correction of errors, the correct format, use of a title, etc.)

Important: Each final revision must demonstrate both "deep-level" revision and "surface-level" revision.

Tip: To ensure that you are making deep-level changes, add new supporting evidence to each body paragraph of your essay: more description for Essay 1, more quotations or facts for the other essays. Demonstrate that you have re-examined your subject as you revised your essay.

Deep-level revision involves changes to the thesis (or your approach to your topic), the organization, the support and development of ideas, and the insights into your subject. In general, deep-level revision involves changes to the content of essays, changes to what you say in your essays. Deep-level revision to an essay includes the following:

Surface-level revision involves changes at the sentence level and the correction of errors, changes to how you express your ideas in your essays. Surface-level revision to an essay includes the following:

Note that the lack of sufficient deep-level revision is the most common reason that grades on final revisions go down or remain the same. The next most common reason is problems with errors.

You may be tempted to start your revision of an essay by identifying and correcting the grammar and punctuation errors. Avoid this temptation. Writers are most often successful with their revision if they begin with the "larger" aspects of a paper, such as the thesis and organization, as opposed to beginning with the sentence-level matters. Part of this is psychological. 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 paper could be stronger if you deleted some of the sentences that you corrected.

When I evaluate the final revisions, I do check to see if errors are corrected, but I think it’s more important that you end the course having fewer problems with errors than you may have had earlier in the course. It’s one thing to correct an error, but the real evidence of learning comes when you can revise a paper substantially and have fewer errors in the final version 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 in your graded papers, but it would be better if you can demonstrate in your revisions that you understand what comma splices are and that you can avoid them as you revise sentences and write new sentences.

Note that errors substantially reduce the grades of final revisions. Just a couple of major errors, such as the sentence-boundary errors (comma splices, sentence fragments, run-on sentences) or word-choice problems (such as the use of "there" for "their" or the use of "then" for "than") will lower the grade of the essay by a full letter, and an essay will not earn at least a "C" if it includes many of these serious errors. College-level essays should not have problems with such major errors. 

Mastering Standard English usage should be something you do earlier in your college career.

Should I make changes based on the instructor's comments on my graded essays?

Yes. When I write comments on an essay, I try to identify some of the things that I think are strong about the essay and some of the things that I think could be more effective. It is your essay, of course, and you must decide how to make it stronger, but the suggestions I have written on the earlier drafts indicate some of the ways that I think the papers could be stronger, and if those aspects remain the same in the final revisions, I will still think that they could be better. However, please note that the comments on your graded essays only identify some of the ways that the essay might be stronger. The comments are not intended to identify all ways that an essay could be better.

Should I only make changes based on the instructor's comments?

No. As indicated above, you should review all aspects of your papers as you are revising them, not just what I pointed out. The instructor comments on graded essays represent only some of the ways that an essay might be stronger; the comments do not indicate everything that could be done to an essay to make it better. Do not limit your revision only to addressing the comments on your graded drafts.

Realize as well that I often identify ways that an aspect of an essay could be stronger by giving an example from the essay, but the example should not be regarded as the only way that the aspect of the paper could be improved. For example, I might comment that the support and development of ideas could be stronger, giving one specific example from the essay. This is an example to help you get started and should not be regarded as the only place where the support and development of ideas could be stronger in the essay.

It would be a good idea for you to review the comments on all of your papers. Collectively, these comments should give you a clear sense of what is working well with your writing and what might be stronger ("with your writing," not just with a particular essay).

Any questions about the final revisions?

Of course, ask those questions!

Copyright Randy Rambo, 2022.