Our Favorite Revision Strategies

With deadlines fast approaching and drafts piling up, we thought it may be nice to share a few of our favorite revision strategies to help you out in the home stretch to the end of the semester.

Lead tutor Jenni suggests a strategy of to determine the clarity of your topic to your audience.

“Here is a revision strategy which has helped me clean up and refocus many papers. After completing a first draft, print out two copies of your paper. Take one copy, and in the margins identify the topic of each paragraph. Limit yourself to no more than three words. Ask yourself what each paragraph is really about, and jot it down. When you get to the end of your paper, go ahead and put those pages away and forget about them for the time being. Retrieve that second copy of your paper; the copy you have not jotted notes on. Hand it to a peer. Without mentioning how you’ve already done this yourself on another copy, ask your peer to read and then write in the margin next to each paragraph what they think is the topic of that paragraph. After your peer has finished, bring your copy with your notes back out. Compare papers and notes. Have a conversation about what you each came up with and why. Do you and your peer agree on what each paragraph is really about? If not, think and talk about how this miscommunication could have happened. What specifically on the page is sending mixed signals?”

Staff tutor Hillary describes a simple fix for voice and sentence clarity.

“One of the easiest and most effective ways to revise your paper is to read it aloud. Read the paper out loud, and pay attention to spots you stumble on. I find that these trouble areas usually just need a quick flip or maybe a different word choice to make them flow better. If possible, have a friend read along silently--You’d be surprised how often you will actually auto-correct your own typed words when you are speaking them.  Often you will say something clearer than you typed it, and BAM!, your brain did the revision for you. This is a tool we often use in the Writing Center, and it can really help smooth out the voice in your writing without much effort.”

Lead Tutor, Dan, has a bit of a different spin on reading your paper aloud, which he calls the “Richard Nixon.”

“Once I've written my paper, I like to read my paper aloud using a character voice, my favorite being Richard Nixon. Because I am focusing so much on the character voice, I  remove myself from my own speech patterns and can find any trouble spots in the paper”

We hope these few suggestions help in your revision process!

Please note the the Writing Center is OPEN Monday and Tuesday 9-5 and Wednesday 9-Noon during Finals week! Visit our webpage to make an appointment!

Outlining: A Necessary Evil

So you have your assignment sheet. You sit down in front of your laptop with a cup of coffee and a bag of cheetos (the lunch of champions) and begin to write. Suddenly you realize it’s three hours later, your caffeine buzz has passed, your cheetos are gone, and all you have on the page are a few scrawled, disjointed sentences. Sound familiar? You’re not alone.

The two most common problems I see walk into the writing center are lack of organization and simply not knowing where to start! Both of these problems can almost always be solved by outlining.

I know...ewww, right?

Most of us think of outlines as that stupid step we had to complete in third grade when we were all a bit too distracted to stay on topic. (Shiny?!) Outlining has been pushed aside as unnecessary and tedious, but I have come to realize in working with my students and peers that it is often THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP of the compositional process.

Think of it this way (which your elementary teacher may have once mentioned to you, as well):

Everything needs a base on which to build.

A house needs a foundation, otherwise it will be unstable.  

A bridge needs keystone or it will collapse.

A grilled cheese needs bread, otherwise you’ll burn your tongue licking melted cheese out of a hot pan.

AND an essay needs a frame on which to be built, which is an outline!

An outline provides organization and structure to your thoughts, and can often helped the “blocked” writer get their ideas out of their head and onto the paper. So how do you begin? Outlining is kind of a personal process, but there are a few options we can explore to help you get started.

In some cases, you may already have a thesis, or the idea you are trying to argue or prove. Start with that thought and begin compiling points to support it.  These ideas will most likely be general items which continue your investigation of the main topic. The most important thing at this point is to list different ideas you would like to explore about your main idea. For example:

Main Idea: Pasta is the best food.

Support point 1: Pasta is popular.

Support Point 2: Pasta is a staple in many cultures.

Support Point 3: Pasta is nutritional.

Do not worry if these points are “in order.” As you begin to find support, you can find a way to naturally progress through your ideas and organize them in the most logical order.

If you have no idea what your main idea/thesis will be, or if your paper is more exploratory than argumentative, just start writing down some ideas. If you have read some sources start there and write about parts that struck you, ideas you found interesting, or places you had questions about. Often just getting your ideas out on the page will help you see a common theme that will become the overarching topic of your paper. One of our tutors suggests writing important passages or points on note cards and separating them by theme into piles. If you have all your notes on one page, go through and highlight similar ideas in different colors. Don’t be afraid to try different methods of organization--there are many paths to an outline.

If you cannot wait to start writing, just start writing. Once you have these rough draft paragraphs out, take a moment and read through them.  Try to determine your main idea, and then arrange the paragraphs so that they logically flow from one idea to another, essentially creating an outline with your paragraphs. (Don’t worry about the flow too much at this point. You can always refine, add details and transitions later in the drafting process).

Once you have the framework of the paper you can begin finding support for each point you have made. Find sources or even specific quotes that back up the topic of that paragraph and the main idea of the paper as a whole. To expand upon our original outline:

Main Idea: Pasta is the best food.

Support point 1: Pasta is popular.

-Oxfam reported statistics listing pasta as the favorite food across several different countries.

(Sedghi, Amy. (22 July 2011). What’s your Favorite Food? The Guardian,

<http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/jun/22/global-top-foods-list-by-country>.)

Support Point 2: Pasta is a staple in many cultures.

-Italian culture, Asian culture, even Western Culture (German Spaetzle)...

Support Point 3: Pasta is nutritional.

-Low Fat

-Carbs are part of a balanced diet according to FDA food pyramid

-Certain brands of pasta adding nutrients and fiber to recipe

**Notice that each bullet point listed supports the paragraph topic, and also helps to prove my main argument.

Now you can work to expand and refine your organized ideas into a fully formed essay!

Hopefully the task of writing your paper (or at least organizing your paper) seems a little less daunting now. Remember: Writing is a process, and organization is key to constructing a strong paper. No matter which method you choose to use, or if you find another way that works better for you, outlining, in all its forms, sets you up for success.

-Hillary E.

Welcome!

Welcome new students of Roosevelt University and welcome back to those
returning! It is a new school year full of challenges and promise. I hope
that all of you have enjoyed your summers and are invigorated to start
afresh this semester.  I know I am, and I thought I’d share a bit of my
story here.
I am a native Chicagoan, but have spent the last eight years studying,
working and performing in New York. To say that I planned for my life to
lead me back here would be a lie, but sometimes…most of the time…plans
don’t always work out the way we envisioned them. I went to New York
excited to leave my suburban past behind to take on the Big Apple with all
my heart, and I fully expected my career to take off so I could spend the
rest of my life happily flitting about Manhattan getting paid to do what I
love.
So, yeah…that didn’t happen. And now that I look back on it, I wonder how I
even expected that it would. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of that did happen,
and those years were some the most transformative of my life so far. But,
as is often the case, I came to find one day that I had led myself to a
dead end. I was singing well, but not where I wanted to. I was performing,
but not getting paid, and while the people I knew were lovely, they did not
have the connections I needed to get me a step further than I had already
gotten. Oh, and I was working over 40 hours a week, singing in the
evenings, and I was living way beyond my means. Something needed to change.
And I chose to initiate that change.
Chicago was a place to rebuild-- my childhood home, my native city, with my
family and friends to support me while I regrouped. (Not to mention that
it is much cheaper than NYC!) So here I am, 
adjusting from being a 9-to-5 employee and an aspiring opera singer to
being a student again. It is not easy—there have
been many tears, and many times when I just wish I was back living on my
own and working, but I know that to attain my dream, to live the life I
want to live, I need to be here.
Roosevelt has opened its arms to me and has certainly made the transition
easier. The people and the general vibe of the place is warm and friendly.
I couldn’t have asked for a more inviting school to come into, and it is my
hope that you feel the same.
I know each of you has his/her own story. We have all come here for different
reasons and are at different points in our academic careers and our life
at large, but we are all part of the Roosevelt community.
In that spirit, I want to invite every single student, faculty member, or
alum who reads this to the Writing Center. I’ve only been here a few
days, but this is a micro-community within Roosevelt that embodies the
warmth and kindness of the school around us. We are here to help
you—whether you need help refining your thesis, getting your ideas onto
paper, or coming up with ideas, period. WE ARE HERE. This is a place for
anyone who needs ANY sort of help on their writing. It is not a place to
be judged,  but a place of collaboration so that you can articulate your ideas
to the best of your ability. I stress that whatever you are writing,
academic or not, is fine to bring in. We all are adjusting, moving though,
or soldiering on through this portion of our lives. Why not use the
resources available to you to make your journey a little easier? So, stop
by sometime, and we can help you make this time at Roosevelt as fulfilling
as possible!

All the best,

Hillary E