The rewrite for the first paper is due in class on Thurs. Nov. 5 . You must attach your original paper, with the T.A.’s comments.

 All writing-intensive courses require that students rewrite at least one paper. This is a process that your instructors go through based upon suggestions from colleagues and from anonymous reviewers for journals and book publishers. Revisions based upon such feedback always results in stronger, clearer, and more convincing arguments. There is always room for improvement, even on “A” papers. Feel free to consult with your T.A., Prof. Chambers and/or Writing Tutors as you revise your paper.

Those who chose the research paper option are required to revise their topic proposals and revise and annotate their bibliographies; be sure to familiarize yourself enough with the items on your bibliography (for now, that may mean reading the introductions and conclusions) to determine relevance, make substitutions as needed, and write an annotation. The annotations should, in a few sentences, identify the main content and argument of each work on the bibliography and indicate how it relates to your paper topic. As you undertake your research, you will likely have to continue substituting more relevant works on your bibliography as you focus and refine the topic and identify sources in notes and bibliographies.

The re-write will receive a separate grade. This will not simply be a new grade given to the paper as if it were a first paper. The grade on the rewrite will also consider the extent to which you revised the first draft based upon the feedback from the T.A.. (In other words it would be possible, though we hope unlikely, to get a lower grade on the rewrite if you do not make serious revisions to the paper.) Such revisions should include fixing grammatical errors, footnotes and bibliography, but must also go beyond this level to strengthen the argument of the paper. Depending upon the comments you receive, the latter may involve revising the thesis statement, improving clarity or organization, fixing internal contradictions, providing evidence or considering new evidence, developing particular points in greater depth or complexity, etc.

If a particular grammatical error has been identified in your paper, you are responsible to find other instances of the same error and correct them all. (For example, if you misspelled a word, failed to capitalize the New World, had sentence fragments, or had the format of footnotes incorrect etc, you must find and fix all instances throughout the paper. Please see below for the abbreviations we are using.) Use the Rampolla writing guide and online resources for help and models.

GRADING AND EDITING KEY

¶ = New paragraph needed here

Ö = Good point or very good argument

ARG? = missing argument; indicates that the passage is descriptive rather then analytical

E = Evidence or sources missing from argument

FN = Footnote required

I S = Incomplete sentence

RS = Run-on Sentence

AWK = Awkward sentence structure or peculiar use of word

REP = Repetitive use of idea or word; reconsider your choice of word or sentence structure

SP = Spelling error

VT = Shifted verb tense or verb tense confusion in sentence or paragraph

WC = Inappropriate or incorrect word choice

CT = Incorrect citation formatting

Passive = Passive construction; activate your verbs here

Poss = Missing or incorrect use of possessive

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Last updated October 27, 2009
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