Revision

To write an A paper, one needs to understand the errors in content and organization in order to make edits and revisions. The first draft of the essay always contains a number of mistakes to be fixed. As one completes the next assignment, one must review the errors made in previous papers to avoid the same mistakes on the next assignment. For each new assignment, one must prepare to invest more time to ensure not repeating mistakes. When preparing to write, after reading the prompt, one needs to decide what steps one needs to take to best inform the reader. Knowing the previous essay’s errors, one needs to conscientiously make edits to remove such mistakes from the current and next assignment. After writing the essay from last quarter, I received feedback and comments from my teacher, which will help me to take the next step: to make revisions by identifying my strengths and weaknesses so that I will make improvements on future assignments.        

Proofreading can be the most important strategy in helping people can find their mistakes. In the essay “History and Me” from last quarter, I wrote a good essay overall, but if I had proofread better, I could have organized the content and revised the sentence flow in the essay. Proofreading helps me to find grammar mistakes and to evaluate whether the essay is focused. Understanding both grammar errors and focus problems can help me improve the next essay. Overall, the strengths from my last essay include not having many errors or sentence flow problems. In the next assignment, I will remember to proofread after writing so that errors can be minimized. Most mistakes from essays are missed when writers choose to forgo proofreading; proofreading is a crucial process that can address major sentence flow problems and grammatical errors.

            The organization of essays through body paragraphs guides readers’ attention and allows them to easily follow the essay’s topic and content. Without organization of body paragraphs, essays can contain random ideas or topics that confuse readers and distract them from the writer’s argument and development. Reviewing my “History and Me” paper, I saw a few distinct organization problems that involved connecting my ideas, particularly the two ideas of challenging myself and attempting new things to help ourselves discover who we are. Reading my teacher’s comments “connect this paragraph to post-industrial boom and the age of science, as this used to be only an academic occupation” helps me to understand that I needed to discuss science more in order to connect to the paragraph. Other parts of the essay have clear ideas and organization, which become strengths in this essay. In the next assignment, I will make sure to consider the organization more carefully so that the paper is closer to perfect.

            On the paragraph level, PiE or “paragraph, information, and explanation” can be a very important writing strategy that will strengthen any essays. Looking back at my “History and Me” essay, I realized I had applied PiE to my paragraphs in such a way that I alternated information and explanation, instead of delivering all of the information before beginning the explanation. In one paragraph, I have the information, “The evolution of technology continues as an ever increasingly rapid pace; it has brought us the transition from traditional industry to the digital age”(History and Me). The explanation then follows, “Technology, since its inception, has drastically affected all aspects of our daily life, from education to transportation, from communication to common conveniences.” Continuing reading the essay, I had focused PiE strategy to strengthen my “History and Me” essay. In the next assignment, I will pay attention to PiE as I start giving ideas in each paragraph.

            For the assignment regarding John Fox’s Sociology course, the last paper needs to be read from a sociologist’s perspective. Following the prompt last quarter, I focused more on sentence structure and paragraph level. Reading the prompt “Write a 5 page paper that shows how your biography—the story of your life—was shaped by social and historical forces—the story of society” from Sociology class, I need to present my argument from a sociologist’s perspective, which requires I connect ideas to modern society more and provide more examples that demonstrated the process by which I was shaped into who I am. Even though the prompts are similar, examples and analysis need to be different for sociology: the essay needs to present the subject matter’s relationship to and context within society by using sociological terms, instead of merely focusing on grammar and spelling. The next step to accomplishing the sociologist class assignment has to be carefully ensuring that the examples provided clearly connect to society and social issues.

           All in all, after thoroughly reviewing the last sociology class paper, I now understand that I need to address my errors from last quarter and fix those mistakes to write an A paper for the next assignment. My last assignment was nearly perfect, but if it had been given to the sociology class, I would have changed and connected the examples more strongly to real life. By incorporating the teacher’s suggestions from my last assignment, I can make the appropriate changes and improvements to future assignments so that the readers can more easily understand and enjoy my writing. Even if the essay is not read from a sociologist’s perspective, I will remember the comments and mistakes; I will start considering the important steps that will help me improve as soon as I read the prompt for the next assignment.