Week 3: Revising and editing your argument
Summary of Learning Activities:
Reading: Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates Chapter 11 Developing your Argument in Writing a Critical Review of a text
Reading: Pat Thomson, blog post. taste the ACWRI difference-recount, summary argument
Activity: Provide feedback to at least one other participant on a draft piece of writing.
Webinar: Monday 22 June 12pm noon British Summer time - ask Simon for help using Adobe Connect in advance if you need this.
By now hopefully everyone has reflected on the fact that writing is non-linear and messy. Coming to this realisation can be a great enabler for your writing. To summarise the work that you have probably undertaken so far: you have identified the genre of text for your writing project, generated ideas, practised freewriting, and planned the structure of your proposed text. In week 2 you undertook topic sentence development and paragraphs. The ultimate goal of week 3 is to provide feedback to at least one other participant on the course. This is a reciprocal task because you will also receive feedback on your work.
Revising and editing your draft prior to feedback
Wallace and Wray's Chapter Developing Your Argument in Writing a Critical Review of a Text is a great start for this week’s task. You will note that this text deals with both reading and writing. At some point you will need to include the work of others within your writing and this text is invaluable for this. The chapter in general is excellent for devolping your argument. This is supplemented by Pat Thomson's, blog post. taste the ACWRI difference-recount, summary argument
In order to revise and edit your work in preparation for feedback you may find it useful to use a framework; for example Robert Brown’s eight questions (Brown 1994/1995)
Who are your intended readers? | List 3-5 of them by name & discipline |
What did you do? | No more than 50 words |
Why did you do it? | No more than 50 words |
What happened? | No more than 50 words |
What do the results mean in theory? | No more than 50 words |
What do the results mean in practice? | No more than 50 words |
What is the key benefit for your readers? | No more than 25 words |
What remains unresolved? | No word limit |
(You can download a worksheet with these questions in both Word and PDF format from the main course page.)
This should take you about 2-3 hours, and it builds on earlier tasks where you used topic sentences to create paragraphs. This is also a key moment in which to review your target writing project.
These questions will help you to review your writing so far, and to ask yourself whether you need to move, cut, or develop any sections. Rather than deleting your precious work, you can move surplus content into another document.
Uploading your text in order to give and receive feedback
Upload your own text.
Please provide feeback to at least one other participant. Here are some further tips on preparing to provide feedback:
Giving feedback
One of the joys of reviewing the writing of others is that it gives you an opportunity to learn and develop your own writing. If you practice in an academic background then you will have had lots of experience of giving feedback to learners on assessed work. Some of this will be helpful but it is important to frame your your feedback positively as thinking this through will help you to compare and contrast with your own writing.
Belcher (2009) suggests the following “What not to do when you are giving feedback” (p.223)
- Do not fixate or obsess about author’s bibliography
- Do not focus on what is not in the text
- Try not to judge the work
Working with other participants
We'd like to give you experience of both providing feedback and receiving comments on your draft. For this we recommend that you identify at least one other participant to give feedback to. Both parties should share a piece of writing, and offer feeback on the text they've read. Here are three tips on where to focus as you prepare your feedback:
- Summarise: begin by reporting back to the writer what you have understood to be the main argument in this piece of writing.
- Strengths: identify the qualities in the piece of writing, such as good use of evidence, strong organisation, or originality.
- Questions: if you identify any weaknesses, ask questions about these; for instance, 'Could you improve the flow by moving the third paragaph to the start of this section?' Questions give responsbility to the writer, whilst highlighting areas you have struggled with as a reader. Be specific and give page numbers so your writing partner can see exactly the passages you're referring to.
It is valuable to practice giving feeback to colleagues because this puts you in the position of a Consumer of text, and makes you more aware of weaknesses when you come back to review your own writing. It is much easier to identify problems in a text generated by someone else, than one we have written ourselves.
Receiving feedback
When you submit your text for sharing you may have a specific idea about what you would like feedback on. Please provide this information also.
If you feel that you would like to use a more structured framework for giving and receiving feedback you may find the following resource useful
http://www.wendybelcher.com/pages/documents/Feedback_Form.pdf
Additional resources and references
- Belcher, W. (2009) Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks - A Guide to Academic Publishing Success. London. Sage
- Purdue University Writing Lab Steps for Revising your Paper - https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/561/05/
- Brown, R. (1994/1995) Write Right First Time in Literati Newsline. Available at http://web.archive.org/web/19971014014626/http://www.mcb.co.uk/literati/write.htm