College Writing

College Writing Study Guide best thought and that �lowing from one word to another, one sentence to the next, and executing a carefully thought-out pre- writing plan would always lead to the best results. A modi�ied approach to Kerouac would suggest that you should spend extra time in the revision process to ensure that your writing is error-free and appropriate for the audience. Like many aspects of writing practice, neither of these methods is better than the other, and you will have to discover which method of composing works best for you. As you continue to gain experience as a writer, you’ll understand if you’re more similar to Vonnegut or Kerouac, but you should be aware of the pitfalls associated with each method. Vonnegut writers can get too caught up in the minutiae, and on timed tests, like the one for which this study guide is preparing you, it’s easy to run out of time. You’ll have to learn when spending extra time fretting about a sentence’s phrasing is worth it andwhen “good enough” actually is good enough. Kerouac writers have to spend extra time in the revision and editing process. They often don’t notice when entire paragraphs or tangents don’t �it with the organizational plan they initially outlinedwhile they’re composing, so those parts of the paper have to be excised during revision. Likewise, gram- matical and spelling errors litter Kerouac writers’ initial texts (Kerouac himself didn’t use apostro- phes except when absolutely necessary), so if you’re composing too quickly, you’ll have to slow down while you re-read your work. 4.5 Revising Revision literally means to “re-see,” and that’s what you should keep in mind during the last step of the writing process: you are attempting to re-see the prompt and your response to the prompt; you should try to “get outside” of your writing by pretending that you didn’t write what you’re re-reading. Writers have the tendency to �ill in the gaps in their own arguments, and sometimes they even �ill in the gaps in their sentences by failing to notice that they’ve left out a word or substituted a misspelled word for the correct one. These mistakes happen all the time nomatter how you compose, and they’re no big deal – as long as you catch them in the revision process. There are three steps to revision: global revision, paragraph-level revision, and editing. During global revision, you should re-read the paper in its entirety. Avoid correcting little errors, but instead, focus on the big picture. Simply put, are you convinced by the paper’s argument? Do you need to add more support? Is there an obvious counter-argument to what you’re saying that you left out? Is the paper properly organized so that you’re able to follow each step in the author’s reasoning? Respond to each of these questions by adding or subtracting text where you think it’s appropriate. There is nothing wrong with writing an entirely new paragraph, switching the order of your para- graphs, or even deleting a whole swath of text that doesn’t �it or advance your paper’s argument. Once you make these global revisions, you should repeat this step of the revision process until you are satis�ied that what you wrote would convince a doubting reader.

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