Week 8
Continuing My Journey in 39B: Revision Strategy For the RA Essay
Joanne Tran | March 1, 2018 | 11:59 (due date)
Hello, and welcome back to my blog! You may be wondering: "why are you posting earlier than usual?" And to that, I say: good observation! As the title indicates, it is week 8 of the quarter, and that means that the end of the course is approaching quickly. In order to keep up with our rapid progress on our RA Essay, this week's blog is due earlier so that we can address and reflect on our RA drafting process thus far before the second draft is due this Sunday. Our class has done a lot this past week alone to help improve our understanding of the assignment, so there is much to talk about how I plan to revise my draft and how I learned about what I need to revise. Let's get started shall we?
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One of the first things I need to improve on while I edit my paper is my wordiness. I learned that I tend to use transitions that are not needed, particularly when I begin a paragraph, and misplace descriptive phrases. That is, in places where I need adjectives the most, they are often missing and are instead found where I tend to use too many adjectives and become repetitive. The excerpts below show when I am missing an important descriptor in my essay and when I begin to use irrelevant words:
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This red box outlines an example of when I do not add adjectives when I need them. To the left of the excerpt of my essay is the professor's comment on the purpose for such a descriptor at this place in my writing.
Here, the red box outlines an example of when I start to use unneeded words in my essay and begin to get wordy. To the left is the professor's comment which elaborates that these words have no use for my topic sentence, and this is why they should be edited out
I have always been aware of my tendency to be wordy, for in the past few writing assignments, I repeatedly found myself over the word limit, causing me to take hours to revise and edit down my work. Reflecting on these processes, I learned how to better recognize when I need certain words or when I am adding unnecessary words. But, as evidently seen in my first draft and in the excerpts above, I still need a lot of improvement. After going to office hours on Tuesday and talking to Professor Delany-Ullman, I also realized that my wordiness actually goes against my intended purpose at times, too: I used to think that the more descriptive I am, the better, because adding more context would benefit the reader. But in reality, adding too much when it is not needed can cause the reader to lose interest or to become confused on what is being said, and as a writer trying to persuade my audience with the RA Essay, this is the exact opposite of what I want. Thus, I will focus on deleting repetitive and meaningless words and adding important descriptors that provide relevant details.
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Another thing I must work on is adding context to Barbaro's rhetorical situation in the second paragraph of my draft. From Professor Delany-Ullman's comment, which is shown below, I realized that I had forgotten to provide the political situation our country is currently in with regard to immigration policies, for I assumed that readers would know this information since it is very prominent today and is talked about regularly in our class. But because this is a rhetorical analysis essay, and because I was speaking about specific actions the government is taking on immigrants, I now know that I must add these details in my draft to make my connection between Barbaro and his message about America stronger. I also realized the importance of context as I peer reviewed others' essays, for I often found myself confused about what the writer was regarding in their essay if they did not provide relevant historical or cultural context for the text they were analyzing, and thus, I had to infer the context myself. After taking into account my experience with my peers' writing and the professor's comments, I know I must adjust for my lack of historical context in my essay to provide a clearer argument.
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This image shows an excerpt of my essay where I talk about the effect of evoking sympathy in Barbaro's audience, which is outlined by the red box. To the left, Professor Delany-Ullman's comment mentions how I should provide more context here, for without it, my argument is not as strong since readers have to infer about what the government is specifically in the wrong for.
In addition, I must edit my topic sentences; although assertive, they often lack in answering the question "why" or "how." For instance, one topic sentence I had written referred to Barbaro and how his purposeful sequencing of events in his podcast evoke sympathy in his audience, but after this, I did not add further detail to say why he had done this, or to explain how this action affected his audience. Knowing this, I reread through all of my topic sentences and found that all were lacking a "push," something that connects the sentence more strongly to the importance of the analysis in regards to the rhetor's message and audience. Therefore, I plan to edit in a sentence or an additional clause after each topic sentence to make it more complete, connecting it to my rationale behind the analysis and explicitly stating the connection to the rhetor's audience and message; this way, I can allude to the full purpose of paragraph and prevent the reader from constantly asking "so what?," "why is this important?," or "how does the author do what you are asserting in this paragraph?"
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Gaining insight from the professor and from our peer review assignments, I am becoming more aware of one of our course objectives: to understand the importance behind the process of writing, for it is clear that our first draft of anything is never meant to be perfect, rather, as the professor says herself, "it is just something for us to get our ideas on paper first." The help I have been getting from Professor Delany-Ullman, the peer review assignments, and the discussions we conduct in class about the RA Essay--especially regarding those that involve analyzing past student's theses-- have all helped me understand more about what is expected in my paper as I continually revise it for subsequent drafts. After what I have learned this week about what I need to edit, I realized that I also must keep my own intended audience in mind as I work on my next draft, for the refining of my wordiness, addition of historical context to Barbaro's rhetorical situation, and connection of details to my topic sentences are all in an effort to make my message in the paper clearer and stronger for my readers.
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And on that reflective note, I would like to end my blog entry. Please stay tuned for updates on my RA essay!
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Until next time,
Joanne
