Rewriting to solid proficiency and beyond

Revision and Refinement Guide Sheet:

Review your work for the following issues.  Underline and label them on your work.  Create corrections in the margins of your on-demand.  You will return your original draft, rubric, and redraft. Your redraft should be remarkably different from your first draft. Your score will be determined as follows:

 

30 points—Original writing score

(18/30 for Novice, 22/30 for Apprentice, 26/30 Proficient, 30/30 Distinguished)  

20 points—Return of original draft and significant changes from the original draft. Changes are highlighted on

second draft.

Total points: 50

 

Indicators of lapses in awareness of audience/purpose/focus

·                    Informal word choice (ain’t, gonna, sorta)

·                    Lack of identification of audience

·                    Addressing audience as though he or she is a peer, when he or she is not

·                    Forgetting to interact with audience (You may ask, you have no doubt considered, imagine this, when was the last time you considered) 

·                    Background situation does not answer “Who?”, “What?”, “Why?”, or “How?”.

·                    Thesis and supports are not clear

 

Indicators of lapses in Idea Development: 

·                    The connection between the support and SMARTIES is not clear

·                    There are not at least two SMARTIES per support

·                    There are not two opposing viewpoints and counterclaims (one can be more developed than the other)

·                    There is an opposing view with no counterclaim  

·                    The prompt has been mis-read or information is incorrectly used

·                    Your supporting ideas are obviously weak and easily argued against

 

Issues with Structure:

·                    Transitions are simple or non-existent

·                    Sentences are simplistic with little variety

·                    No use of colon, semi-colon, ellipses, parentheses or dashes

 

Issues with Language and Conventions

·                    Random capitalization or lack of capitalization at the beginning of new sentences  

·                    Proper nouns are not given capital letters

·                    Little use of commas or periods

·                    Word choice is very simple or informal

 

 

Moving in to Distinguished Territory

·                    Consider where you can elevate your language, multiple times in each paragraph.  In this case, you are looking at an opportunity to use environmental/scientific vocabulary, when appropriate.  Don’t be afraid to use that information.

·                    Parallelism is important—watch out for sentences that have two or more verb phrases, but don’t have the same length or structure. The preview of support should be parallel.

·                   * The semicolon, colon, ellipses, parenthesis and quotation marks are signs of exceptional writing.

·                    * Find places to use two of the following:  antithesis, analogy, quotations, allusions.  These strategies indicate purposeful writing style.