cle. During the first revision cycle their attention is primarily directed towards narrowing the topic and delimiting their ideas. At this point, they are not as concerned as they are later about vocabulary and st
One of my biggest struggles is that I always easily get caught up with vocabulary and style. It seems to be something that I can't ignore, even when I keep telling myself that I can fix it later. To improve as a writer, I'll have to continue working on this.
ent. When questioned about this emphasis, the experienced writers responded that since their first drafts are usually scattered attempts to define their territory, their objective in the second draft is to begin observing general patterns of development and deciding what should be included and what exclu
So in other words, good writers use their first draft as a way of simply getting all their jumbled up ideas on to paper and the second draft is when they start fixing the structure in order to develop a better flow.
n other words, a supportive paragraph's main idea clearly develops the argument of the thesis
In other words, if there is a paragraph that doesn't develop the argument of the thesis, it basically does not add anything to the paper and shouldn't be included.
Here are some questions that you might ask
These questions seem like they will be extremely helpful in making sure that the entire paper is well-balanced rather than having some areas that are extremely strong but then completely missing out in other areas.
Different readers are always going to pick up on different things and respond in different ways, and no one reading or response is going to address every-thing that might well be addressed, in the way it might best be addressed. All responses are incomplete and provisional-one reader's way of reading and reacting to the text in front of him.
This is a concept I definitely saw being utilized in high school. We would always get our papers looked at by a number of classmates to receive different opinions and responses. However, similar to the mindset introduced in the first paragraph, most students including myself devalued the process of peer-review and usually ended up giving vague comments about sentence structure or punctuation. I now better understand that giving a thoughtful peer-review can truly be of great significance to the writer.
Read it quick-ly and mark whatever you see. Say something about the introduction. Something about details and examples. Ideas you can say you like. Mark any typos and spelling errors. Make your comments brie
I have to admit, this is exactly what goes through my head when I have to peer review someone's paper.
Ellen, for example, admits that she has a general "outline in [her] head about how a topic paragraph should look" but could not describe much about its structure. Susan also has a general plan to follow, but, if stymied, will quickly attempt to conceptualize the assign- ment in different ways: "If my original idea won't work, then I need to pro- ceed differently.
Something I noticed is that non-blockers seem to be very flexible with their writing strategy/structure and focus primarily on getting their ideas on paper whereas blockers are often caught up by how "good" their writing is. If a change in writing structure/strategy is necessary, blockers may believe the outcome won't be as "good" as they had originally envisioned.
The answer could have rested in the emotional realm-anxiety, fear of evaluation, insecurity, etc.
On top of of these reasons, as someone who often struggles with writers block I feel like another key obstacle are self-imposed standards. If there is a sentence or phrase that don't meet my own unreasonable standards, I'll always end up thinking to myself "I can do better".
I'd start writing up descriptions of the food, one dish at a time, bird by bird, and the critics would be sitting on my shoulders, commenting like cartoon characters.
I also tend to worry about how others may view/critique my writing while I am in the writing process. As a result, I often re-read/re-write many sentences and end up taking a very long time to write even a short passage.
that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter.
The author uses vivid imagery to highlight the inaccurate assumptions most people have about successful writers. The minute details included play a significant role in setting up an idea that the author is about to debunk.