What are "revision questions"?
Revision questions are questions you ask to your peer responders in order to focus their attention on specific aspects of your argument or writing you know can be stronger. These questions should not be opinion based, surface level editing or "yes/no" questions, nor should the questions ask your peers to help you fix something you can fix yourself. Instead, you should ask questions that are directly related to that particular draft, to guide your peers' readings and response to your work so that you can enter into meaningful revision. Revision questions are hard at first because they ask you to be aware of your work and your needs as a writer, which you may not have been asked to do before. But effective writers are aware of themselves as writers, their habits, their strengths, and their weaknesses, because writing is not formulaic. Indeed, effective writers do not approach every writing situation in the same way, and so our only hope is to be aware of ourselves as writers and to consciously employ the most effective strategies in the most reasonable ways for each unique rhetorical situation.
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Good Questions In my last essay, I had a lot of comments about my tendency to leave an idea incomplete. I have tried to move away from that bad habit by offering more information than my instincts are telling me I need. Please let me know if and where I still move on before finishing an idea. I am working on integrating quotes better. I have used two different strategies in this essay. If there is another way that makes sense to you, one that is at least different if not better than how I have done it in the essay, could you please offer suggestions? In the intro, I tried to make it clear that I was taking a lighthearted tone to discuss a book that is quite patronizing. I am worried, though, that I am coming across as being more aggressive than lighthearted. Please tell me what your response to my intro is in terms of tone. Does it come across a lighthearted? If it doesn't, what aspect of the intro (sentence structure? particular words?) obstruct my goal? |
Bad Questions Would you read this book? I always mess up MLA formatting. Please fix it if it is wrong. Are my commas in the right place? Please add them if they are needed. Does the intro make sense?
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Your goal should be 2-4 really good revision questions. Also note that the nature of revision questions is that they are different for every draft of every essay. A writer does not just have a set of questions they ask every time because your peers' suggestions should be helping you strengthen weak skills so that by the next draft that "problem" is stronger if not fixed altogether.