English 505

We had a thorough discussion on the differences between revising and editing a paper. They were very excited about the various revision techniques I shared with them and strangely enough they shared many they've used and learned in the past. Instead of simply giving them a list of techniques to use at their leisure, I asked them to actually use them in class and we discussed the effectiveness of each technique. Their favorite was "Clothing the Naked this, that, and other things (such as "It" ). They had to circle each time they used words such as it, that, this... without supplying a referent. Our goal was to eliminate confusion and ensure clarity. It went pretty well. As always I had some who found the task tedious but hopefully they found them all worthwhile.