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Revision Workshop

Create a strong introduction

Effective introductions establish the focus by introducing the subject, narrowing it down, and making a statement (thesis) about the subject.

Include author and title BEFORE you begin talking about the book.

Strategies for introductions

Ask a question or pose a series of questions about the subject

Begin by defining the subject (avoid the dictionary definition approach – way too over-used!)

Make an unexpected or compelling comparison

Open with a controversial statement that challenges but does not offend or distract from the point you want to make

Lead with an interesting anecdote

Proper integration of quotes

Quote must be introduced. Set up the context of the quote – what is

happening/who is talking/what leads to this moment

Quote must be explained. Explain WHAT quote demonstrates/how it illustrates

your point/link it back to your thesis

Example of integrated quote

Thesis: In the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien we learn about these emotional challenges the soldiers in the war face, and how they find ways to cope with these challenges.

Body Paragraph: At the beginning of the book, the author talks about the thoughts running through the heads of the soldiers being drafted into the war. I don’t think we realize that back when the draft was in effect, some men really didn’t want to fight. They were worried, uncertain, anxious, and most of all scared. Who wouldn’t be? There are only two things you know for certain: You were going to war and you were going to kill or die. The Things They Carried also emphasizes the need for the men going to war to prove themselves and not shame their family. They had strong desires to not look like a coward, but to look like a man. We see this in the passage where the main character is debating whether or not to flee to Canada to escape the war after being drafted. “Both my conscience and my instincts were telling me to make a break for it, just take off and run and never stop”(O’Brien 44). This man is struggling with the knowledge he is most likely going to die, since he is not a fighter, but a scholar. However, he knows that if he goes AWOL his family will be shamed. With this knowledge, he simply goes to war because he is embarrassed not to.

Maintain focus

Stick to the subject.

Only include events/examples/quotes that support your point

Write about one subject per paragraph – make sure your paragraphs have topic sentences that directly link to your thesis

Provide Insight

Who What Why So what?

Who: The woman

What: Sacrifices her books

Why: They are worth more to her than her life

So what: This makes Montag realize there must be something to these books.

Revision is NOT just proofreading

Revision does not concern itself with surface details

Revision utilizes the evaluation of both self and others

Global revision considers the big picture – the paper as a whole. Does the paper do what it set out to do? Does the organization of the piece help the reader understand where the writer is going? Does the writing provide a “So What?” for the reader?

Revise for style

Strong verbs (eliminate “be” verbs – is, are, was, were, etc.)

Write about literature in present tense

Sentence work – combining, use of appositives, imitation, sentence templates

Sentence Combining

Ray Bradbury is the writer of Fahrenheit 451.

Fahrenheit 451 is a polemic against book censorship.

Fahrenheit 451 paints an alarming clear picture of what our world can become if we do not heed its warning.

Combined version:

Use of Appositives

Back in the 1920s, John Macready, an Army Air Corps lieutenant, should have been famous. He flew nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean (in a blimp) six years before Charles Lindbergh; and he approached Bausch & Lomb, the leading manufacturer of sunglasses, about developing lenses to block the sun. Bausch & Lomb responded by making Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses, the glasses made famous by General Douglas MacArthur. But it took the stars of Hollywood – Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Gary Cooper – to make sunglasses into an item of fashion. Hollywood stars wore them for one reason: to avoid having to look into the eyes of pestering fans. A few years back the popular Ray-Bans lost out to Wayfarers, the sunglasses made popular by Tom Cruise in the movie Risky Business. There remains one thing I cannot understand about people – mostly rock stars and actors – who wear sunglasses: why they wear them at night.

Use of Appositives

“Welcome to the planet Earth – a place of blue nitrogen skies, oceans of liquid water, cool forests and soft meadows, a world positively rippling with life” (from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos).

In her wallet she still carried a picture of her husband, a clean-shaven boy in his twenties, the hair parted on one side. (from Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth).

Imitating

A tall, rawhide man in an unbuttoned, sagging vest, he was visibly embarrassed by any furnishings that suggested refinement.” from “Early Marriage” by Conrad Richter

Describing in precise detail a “dimpled spider” and “white heal-all,” Frost questions the origins and intent of such a “design of darkness.”

Sentence Templates

When X says _______________, he means __________________. X believes, for example, that …. This is obvious since early on X says _______________________.