EDITING AND REWRITING A DRAFT: AN ESSAY WRITING PRACTICE

THE 12Th SESSION IN ESSAY WRITING

Instructional design: 

Students are able to edit and rewrite a text in order to make a good paragraph. They have to be consistent delivering their ideas by using the rules in writing an essay. Finally, they could apply the activities in editing and rewriting a draft in their real works. 

Method:

Teacher asks her students to do a project to increase their knowledge and experience in writing. She also invites the students to communicate and to practise the topic task in this blog. 

Description: 

The material includes the discussion of how to edit and to rewrite a draft in essay practice. This topic is very important to strengthen their ability in writing essay. Editing and rewriting a draft are parts of writing processes. Editing refers to the activity of checking a draft by applying grammar and organization rules of writing. Grammar includes sentences' structures, meaning, and context. Then, organization relates to your way to present ideas in your text. After checking, you might find any fallacy in both aspects. Therefore, you will rewrite the draft based on your correction. The process of editing and rewriting also relate to paraphrasing (see previous material). To do editing and rewriting a draft, you could consider some ideas from Bailey (2011) as follow:

1. considering the confusing pairs such as effect (Noun) and affect (Verb). 

2. considering grammar, punctuation, and spelling

3. looking at the organization whether it is vertical or horizontal. Vertical means grouping the benefits in one paragraph and the disadvantages in another whereas horizontal examines the subject from different viewpoints.

4. When discussing common ideas avoid personal phrases such as in my opinion or personally, I think . . ., etc.

5. you must show that you are familiar with both sides of the argument, and provide reasons to support your voice/position.

6. supporting your opinions with sources such as according to Emerson (2003)...., Poledna (2007) claims that ...

7. your conclusions on a topic should be followed by the evidence so that you could give a balanced judgment.

To practise your knowledge and experience in editing and rewriting a draft, you could do both activities in the following text that containing the idea of recent habit of young people who have grown up with digital and technology, that are different from previous generations.

DO ‘DIGITAL NATIVES’ EXIST?

Various writers have argued that people born in the last two decades of the twentieth century (1980–2000) and who have been using computers all their lives have different abilities and needs to other people. Palfrey and Gasser (2008) refer to them as the ‘net generation’ and argue that activities such as putting videos on You Tube are more natural for them than writing essays. Similarly Prensky (2001a) claims that the educational system needs to be revised to cater for the preferences of these ‘digital natives’.

But other researchers doubt that these claims can apply to a whole generation. Bennett, Maton and Kervin (2008) argue that these young people comprise a whole range of abilities, and that many of them only have a limited understanding of digital tools. They insist that the so-called ‘digital native’ theory is a myth, and that it would be a mistake to re-organise the educational system to cater for their supposed requirements. Clearly there are some young people who are very proficient in online technologies, but taking a global perspective many still grow up and are educated in a traditional manner. Teaching methods are constantly being revised, but there is no clear evidence of a need to radically change them.

(Bailey, 2011, p.107)