Checklist for Revising a Draft:
From: Sylvan Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing about Art , 8th edition, 2005
- Does the draft fulfill the specifications (e.g., length, scope) of the assignment?
- Does the draft have a point, a focus?
- Is the title interesting and informative? Does it create a favorable first impression?
- Are the early paragraphs engaging, and do they give the reader a fairly good idea of what will follow, perhaps by naming the works of art and the approach?
- Are arguable assertions supported with evidence?
- Are your readers kept in mind, for instance by defining terms that they may be unfamiliar with?
- If any quotations are included, are they adequately introduced rather than just dumped into the essay? Are quotations as brief as possible? Might summaries (properly credited to the sources) be more effective than long quotations?
- Are all sources cited, including Internet material?
- Is the organization clear, reasonable, and effective? (Check by making a quick outline.)
- Does the final paragraph nicely round off the paper, or does it merely restate—unnecessarily—what is by now obvious?
- Does the paper include whatever visual material reader needs to see?
PEER REVIEW
Your instructor may encourage (or even require) you to discuss your draft with another student or with a small group of students. That is, you may be asked to get a review from your peers. Such a procedure is helpful in several ways. First, it gives the writer a real audience, readers who can point to what pleases or puzzles them, who make suggestions, who may often disagree (with the writer or with each other), and who frequently, though not intentionally, misread. Though writers don't necessarily like everything they hear (they seldom hear "This is perfect. Don't change a word!"), reading and discussing their work with others almost always gives them a fresh perspective on their work, and a fresh perspective may stimulate thoughtful revision. (Hav ing your intentions misread, because your writing isn't clear enough, can be particularly stimulating.)
Note: It's not a bad idea for you to ask yourself these questions before you give a draft to a fellow student.
Checklist for Peer Review
Read each draft once, quickly. Then read it again and jot down brief responses to the following questions.
- What is the essay's topic? Is it one of the assigned topics, or a varia tion of one of them? Is the title appropriate? Does the draft show promise of fulfilling the assignment?
- Looking at the essay as a whole, what thesis (main idea) is stated or implied? If implied, try to state it in your own words.
- Is the thesis plausible? How might it be strengthened?
- Looking at each paragraph separately: Q What is the basic point? [-) How does each paragraph relate to the essay's main idea or to the previous paragraph?
- Should some paragraphs be deleted? be divided into two or more paragraphs? be combined? be put elsewhere? (If you outline the essay by jotting down the gist of each paragraph, you will get help in answering these questions.)
- Is each sentence clearly related to the sentence that precedes and to the sentence that follows?
- Is each paragraph adequately developed? Are there sufficient details to support the generalizations?
- Are the introductory and concluding paragraphs effective?
- Are the necessary illustrations included, and are they adequately identified?
- What are the paper's chief strengths?
- Make at least two specific suggestions that you think will assist the author to improve the paper.
The writer whose work is being reviewed is not the sole beneficiary. When students regularly serve as readers for each other, they become better readers of their own work and consequently better revisers. And, as you probably know, learning to write is in large measure learning to read.
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Sacramento State
