EXERCISE 6 Revising a Draft Working Together
The writer’s purpose of the following draft was to inform history classmates about the Dust Bowl. Revise it, focusing separately on ideas and unity, organization and coherence, sentence variety, and word choice. Write your revised version on a separate piece of paper, and talk about your revisions with a writing partner. Refer to the revising strategies in this lesson to focus your discussion.
The revision sheet shows a passage about Chinese immigration during the late 1800 with editorial markings, strikethroughs, and handwritten additions. On the left margin, there are comments showing reflective questions. From top to bottom, they read: does the writer use a hook to capture your attention, do you see any new ideas in this piece of writing, what do you notice that’s different between the first draft and this revision, how did the writer’s changes in word choice and sentence variety affect the quality of the writing, and does the writer create an ending. The main text begins with: Did you know that in the late 1800 Chinese people were the largest immigrant group on the West Coast. The next line reads, The first big bunch of Chinese immigrants came to ‘Gold Mountain’ (which is what they called the United States) after the California gold rush, which happened in 1849. The word bunch is crossed out and replaced by the handwritten word wave. The parenthetical phrase, which is what they called the United States, is struck through, and which happened is also struck through. The next line reads, They worked as cooks and household workers. The word and is striked through with proofreading symbols to insert comma after cooks and workers (replacing period). Following this, the original text, They also worked as storekeepers and trying to find gold, is struck through, except words storekeepers and. A comma is inserted after the word storekeepers and the word miners is inserted after and. The next paragraph begins with a pilcrow mark, indicating a paragraph break and includes an added starting phrase, After the gold rush. It reads, There was a great push to finish building the transcontinental railroad across the American continent after the gold rush. The phrase, across the American continent after the gold rush, is struck through and replaced with the simpler line continuing to Nine-tenths of the railroad workers who were working on the western leg of the transcontinental railroad were Chinese immigrants. The words, who were working, are struck through. The full stop at the end of the previous sentence is replaced with word, who. The next line states, They worked for about 12 cents an hour. The word they is replaced with and, and the two sentences are connected. The following line reads, Racial discrimination against the Chinese and violence against the Chinese led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The words, against the Chinese, are struck through. The handwritten phrase, along with a fear of cheap labor, and passage of the, is added between the sentence. The resulting sentence becomes, Racial discrimination and violence against the Chinese along with a fear of cheap labor led to the passage of the Exclusion Act of 1882. Next, an inserted sentence reads, This law banned all Chinese immigration. which is handwritten above the struck-through line, No Chinese person could enter the U S for ten years and it was (the word latter is added inbetween) extended another ten years. The next edit replaces and in the sentence and connects with the previous sentence. The sentence continues to, no Chinese person could become a citizen until various restrictive laws ended in 1943, with the handwritten phrase Congress repealed added between the words until and various. The word ended has a strikethrough. The final line reads, Since that time, Chinese Americans have overcome many of the social and economic inequalities that confronted the earlier immigrants. This line remains underlined.
EXERCISE 7 Working with a Writing Partner Working Together
- Revise the paragraphs that you drafted in Lesson 1.2, Exercise 5. Use the revising strategies in this lesson to improve your draft.
- Now work with a partner to revise your draft. Allow your partner to read your draft without your input. Your partner should respond to your writing using the revising strategies on page 15 as a guide.
- Review your writing partner’s comments on your draft, and incorporate those that you feel will improve your writing. Don’t be discouraged if you have to rewrite some passages.
Encourage writing partners to be positive about the drafts they read and to suggest possible solutions to problems they find.