276 RevisionThe final stepWith this done you will have completed the five-stage revision on
your essay. As a result you should be seeing a marked improvement in
your work. The introduction should outline a clear structure for your
readers to follow. Your paragraphs should have transitions and topic
sentences that clearly signpost the direction of your argument and
its relevance to the question. And your conclusion should tie up the
issues raised in the introduction, producing an essay that has a tight,
convincing structure.
Equally important, your writing should be much lighter. You
should be able to see that it is getting closer to talk in print. You
will already notice that with fewer modifiers and prepositions it’s
possible to read your ideas without the bumpy ride you might be used
to. What’s more, knowing how to use your punctuation, and sentencesAssignment 14
Revision – the contentTake the essay you’ve been working on in the assignments and go
through the final three stages revising the content.
In your first revision look for all the unnecessary words, phrases and
sentences. Check for readability. If sentences are long, cut them up into
shorter, more manageable lengths. Remember the key is to keep your
readers engaged and not to lose them.
On the second revision check for strong nouns and verbs, and where
you find too many adjectives and adverbs see if you can think of stronger
nouns and verbs, that would make these unnecessary. The same goes
for the active and passive voices in your writing. Check wherever you’ve
used the passive voice that it is more appropriate than the active voice.
Then, once you’ve completed that, move on to the last revision. Get
someone to read your essay to you, so that you can see how well it
sounds.credence or not, you can avoid the danger of dropping a grade by
making sure your essay is clearly and neatly presented, with as few
mistakes in it as possible. Your work must look like the work of a
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