Resources

Why Revise?

We often hope to research and compose our essays from beginning to end without making any revisions. But this hope overlooks the fact that writing about a topic is also a way of learning about it. Writers deepen their understanding of their topic as they write and rewrite.

Reviewing and revising your work will help you to:

  • “re-see” your topic and what you have said about it
  • see new points to make, find better explanations of your ideas, and make interesting new connections among those ideas
  • improve your understanding of your topic and the quality of your essay

This module on making revisions is closely related to the following modules:

Revising, drafting, and editing are closely related processes. In fact, most writers do not readily distinguish the three as they work. They do not simply draft once, revise once and edit once in that order. They are likely to move back and forth among these processes effortlessly and frequently. This module will help you develop efficient and productive strategies for revising your work, wherever you may be in the writing process.

12%
SPARK York University

Module Objectives

This module on understanding assignments provides strategies for:

  • understanding the general requirements of an academic assignment
  • determining the purpose of an assignment in order to guide the writing process
  • discovering types of assignments and their corresponding signal words
  • noting various disciplinary approaches
  • defining the audience and considering its role in the assignment