Phase Three is essentially mechanical/technical editing of your Phase Two document — it doesn’t happen in a new document. You just make changes to your Phase Two. In order to satisfy the Phase Three requirement that will be included with your portfolio at the end of the semester, you’ll be opening a new document in which you reflect on the editing that you need to do to your Phase Two in order to turn it into your final draft.
Open a new document and title it Phase Three; it should include sections on the following three prompts: Top Twenty, Three Questions, and Five Keys. You’ll complete those sections of the document by following the steps below:
Read the following resource thoroughly: The Top Twenty Errors in Undergraduate Writing (composed by the Hume Center for Writing and Speaking at Stanford University). Choose a handful of the errors from that list that you struggle with the most. What sentences from your Phase Two reflect “errors” that are named on the Stanford site, and how can you best rebuild those sentences in your own writing (include both your original sentence and the revision).
Examine your writing at the sentence level, and choose some that don’t seem to be clear to you (or someone you’ve asked to look at your writing). Ask three important questions about these sentences: Is this sentence clear? Is the tone of this sentence academic (rather than general)? Can you choose a new sentence structure that makes improves its language? Provide a list of at least three sentences along with possible revisions along with reflection for why one sentence is an improvement over the other.
Finally, reflect on my five keys to more effective editing below. Do the same as above: include sentences that could be improved by the items on this list and offer a possible revision that will go into your assignment.
Reduce wordy or vague language.
Reduce pronouns and replace with more specific words.
Reduce use of “to be” verb constructions (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been).
Reduce sentence completion issues (fragments, run ons, and comma splices).
Rebuild sentences that start with “There,” “It,” or “That”; when you remove those words, rebuild the sentence so that its idea is more clear.
Your Phase Three document will consist of three sections, matching to the ones above, and will include pairs of sentences — one that appears in your Phase Two and one that is a stronger, clear version with some reflection in each section about what you’re learning by picking those sentences/issues out.
Remember: your Phase Three document is not a final draft of your writing; it’s a document that reflects on possible revisions to that document based on the prompts above. Each one of your writing phase documents (one, two, and three) should be saved for submission into the reflective portfolio at the end of the semester. After you’ve completed the work of Phase Three and incorporated those changes into what was your Phase Two document, you should have a final version of the essay.
This series of blog posts (Phase One, Phase Two, and Phase Three) describe the writing process that I suggest and, to a small degree, require in ENGL 1102. Be sure that you’ve already closely read the descriptions of the major assignments for this class. Please read these Phase posts as a description of the best process to use in completing those assignments this semester.
A Phase Two document is about organization. It’s what most people think of as a “first draft”, but the real benefit of Phase Two comes from following these instructions.
In any academic writing project we may have lots of ideas that are all over the place in the beginning. Phase One helps us do two things: concentrate on our reading/research and get all of those ideas out there. Usually 1000 words of Phase Writing (or two of those), prepare someone well to get ready for Phase Two. Phase Two is the longest phase; it’s what most people call “writing the rough draft”. I’ve broken it into three steps.
1: Generating Body Paragraphs
When you start your Phase Two document read all of your Phase One writing (usually about 1000 words) and underline, circle, or bookmark the things that you like. Then open a new document and start writing. It’s often the case that there’s only two or three great ideas in your Phase One that you want to move over as you start Phase Two.
Yes, I wrote that. Start over in a new document. Don’t copy and paste. Start completely fresh.
It will feel like you are rephrasing some of what you’ve already written in Phase One. That’s good. When you have to rewrite an idea, it means that you’ve selected that idea out of the ocean of ideas in your head (which means it’s a better one) and you are paying attention to how that idea should be shaped — not just that you have it. Phase One is for messy ideas. Phase Two is for clean, logical, rational, ideas that follow an intelligent order, but that order is something that you have find during Phase Two. It isn’t always the first order your come up with.
When you begin your Phase Two, don’t start out by writing the first paragraph. Start by writing example/body paragraphs. Think about this approach as writing your essay from the inside out. You can put a sentence at the top along the lines of “I think I want to prove that . . . ” or “I think I want to argue that . . . ” You don’t have to though. In the beginning, a Phase Two document should be paragraphs of evidence and context and should avoid an introduction and conclusion.
If the idea is the building block of Phase One, the paragraph is the building block of Phase Two. In Phase Two, paragraphs should be sacred. Take care to build them distinct from each other. Don’t worry about what order they are going to land in. Sometimes as you are writing a Phase Two paragraph, you realize — well, there’s really more to say about this thing. That’s ok; mark it in your head (or even in your document). You’ll come back to it later and divide into two paragraphs.
Write as many paragraphs of evidence, proof, or context as you can. Make sure that there is at least one quote or citation in each one (preferably two). In a short piece of academic writing every paragraph should be citing information from reputable sources. Otherwise, the reader gets the impression you are just relaying your own opinion without the benefit of research. Sometimes a paragraph might have two or three citations in it; that’s fine.
2: Index Card Activity
After you’ve generated about as many words as the final assignment needs just in evidence paragraphs, get some some index cards. Write a word or a phrase (resist writing a sentence) on one index card for each paragraph that you’ve written — the topic of the paragraph, or an important citation or idea. Put the index cards on a flat surface and start arranging in them in ways that you think will be the most convincing.
Certainly some paragraphs need to go together in a certain order because they build on/from each other. Think of these blocks of paragraphs as sections. In a 1000 word essay, it will be good for you to have around two to four sections, even if there are some one-off paragraphs in between that do not belong to a larger. If you just have a bunch of paragraphs that don’t obviously connect to each other, give your work another look. Can you take one rich paragraph, where you covering a lot of ground and develop that into three paragraphs that develop part of your argument in more detail?
While you are looking at the potential order of your paragraphs with the index cards, you may realize — “Oh, I’m missing something,” an important citation, fact, detail, or strategy. Pause your index card work, go write a rough version of the paragraph, make an index card for it, and go back to arranging. You will have to come back to that new index card and draft that paragraph.
When you’re finished arranging, dividing, deleting, and adding ideas for new paragraphs on the index cards and revising your Phase Two document to match that plan, take a picture of the index cards in the appropriate order.
3: Introduction and Conclusion
When you think you’ve got the cards in the most logical and convincing order, and only then, write the introductory and concluding paragraph.
A strong introductory paragraph in a short piece of academic writing should work like a funnel or a hook. Begin with an idea that is as concrete as you can make it (hopefully something with a proper noun in it — worry if you don’t have a proper noun) and build a paragraph that works toward a final sentence that is your thesis. I will always look for a thesis in the last sentence of your first paragraph in the blog posts of the blog cycle assignment. Your image argument, on the other end, should begin with a thesis statement.
Some people have been told that the concluding paragraph of an essay should be a restatement of your first paragraph. Erase that idea from your head. Academic writing should be efficient and productive, and no one wants to read what they’ve already read. Plus, you’ve just spent all this time proving something. Do something with all of that momentum and say something that extends your work. Don’t take a completely new direction, but consider doing the following: reflecting on the implications of your thesis; suggesting “next steps” for this kind of research; predicting what the future might hold for your idea given events that may happen with respect to your topic.
Think about Phase Two in terms of Legos. One Lego is not impressive all by itself, but have you seen what people can do with Legos? It’s about architecture, and your idea, if it’s a sound one, deserves logical, careful construction. At every turn in Phase Two, consider what happens if you move this block of Legos (paragraphs) from here to here. Or take some out and put ones in.
At the end of Phase Two, you should have a pretty sound version of your assignment. It won’t be perfect, but it should be 1) clear about what it is arguing and 2) in some kind of logical order. Because you front loaded your Phase One with references to your research, that material should already be assembled there. Phase Two takes the longest. You’re doing it right if you take breaks and keep coming back to chisel away at it, adding some, taking a way. Get the order right. That’s called revision.
Now all you’ve left is to proofread your work. And there’s a good reason to do that last. We’ll talk about proofreading in Phase Three.
It’s challenging for most people to begin a writing assignment, especially a longer one for an academic audience. I suggest that students break that process into three phases, each one focused on a different priority. We’ll start with Phase One.
A Phase One document is about ideas. When you’re composing an essay, it’s better for you to get the ideas out first, whether they are pretty or not. (Phase Two is about organization and Phase Three is about mechanics, but we’ll get to those later.)
Composing a Phase One draft entails blurting out of ideas and thoughts that are the product of lots of research. In Phase One writing, we don’t have to worry about paragraphs, punctuation, intro/conclusion, or even staying on the same topic. We concentrate on three things: composing a significant amount of words (usually around 1000), being sure to references sources often (citing them and quoting from them), and moving around to try out different ideas.
A key component of the Phase One is the sentence — write interesting, quirky, weird, controversial, challenging sentences whether they connect to the ones before them or after them.
A Phase One might seem chaotic if someone were to try to read it “like an essay.” It should, in many ways, be “all over the place.”
In a Phase One, you’re usually staying inside one topic (because your research should have some focus), but you may not be clearly identifying an argument or sticking with just one.
Phase One (and all academic writing) should derive from a significant amount of reading. Read widely and critically before starting your draft and takes lots of notes. Jot down notes on some subjects or events you’d like to learn more about and that abide by the six-part topic test for our class (available in the document linked above about the Major Assignments). Read widely from credible sources, both academic and journalistic, in order to answer a particular question or understand a particular event. Sometimes the best way to get a Phase One draft started is by listing and annotating your sources and building an approach from there.
You often have to keep finding new sources and continue to add to a particular Phase One document over several sittings before you find the best topic and thesis for your assignment. You know that you’re “finished” with Phase One writing when you start to feel like you know clearly what your thesis is.
Activity: Spend 90 minutes researching ideas related to your Pecha Kucha and Blog Cycle assignment. Keep notes on your reading that include as least the author, title, hyperlink, and valuable quotes for each source you find useful or interesting. After a significant amount of research, compose a Phase One document by writing 1000 words on topics and/or arguments you might consider for your upcoming Major Assignments. Follow the guidance above for Phase One writing, and be sure to include frequent references to, links to, and quotes from the sources that you’ve read.
