Disassembling the Rough Draft

After I had finished my rough draft, I brought it into class as we had been instructed to do. We switched with partners and started by reading paragraphs of each other's essays out loud in order to hear it in another voice, and then be able to actually hear some mistakes that needed to be fixed. We then kept each other's essays and evaluated a body paragraph to determine if it had a topic sentence and three supporting points, each with relevant examples. This was a minor step in our revision process. The bigger step came next.

We were each given sticky notes to write our thesis on and stick on the table in front of us. Then we had to literally cut (with scissors) apart our essays. Every paragraph that had to do with some component of our thesis we would put in one pile and every paragraph that didn't have to do with it, we would put in another pile. I had never physically disassembled my essay before. I actually liked doing it because, since I am a visual learner, I like to see everything clearly laid out in front of me.

At first, I honestly thought it was a little ridiculous and unnecessary to go to such extremes where I am physically cutting apart my paper in order to revise it. I was quickly proven wrong when I completed the exercise because although I was skeptical as to whether it would be beneficial or not, it really did help me see what I was missing or what I had too much of.

The results of evaluating each paragraph's relevance to my thesis were unexpected, as I said before. I noticed that in some paragraphs I had a tendency to babble on and on and even get off topic or try to make my paper sound ridiculously sophisticated with high level vocab left and right. It is also easier to see each paragraph individually when they are all cut up because then I could address one at a time, rather than feeling tempted to shift my eyes over to another paragraph and abandon the one I was working on.

I learned to give these exercises some time and thought before saying, "This will not be beneficial to my paper," or "I don't wanna try this." This exercise really pointed out what other information I needed and if I had to complete any other research. I found that disassembling my essay as well as having someone else read it out loud, really helped me see what needed to be revised. Overall I would say that it was very helpful and I will probably use these techniques in the future.