Many instructors recommend that in their revision, students work from the biggest elements to the smallest. This is, on the whole, good advice because it makes the act of revision methodical.

Global revisions are revisions aimed at refining the general structure of the writing and changing the shape and reasoning in your paper. Before dealing with details of style and language(editing and proofreading), be sure that you have presented ideas that are clear and forceful.

When looking globally at your work, please focus particularly on the following aspects:

1. Make sure the structure is a complete and logical one

The first thing to look at when you revise is to make sure that your academic paper has a complete structure, which usually includes an introduction, a discussion and a conclusion.

Then analyze your arguments. The process of analysis involves breaking down an idea or an argument into its parts and evaluating those parts on their merits. When you analyze your own paper, then, you are breaking that paper down into its parts and asking yourself whether or not these parts support the paper as you envision it. Here is a checklist to help you analyze your argument and the general structure.

·Does your thesis say what you want it to say? Does it make a point worth considering?

·Does the paper deliver what your thesis promises to deliver?

·Make an outline of the paper you’ve just written. Does this outline reflect your intentions?

·Is each point in your outline adequately developed?

·Is each point equally developed? (That is, does your paper seem balanced, overall?)

·Is each point relevant? Interesting?

·Have you really presented an argument, or is your paper merely a series of observations, a summary?

·Do you see any holes in your argument? Or do you find the argument convincing?

·Have you supplied ample evidence for your arguments?

·Do you see any logical fallacies?

Activity 2-1: What is the structure of an academic paper?

The complete structure of an academic writing has already been discussed in Unit 1. Do you still remember what are the elements of each of the following kinds of academic writing?

·Short essays

·Long essays (dissertations, journal articles...)

·Reports

2. Check that your paragraphs follow the sequence of the topics

The topic sentences of your paragraphs must follow the same sequence as the points of your thesis. If the thesis announces that it will cover a, b, and c, your topic sentences must appear in that same sequence. Jumbling the sequence of topics makes the paper harder to read. If you do not cover the topics in the order promised by your thesis, you need to either rewrite the thesis or shuffle the paragraphs so that the two sequences match.

Activity 2-2: Examine the thesis

In this exercise, you will find a thesis on the left column and the topics of paragraphs on the right column. Discuss with your partner whether the topics of paragraphs follow the same sequence as what is indicated in the thesis.

3. Check paragraph transitions

If we compare an essay to a train, the individual paragraphs would be separate boxcars of meaning. They must be linked to one another by more than simple sequence, but by the locomotion of a common theme, idea, or argument. When revising your work, check that your paragraphs are truly coupled together rather than simply sitting side by side.

Not only coherence should be achieved between paragraphs, it is also important within the paragraph. To make your writing coherent, you must think of the paragraph as expressing a single idea to which the individual sentences contribute bits of meaning. You can achieve this linkage by the use of transitional markers and sentences.

Activity 2-3: Transitional markers

Read the following example. Identify the transitional markers/sentences in each example and answer the questions that follow.

Example 1

Type-A person is forever nervous about coming events—always wanting success but fearing failure. As an illustration consider Howard Hughs, the brilliant entrepreneur. He started a car industry with good potential, but shut it down overnight because his automobile was not perfect. Such rashness is typical of type-A people, who often set themselves up for failure because their best efforts never seem good enough. In contrast to type As, type Bs provide themselves on their optimism and relaxed attitude. Type Bs are the kind of people who study hours for an exam and do poorly, yet they still feel good about themselves because they did all that was possible.

Example 2

Anyone with an interest in biography soon becomes interested in Boswell’s Life of Johnson. It stands next to other biographies as Shakespeare stands beside other playwrights: towering above them all. For more than two centuries it has been continuously in print, and in that time it has won innumerable admirers. No other biography has given so much pleasure; no other biography has created such a vivid central character. It has become a truism that, as a result of Boswell’s extraordinary book, Samuel Johnson is better known to us than any other man in history.

As well as being a famous and much loved book, the life of Johnson is a work that raised fundamental questions about the nature of biography itself. Is it possible for a biographer to fully understand what it is like to be another human being? ... Is biography science or art? History or fiction?

Boswell’s Presumptuous Task, Adam Sisman

Questions for discussion

1.Please underline the transitional markers in each example.

2.What is the role of the transitional marker?

3.There are many types of transitional markers based on their usages and functions. Could you think of more examples to complete the following table?