Essay Revision and Memo Assignment

Introduction
When you start to tutor, writers will start to look to you as an all-knowing writing expert.
Unfortunately, becoming a writing tutor does not give you the magical power to know
everything about writing, so a lot of tutoring involves modeling the behavior you would use as a
student to look up answers, ask professors specific clarifying questions, and work through issues
by asking questions and thinking through possible solutions.
Of course, it does help to be a tutor if you do possess writing skills of your own that you can
share with others. It is especially helpful if you are great at communicating about your cognitive
process and revision strategies to others. All of you have to have some of these skills if you made
it into this class, but this assignment will help you to develop these skills further.

Relevance
The goal of this project is to think about what you can continue to improve upon with your own
writing and start to use some metalanguage to talk about your own revision process so that you
can better help other people with their writing.

What It Is
There are two parts to this project. First, you will be revising an old assignment. You will turn in
a copy of the original and your new revision, so I will be looking for substantial revision to the
assignment. The goal with this revision is that you will have a great example essay that you can
bring up in your own sessions. If you want, you can even add this essay to our repository of
example essays at the writing center.
The second part of this assignment is the memo you will be writing about the revisions that you
have made. This memo will have to be written in business memo format and should be concise
and direct, as in business writing. The purpose of this memo is to describe the revisions that you
made, how these revisions improved the paper, and how this project will affect your future
writing.

What It Is Not
This is not a proofreading assignment. I expect you to make at least two revisions towards higher
order concerns in your paper in addition to any lower order concerns that you might address.
You should be working on this paper through practice tutoring sessions, so you should also fully
utilize the writing process and not leave this assignment off until right before it is due.

Metalanguage
Metalanguage is the language or set of terms used to describe or analyze another language. In
this assignment, you will be using terms from your required course readings to describe your
revision process. Some examples of these terms are organization, reverse outlines, style, tone,
audience, purpose, content, structure, argument, format, brainstorming, and sequencing, just to
name a few.
Revision
When you revise your essay, the first thing you will have to decide on is a goal for that revision.
You have two basic options:
1- Revise the essay so that it would have gotten the perfect grade for the class it was
originally assigned.

This might be a good choice if you are revising an essay that you wish you had done
better on. With this option, it is essential that you have the original assignment
description and/or feedback from your instructor that you can look back over while
revising. It will be your goal to be that one obnoxious student that got 100% on the essay
that everyone else in the class struggled to get a B on. This means that you will have to
work to figure out exactly what your instructor wanted and do everything possible to
meet all of those expectations.

2- Revise the essay so that it exceeds the criteria originally set for the class it was originally
assigned.

This might be a good option if you are revising an essay that you already did pretty well
on, but you personally felt that you could have done more with the topic. With this
option, you will have to come up with new criteria for the goals of your revision. Do you
want to draw future implications from what you already wrote about? Have you since
learned new information that you would like to add to your argument? Do you want to
add your opinion to an assignment that was originally written to be informative and not
opinionated? With this option, you will have to make your own goals for what you want
to do in the revision process and think through criteria of what it will take for you to get
there.

With either choice, you will have to:

Come up with the specific goals of your revision.

Make at least two global revisions to your paper that significantly impact your final draft.
Self-evaluate how well you did in meeting the goals of your revisions in your memo.

Memo

The goal of the memo is to start to use metalanguage to talk about your own revision process so
that you will be better prepared to discuss revision strategies with other writers. You will also be
writing this in a memo format, which is traditionally a business writing format, to gain practice
in writing in a genre other than an essay.
Format

We will be using the pages about memos on the Purdue OWL to create the memo. Follow the
hyperlinks for each section to find these pages with more information. The Purdue OWL dictates
just one way that a memo can be formatted, so remember that while we are including everything
exactly as it is on this site, you might tutor someone in the future that has slightly different
requirements from their specific professor.

Audience and Purpose:

The audience for the memo is your classmates and your instructor. The purpose is to
describe the revisions that you made, how these revisions improved the paper, and how
this project will affect your future writing.

Parts of a Memo:
Heading Segment: This member is to the entire course, so note the course code. It is
from you. The date is the date the assignment is due. The subject is the title for your
memo, which should be direct, informative, and concise.
Opening Segment: This is where you should state the purpose of the memo. You should
also give us a sentence or two overview of the rest of the memo.
Context: This is where you will tell us what essay you chose to revise and why.
Task Segment: This is where you will detail the goals you made for your revision.
Summary Segment: Even if your memo is over a page long, you can leave this section
out.
Discussion Segments: This is where you will discuss what revisions you made and how
this affected your paper. Make sure to put the most important information at the
beginning. You will describe what revisions you actually made towards meeting the goals
form your task segment and how these revisions improved your paper. You will also
describe how this project will affect your future writing.
Closing Segment: In this section you should briefly thank your readers and leave them
with a one or two sentence recommendation for what they can learn from reading about
your revision process.
Necessary Attachments: Your attachments will be the original and revised versions of
your paper.

Format:
There is a very specific format for writing this memo, and you should follow the
specifications on this page. You should also use headings that are informative, concise,
and descriptive of what you will cover in that section. For example, you could title the
task segment Goals for Revisions rather than Task Segment. Also, use bullet points
and shorter sentences whenever possible. The goal with this memo is to get in all
information in a concise and direct manner.

Sample Memo:
This page is a great visual to show you exactly what format to use. Note that they use a
bulleted list and descriptive headings. Utilize these methods in your own memo as well.
Grading Criteria
More of your grade will be determined by your memo than your revision. Your work on each
should be about 50/50, but I will be determining what revisions you made and why partially
based upon how you describe them in the memo, so the point values reflect this.
You will be graded upon:
Your ability to make substantial revisions to the essay, including at least two HOCs.
Your ability to demonstrate that these revisions improve the quality of the paper in
accordance with your goals for revision.
Your inclusion of all required information in the memo and use of metalanguage about
revision in all sections.
Your ability to follow memo formatting and style.

Grading Rubric
1-3 points 4-7 points 8-10 points
Substantial revisions Only revisions made Some attempt to Significant revisions
made to the essay, were to sentence make HOC revisions, were made, with
including at least two level errors. but these were not especial attention
HOCs carried out effectively given to those
and did not revisions that greatly
significantly improve impacted the papers
the essay. purpose.
Demonstrated how Goals for revision Clear goals were Clear goals were
the revisions were not set and/or made for revision and made for revision and
improved the quality revisions did not the revisions were the memo made it
of the paper in align with these made in attempt to clear how the
accordance with the goals. meet these goals, but revisions made
goals for revision. fell short. improved the paper
towards meeting
these goals.
Required information Many sections were Most sections were All sections were
was included in the not present, or did not included, but were included and each
memo and align with what was missing details utilized metalanguage
metalanguage is used required in the required to about revision to
to discuss revision. assignment thoroughly explain effectively describe
description. the revision process. what revisions were
made.
Demonstrated Significant issues Formatting mostly Formatting followed
appropriate memo with following the adhered to that the Purdue OWL site.
format and style. correct memo format described on the Obvious attempts had
and no attention Purdue OWL site. been made to make
made to adjust for Style of memo was the memo concise
business-writing not concise or direct and direct while still
style. enough for business- including all required
writing style. content.
WLN Writing Assignment
Introduction
Now that you have practiced using dialectal diversity as a resource in your tutoring sessions, I want you
to write an article about:

What you have learned,

How you have applied this knowledge, and
How you suggest other tutors should do the same.
Your goal is to write this such that it could be published in the tutors column of the Writing Lab
Newsletter. Thus, your article should be interesting and informative to other writing tutors. It should be
written in MLA format, as that is the style required by WLN.

Relevance
This assignment will be a way for you to express how you are applying the theories that you have read
about to your own tutoring sessions. This assignment will help you to bridge theory and practice and
share that knowledge with others.

What it is not
This assignment is not an essay like you might write in class; this is an article meant for publication in an
academic setting. This article should have some conventions typical to journalism, such as catching the
attention of the reader, but it still must have a more academic tone compared to what you might find in a
newspaper. You will read a few examples of tutor columns from the past to get an idea of how to write
this in a more journalistic fashion. This is one of your activities in the weeks leading up to this
assignment.

Your decisions
There is no length requirement for this assignment, but if you look at past WLNs you will see that these
articles are about four pages long. You really have a lot of room to play with format for this assignment.
For this project you dont necessarily need a thesis statement, you can choose how much you rely on your
own experience versus theory, and your tone can be less formal than you might use in a research essay.
You will be required to use some research in your article (WLN tends to expect this) and you will have to
have a concrete, central message that you are expressing to your readers. The most important thing is that
you express useful information to tutors in other writing centers.

Audience
Your audience for this article will be other tutors and directors from writing centers across the world. This
means that you should be careful to not assume that other centers are exactly like ours, while all writing
centers have some shared theories and practices, we all carry these out in a wide variety of ways.
Goals
Learning Outcomes
Glean common practices and techniques from past WLN Journal articles and then follow these
practices in an original article
Clearly express ideas to an audience with an awareness of that audiences unique background
Research topics related to WC practice and use this research to support advice to other tutors
Reflect on personal tutoring experiences to support advice on best tutoring practices
Incorporate feedback from others into the final version of a writing assignment

Real World Technology Tools You Will Use

For this assignment, you will have to use secondary research. Earlier this semester you met with a
librarian to learn about how to use the librarys databases. For this assignment, you will have to use that
knowledge to access additional research for your article.

Timeline

1. Strategy Plan Due 11:59 pm Sunday November 27

After you have a rough plan of what you want to do with your article, share your strategy with me. Your
strategy should include:

What dialect you plan to use. Think back to your readings on dialects and specify and describe
the dialect that you will be using in this assignment.
What outside sources you plan to use.
What you hope people will gain out of reading your article.
How you plan to convey your message (will it be argumentative in nature, have an extended
metaphor that you use to relay your point, rely on one strong story you use throughout the entirety
of the article, etc)
This plan will be due (end of the week that the module should be completed). I will then send you
feedback on your progress thus far and give you suggestions on how to proceed.

2. Tutoring Sessions

You will come in for at least two tutoring sessions with your fellow tutors to discuss a draft of this article.
Make sure that you send me a copy of the session reports. During these sessions, look for feedback to see
if your article will be effectively communicating new information to a peer audience. You should also try
to tutor someone else on their paper at this time, as your work schedule allows.
 4. Final Draft Due 11:59 pm Sunday December 4

You will then submit a final draft of the article to me b. You will also submit a reflective memo with this
final draft (which I explain below). I will review your article in a manner similar to that of a reviewer for
an academic publication. This means that in addition to feedback regarding the clarity of your writing, I
will also comment as an expert in the field and give you feedback on how your article fits into the bigger
conversation about this topic in the discipline.

After you receive feedback from me, we will talk about possibly submitting your article for publication in
the WLN Journal or another one of a variety of Writing Center publications.

Assessment
Reflective Memo
When you submit your article to me, I also want you to submit a brief memo about your writing process.
This will be similar to the memo that you wrote for the first assignment in this class, but this time it
should be less in-depth and just focus on telling me about your writing process with this particular paper.
You should answer these questions:

What was the most difficult part of this assignment?

What do you think turned out really well?
What would you change if you had more time?

I will use this memo to help determine your grade as well as what feedback I will give you for possibly
submitting it for actual publication. You will also get 10 points towards this assignment for submitting a
memo that answers these questions.

Grading Rubric

5-10 points 11-16 points 17-20 points

Article is appropriate to the
genre, following the
conventions set by the tutor
in their own plan
Clear conventions for Some attempt to Consistently follows
the article were not set follow conventions the conventions for the
in the plan and/or for the genre, but genre, keeping a
these were not present substantial revision consistent style and
in the article. need to follow them tone throughout.
consistently.

Article expresses a clear
message that is appropriate
for the intended audience
Message has no focus Message is present, One clear message is
and/or is not relevant but could use revision presented with the
to the intended to gain better focus. entire article
audience. Audience would be supporting this
interested, but not message. Audience

Article uses research to
support the main message,
citing material in MLA
Article uses real
experiences to support the
message
Article shows that the tutor
listened and incorporated
advice from both the
professor and a fellow tutor
necessarily gain new will gain knowledge
knowledge or insight. and insight on this
topic.
Only one source was 2-3 sources were 4 or more sources
included and was not referenced with few were referenced and
referenced in MLA errors in MLA MLA formatting was
format. format. Sources nearly flawless.
generally supported Sources supported
main message. main message, making
it stronger and more
believable.
Only one vague Some experiences Clear experiences
experience was were referenced, but were used as examples
referenced. they did not fully and/or support for the
support the message. main message,
showing that the tutor
has applied the
message they are
speaking about.
Only surface-level Some revisions made, Significant revisions
revisions made based but more effort were made based upon
on feedback. needed to make these feedback, greatly
revisions impacting the final
significantly impact version of the article.
article.