Revising with Instructor Feedback
When you receive a draft back from an instructor, you may be most interested in the grade showing at the top, but pay careful attention to any comments made throughout the paper. On a first draft, instructors provide feedback to help you improve your paper in the next round; ignoring their advice is an obvious mistake. But even on final drafts that you are not required to revise, it is worth reading and keeping track of instructor comments. These comments may be useful to you in future assignments and even in other classes.
Here are some of the most common pieces of revision advice that instructors note on student papers, along with strategies for using this feedback to improve your writing.
- “Clarify thesis.” For most writing assignments, your entire paper rests on a clear statement of your main point. If your instructor says that your thesis is not clear, you will need to go back and revise it. Make sure it clearly states your topic and the direction of your paper. Your thesis should always take into account your writing situation (topic, audience, and purpose), and it should be substantive, grounded, and assertive.
- “Provide more detail.” In some cases, instructors ask you to provide more specific details to support your topic sentences. Your support may come in the form of examples, statistics, facts, opinions, or other information. Detail gives your writing substance: it makes your narratives more vivid, and it makes your arguments more convincing.
- “Focus paragraph”/“Organization.” If your paragraph wanders off in multiple directions, or if it includes irrelevant details, your instructor may advise you to revise it for better focus. Make sure each paragraph stays on topic; that is, make sure all sentences in the paragraph connect to the main idea stated in the topic sentence. If you find information that doesn’t relate to the topic sentence, consider either deleting it from the paper or turning it into a new paragraph.
- “Need transition.” Instructors, like all readers, want to be able to follow the logic of your paper. If your paragraphs feel choppy and disconnected, they will probably benefit from transitional words, phrases, sentences, or even entire paragraphs.
- “Citation needed?” When instructors see direct quotations or sense a change in the paper’s voice but they do not see any documentation, they may ask you to double check your notes. If you have used other sources in your paper, always be sure to integrate other authors’ words with care and proper citations to avoid plagiarism.
Of course, instructors may also note errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar, even in a first draft, and those corrections also need to be dealt with. But your main concerns in the revision stage are more global issues related to purpose, support, and organization.
Any time you are unsure of what your instructor means by a comment, be sure to follow up.