Surface revising strategies
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The document provides 4 surface revising strategies: 1) Read the paragraph aloud to identify mistakes, 2) Isolate specific problems such as commas or verbs to check their usage individually, 3) Identify repeating words which could be replaced to strengthen writing, 4) Check spelling of uncertain words by looking them up. The strategies aim to help writers objectively revise their work at a surface level.
Surface revising strategies
- 2. Read Aloud Reading the paragraph aloud slowly can often bring to attention large and small mistakes missed while the writing process. Read each sentence and ask yourself: Does it make sense? Is it awkward?
- 3. Isolate Specific Problems Isolating specific problems can help give objectivity to one's personal work. One way to isolate specific things is to circle them on a paragraph draft and look at them one by one. For example: circle all commas and then go back and look at each comma asking if it is in the appropriate place with the correct usage. Another example would be to circle all verbs and then go back one by one and identify the tense and verify subject verb agreement.
- 4. Identify Repeating Words This can be done several ways. One is to circle common words. Another is to highlight them. Another is to do a computer search within a document. Repeating a word or phrase intentionally is a valid writing style (parallelism), yet sometimes words are repeated unnecessarily. Identifying and changing over-repeated words such as overused transitions can strengthen the paragraph.
- 5. Look it up Spelling check is always necessary. If there is doubt in the correctness of any word's spelling in the paragraph, look it up.
- 6. The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. IX, No. 5, May 2003 http://iteslj.org/ http://iteslj.org/Technique/Coleman- WritingRevision.html