Academic writing and its style changes as the student passes from high school to college and also while in higher studies. Academic writing, especially starting from the college level can be considered as writing done by scholars for other scholars. It involves reading, thinking, arguing, and finally writing about subjects or ideas. It is important that the content of the academic paper need to be carefully analyzed and put in simple language that can be understood by every one. Academic paper should present the reader with an informed argument on a particular subject (Gocsik, 2005).
It is therefore important for a student to select the appropriate topic, understand and get more knowledge on the topic and write it in a structured manner. These are the basic steps that need to be followed in an academic writing. Once a student completes writing an academic paper, the next important step is to revise it thoroughly. Revision plays a very important role in academic writing. This paper discusses the need for revision in academic writing.
Initially while writing, there will be many errors that are overlooked. Revision of the paper will aid the student to carefully look over the writing and will help them to catch errors that they might otherwise miss. A slow reading while revision helps to spot errors than reading at a normal speed. Additionally, when a student revises, it is a good idea to put themselves into the audience’s shoes. Here the audience’s may include teachers, professors, or other students.
This enables them to think in the perspective of the audiences and thereby put forth their ideas in simple and clear terms. It is also a good idea to get another person involved in revision. A fresh reader will be able to help catch the mistakes that might have been overlooked by the writer. They may also help to analysis the paper in a critical manner. As a result, it will be possible for the student to answer the question asked by another person and also give more ideas to express their own ideas in the paper (The OWL at Purdue University, 2008).
Revision can also be termed as proofreading. Proofreading is primarily about searching the writing for errors, both grammatical and typographical, before submitting the paper. It is good the give a gap between writing and proofing. This time span basically aims to help the student to return with a fresh eye and mind (Wells, et al. 2007). In other words, writing is typically re-writing, or re-seeing the writing over and over again, each time making the meaning clearer. This helps to put forth a refined thought. The real skill of academic writing gets more and more refined with revision. Revision is the only way the writer can fiddle with words, and fashion sentences and paragraphs to make them strong and true (Handley, N.D.).
Academic writing is not just writing what ever comes to once mind. It is writing and re-writing it together with editing its sentences one by one. It also looks into the whole essay and draft and redraft–rearranging the sequence, adding and deleting sections to have a clear and focused composition. Once the student is ready with a fairly complete and well-organized draft, it is important for them to revise sentences while giving due attention to transitions.
This aids the student in read-through to make sure that a reader will be able to understand the basic idea within sentences, from sentence to sentence, and from paragraph to paragraph. Last but not the least, it is also important to have a through spell check to examine the exactness and aptness of words and to remove unnecessary words (Procter, 2007). Revision plays a very important role in academic writing. It can be said that an academic paper without revision is an incomplete paper; often it will not be able to convey its ideas clearly to the audiences. The final paper with good revision and restructuring will be able to convey all necessary ideas clearly which is the basic purpose of any academic writing.
References
Gocsik, K. (2005) Revision: Cultivating a Critical Eye, Dartmouth College. Web.
Handley, E. (N.D.) Writer’s Block. Web.
Procter, M. (2007) Some General Advice on Academic Essay-Writing. Web.
The OWL at Purdue University, (2008) Proofreading Your Writing. Web.
Wells, J.M., Sousa, M. and Martini, M. (2007) Proofreading Your Writing, [Online] Purdue OWL. Web.