Revising Your Dynamic Character Essay

Rules of Revising O 85%-100%: You will not revise. O 75%-84%: You may make the decision to revise or not. O 74% or less: You must revise. If you received a 74% or less, you must revise. Failure to turn in a revised essay will result in a loss of 8% (2 points) from your grade on the essay because you are being given in class time to do this. You must make sufficient and effortful revisions.

Revisions cont’d O You must have your essay at school on a computer on Friday. If your final typed version is at home on the computer, you need to it to school or bring it in on a flash drive. O On Friday, if you do not have it or if you do not have your graded draft with my feedback on it to help you revise, you will lost points on your essay grade AND participation points for the day.

Revisions cont’d: Turning it in O You must turn in your new final draft with the changes you made highlighted on it, and you must turn in your original final draft (with my feedback on it) and your rubric. O I will not accept your revised version if you do not highlight your changes and/or if you do not have your original graded final copy. I have to be able to compare and see what you changed. O This is all due on Tuesday at the beginning of the hour.

Helping Your Revise: Common Student Errors

-YOU MAY NOT USE ANY FORM OF YOU, WE, OR I UNLESS IT IS IN A QUOTE. -YOU MAY NOT USE CONTRACTIONS -Using a slash like when saying She is greedy/unhappy means you can’t make up your mind. Pick one. You’re the writer of the essay, so you should be an expert on what you’re saying and should be able to make up your mind. Formal Voice Reminders:

Correcting Short Hand FRAG or FRAGMENT= Fragment (incomplete sentence) awk=awkward (doesn’t sound like we would say it) w.c.= word choice / = lowercase the letter the slash is through (or if it’s the middle of a word, get rid of the letter—sp. error) d =uppercase the letter (in this example, the d) sp= spelling error expl.= explanation trans.= transition

Prepositional Idioms O ungrateful for O accepting of O miserable about O feels miserable about sounds better than is miserable about O unhappy about (probably sounds the best in most cases)

Spelling Mistakes O Mathilde O Loisel O Mathilde’s life changes and that causes changes in her personality O loses O feeling O clothes O accepting (NOT excepting— this excepting means to exclude/leave out) O Miss Hayes looked it up: acceptive is technically a word, but it is not used often at all. Consider using accepting instead.

Possessive apostrophe vs Contraction apostrophe O Possessive: O Mathilde’s change is shown… O The change belonging to Mathilde= possessive O Mathilde’s unhappiness is shown when.. O The unhappiness belonging to Mathilde= possessive O Contraction: O Mathilde’s unhappy because she does not have nice things. O Mathilde is unhappy because she does not have nice things. You need a noun after Mathilde’s for it to be possessive: Ex: misery, unhappiness, dissatisfaction, acceptance

Fragments (FRAG) O A fragment is an incomplete sentence. O You are missing a subject and/or verb, or the way it’s written doesn’t express a complete thought. O Example: After Mathilde loses the necklace. O After Mathilde loses the necklace…WHAT? O This is an incomplete thought because you’re left wondering information. O After Mathilde loses the necklace, her personality changes. (This is a complete thought now.)

Run-ons A run-on is when you have too many improperly joined complete thoughts in one sentence. – Example: Mathilde becomes accepting of her life after she loses the necklace, she learns to do the housework. Sentence 1: Mathilde becomes accepting of her life. Sentence 2: After losing the necklace, she learns to do the housework. – Fix a run-on by placing a period between the two sentences and then making the first word of the second sentence uppercase. » Mathilde becomes accepting of her life. After she loses the necklace, she learns to do the housework.

No Should-ing O You want to leave your opinion out of an analytical essay as much as possible. O Avoid saying things like: She should have been more grateful for the life she had. O You’re job is NOT to say what Mathilde SHOULD HAVE done. Your job is to say what she DID do and what it SHOWS about her personality. O We’re not writing about the moral or theme of the story for this essay. O Our topic is also NOT whether her life was better before or after losing the necklace.

Things, Stuff= Vague word choice One quote that shows that Mathilde is miserable is when the narrator says, “She had no evening clothes, no jewels, nothing” (28). This shows that Mathilde is unhappy because she does not have nice things. Instead of saying things, say …because she does not have nice-looking evening clothes or jewels. – Bring in the language of the quote

Quotes One quote that shows that Mathilde feels miserable about her life is when the narrator says, “She had no evening clothes, no jewels, nothing” (28). Notice the comma here before the quote begins Notice that you have to introduce your quote with a transition like ‘One Quote that shows…’ AND you have to say who says the quote YOU MUST COPY THE QUOTE DIRECTLY FROM THE BOOK. WATCH YOUR PUNCTUAITON, & SPELLING.

Explaining Quotes Your explanation needs to bring in the language of the quote and relate the quote directly back to the trait you are talking about. – Example: One quote that shows that Mathilde is miserable is when the narrator says, “She had no evening clothes, no jewels, nothing” (28). This quote shows that Mathilde does not have many belongings such as jewels or nice evening clothes. The fact that she wants these items but does not have them and cannot afford them makes her unhappy with her life.

Concluding Paragraphs THE CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH NEVER, EVER, EVER ADDS NEW INFORMATION TO THE PARAGRAPH. If you talked about unhappy and accepting in your thesis and body paragraphs, those are the ONLY traits you discuss in your concluding paragraph. – You may use synonyms for unhappy and accepting if you’ve ALREADY used them in the body paragraphs. Make sure they are ACTUALLY synonyms. Greedy, ungrateful, and selfish ARE NOT necessarily synonyms for unhappy