How to approach a rewrite.

Rewrites often depend on the nature of the feedback. If you’re having trouble understanding what your grader wants, set up an appointment with your grader. If that doesn’t work, make an appointment to go to your school’s writing center. If you still aren’t getting anywhere, feel free to ask us for help with your rewrite.

The first thing to do is to realize that you don’t need to sweat the rewrite. You’ve already done the research and you’re comfortable with the topic. If you aren’t comfortable with the topic, begin by rereading the sources you used in the paper, maybe even taking a few notes on the subject or relevant facts before you begin your rewrite.

Once you’ve reinforced your research, you are ready to begin reading your paper through. Keep your eyes out not just for smoothing out and improving sentences, and make sure that your paragraphs are focused on single subjects. As you go along, you should be able to see how to make the changes needed, improving your sentences, paragraphs, and the overall organization of the paper itself.

After you have gone through the paper and made the improvements, take another look at the grader’s comments and make sure that you have addressed all of them. Read the comments aloud and even rewrite or rephrase the comments, before giving your paper another reading and making a last set of changes.

It’s important to think about readability, quality of information, and quality of organization, when writing. Often times, the best way to improve your writing grades is to improve your writing style so that your papers are a pleasure to read, even if the research is light or imperfect. Just like you probably prefer reading that is pleasurable, so does your grader.