Assignment: Final Essay Revision and Reflection Now that you have revised your essay, completed a peer review activity, and constructed a rationale for your writing choices, it is time for the final

Week 6 Final Draft Editing and Reflection Worksheet

In this worksheet, you will make the final edits to your Career Narrative Essay and reflect on the process.

Instructions: This essay should be written in the first-person, using “I, me, my” to filter the career narrative through your perceptions. First-person is a great point of view to write in for reflection; however, there are some stylistic complications that you should address when you edit.

Note: Open your draft of the Career Narrative Essay from Week 4.

Complete the activities below:

• Highlight every “I” pronoun in your essay, and then look for clusters where you start multiple sentences in a row with “I.”

• Combine and/or rewrite sentences in places where you overuse “I.”

• In addition, underline any words or phrases that are overused, and cut and/or revise accordingly.

Here is an example:

Original sentences:
I have extensive experience, and I love working with homeless veterans. I have experience working in mental health outreach, and my experience working in homeless communities makes me proud.

Revised sentence:
I worked with homeless veterans and did mental health outreach in Chicago.

Notice the revised sentence references the same ideas in the original sentences but doesn’t repeat personal pronouns or the word “experience.”

After you have analyzed your essay for overuse of pronouns and repeated words/phrases and made changes accordingly...

Read through your essay again, reflect on how it has changed, and then answer the questions directly below.

In at least one paragraph (5-7 sentences), reflect on your use of I, other personal pronouns, and repetitive language. What did you learn and how did your essay change? How can you apply what you have learned to other writing projects in the future?

Instructions: In this essay, you move the reader through time, focusing on your past, present, and future skills, goals, and accomplishments. When your essay shifts tenses, it needs to be clear for your reader. Not only do transitions and transitional phrases connect ideas in your essay, they can also move the reader through time to make your tense shifts more effective and clearer.

Complete the activities below:

• Read your essay for changes in tense. When you move from talking about the past to the present or future, are those changes clear?
  

• Find all of the places where you shift between the past, the present, and the future. Hint: Look at the verbs (action words). They will help you figure out where you are in time.
  

• Where can you add transitions and transitional phrases to help the reader follow you through time? Click the link below to read about transitions:
  https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/paragraphs/transitions

• Edit your entire essay for transition use. Add, cut, change passages where you use transitions and transitional phrases.

Identify one specific change or idea that came from analyzing your essay for transition use, and reflect on how you can use this editing strategy in your future writing projects.

Instructions: Tone of voice is the way your writing sounds in a reader’s head. It is affected by sentence structure, word choice, repetition, and the use of punctuation, among other factors. A consistent and compelling tone of voice will keep a reader engaged in your Career Narrative Essay. The voice you develop should establish you as a unique and marketable professional to a potential employer.
Complete the activities below:

• Read the introduction and conclusion sections out loud. You can find and fix any errors or awkward writing as you do this. Do they have a consistent, first person tone of voice? Does the writing/narration sound conversational, engaging, and does it flow well? Analyze the tone of voice in those two paragraphs, and make minor changes to word choice, phrasing, and punctuation as needed. Avoid repeating words, phrases, and certain punctuation marks, like exclamation points and question marks.
  

• Then, analyze the body paragraphs for tone of voice. Read out loud and make adjustments as you go. Change words and phrases, edit passages that sound different from the rest of the essay, and adjust punctuation marks as needed.
  

• Find all the places in your essay where you use evidence (quotes or summaries). Read these areas aloud. Where you talk about evidence likely sound more scholarly than the rest of your essay where you use a conversational tone. This is to be expected. You can easily connect these areas with the rest of your ideas by using transitional words to make the tone of voice sound more consistent.

Write at least one paragraph (5-7 sentences) reflecting on how the tone of voice in your essay has changed over the past weeks. Give at least one concrete example of a substantial change you made in this revision to achieve a more effective tone of voice. Be specific. Explain how your awareness of tone will affect your approach in future writing projects.

Instructions: At this stage, you have spent so much time with your draft that it is hard to be objective. Oftentimes, our eyes see what we intend to write, not what we have actually written. Here are the final steps for finding any hidden, lingering errors that have escaped notice so far in the writing process:

• Read your essay aloud and make picky changes as you go.
  

• Use Grammarly and/or your spell/grammar checker to find and fix errors:
  https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/grammarly

• Then read the essay aloud one final time to make sure spell check did not change typos to words you did not mean.

Write at least one paragraph (5-7 sentences) detailing the final changes you made to your essay. Were they big or small, and why did you notice them right at the end of the process?