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Monday, March 14, 2011

Rewrites

I gave my undergraduate class the opportunity to rewrite their papers, but I was surprised when most of them merely corrected a few (but no all) of the things I had called their attention to. Whole sentences made it unchanged into the new version, even sentences that I had marked with a question mark. One student did not even get a better grade on the rewrite.

I guess I have to be explicit: when you rewrite a paper, you should make changes to every paragraph if not every sentence.

The same principle applies to a revise and resubmit. You should go beyond what the referee told you to do and use the opportunity to make the article better in other respects too.

4 comments:

Clarissa said...

"You should go beyond what the referee told you to do and use the opportunity to make the article better in other respects too."

-I wish I'd read this advice three days ago. . .

Well, you live, you learn.

Andrew Shields said...

Same problem here! Rewriting is seen as correcting the things I corrected while ignoring the comments I make.

Anonymous said...

(did a longer blurb on this at my own site, but...)

I'm curious--how did they react after the fact? Will you get the chance to offer this again and remind them of this time, and see if they do better at the rewrite next go-round? (And yeah--I think you really DO have to be explicit. They might just not know. Which doesn't say much for what they've learned prior to getting into your classroom...at least once out they hopefully will remember?)
--J

Jonathan said...

They realized that they probably should have known. There will be a rewrite of paper 2 so they have a chance to redeem themselves.