Midterm Writing Assignment # 4 (Take-Home)

Attached (and also e-mailed to you) you will find the student essay “Phytochemicals.” It is a response to the assignment in P&K, p. 101, # 4 (the topic you used for oral presentation #1). It was written for members of a WRIT 566 class—so, like you, people knowledgeable about science but not necessarily familiar with this kind of information.

As you will see after you read this essay, the student writer needs to do some revising. Your job in the midterm essay is to do that revising for him. You should revise this essay to turn in to me in class on March 23 in a typed form. It is not necessary to submit this to turnitin.com. There are no extensions on this assignment.

Your revision should

1.   Create an effective introduction using what you have learned from P&K. (Hint: Review the assignment to get you started thinking about the writer’s original purpose.)

2.   Organize the body of the essay using the suggestions from P&K chs. 3. 6 and 4.6.

3.   Consider whether the subheadings are effectively used. If not, revise them as suggested in P&K pp. 51-53.

4.   Develop an appropriate conclusion using the suggestions from P&K ch. 3.

5.   Cut any lard you think can be removed by using the strategies Dr. Rankin reviewed with you.

6.   Revise the remnants to improve its coherence and cohesion using strategies you adapt from the Williams Style handout.

7.   Correct any obvious errors you find in the original, including inappropriate tense, execution errors, and citation errors.

8.   If you choose to do so, insert appropriate graphics to illustrate key points.

      9.   Add no further research on the subject of phytochemicals; there is plenty of content here to work with. However, if you choose to add, combine, or cut some sentences for the sake of rhetorical presentation (e.g. in the intro or conclusion, etc.), you may do so.

Please remember that you are turning in one essay that does these nine things—not nine separate answers to each separate question. You may use your books, handouts, and handbooks to revise this essay. You may not collaborate, ask anyone else for advice, or use the Writing Center, since this is a test. Consider this your first big peer review of the semester; good luck!

One suggestion: Download the original document to your disk or hard drive twice with different names—something like ‘phyto1' and ‘phyto2’. That way, if you have technology issues, you should still have a clean original copy to work with. Please double-space your final copy.