After you’ve completed your essay, check over your content.  Aside from grammar, spelling, and mechanics, you want to pay attention to the accuracy and the relevancy of the information you included.

Consider these questions as you review your work:

  • Does the information in your composition accurately reflect what the original sources said?
  • Are there any inaccuracies?
  • Have I ‘put words into the author’s mouth’ that the author didn’t actually say?
  • Does the information in your composition address your assignment prompt or research question?
  • Did you include any irrelevant information?

Example of Inaccurate Information

Suppose I included this information in my composition  about the need to protect rainforests:

Rainforests are at the greatest risk in West Africa, Central America, and South-East Asia because the number of human inhabitants has been doubling every 20 years.

The original source worded it this way:

“The most endangered rainforests are those in West Africa, where human populations are doubling every 20 years, and in Central American and South-East Asia.”  -From the “Tropical Rainforests” webpage on WWF Global.

Although I made a honest attempt at paraphrasing this information, my version doesn’t actually match what the author said in the original article.  According to the original article, it’s only in West Africa that the human population is doubling.  We don’t know what the population growth looks like in Central America and South-East Asia (at least not from this article) because the author didn’t actually say.

Example of Irrelevant Information

Now let’s say I included this information in my composition from the Bangladesh passage.

According to Gillett (2012), flooding in Bangladesh covers an average 30% of the land each year.

This is accurate information, but it’s irrelevant to the topic and purpose of our composition.  We aren’t interested in the normal flooding patterns of Bangladesh. In fact, the article said that this type of monsoon flooding is normal and important for agriculture.  What we are interested in is the abnormal flooding that is described later in the text, because this unusual flooding is attributed to deforestation.  I need to remove the irrelevant piece of information, because it does nothing to serve the purpose of the composition.

You Try

Make any necessary corrections or revisions, and when you’re finished, you can see an example of a completed essay.

[embeddoc url=”https://beckymenendez.edublogs.org/files/2016/11/RainforestEssay-2k0rlkb.docx” download=”all” viewer=”microsoft”]

 

When you’re ready, proceed to the assessment task by clicking the button below.

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