Please review the Conference Preparation Form, complete it, and take it to your conference. Review the information below to understand the point of a group conference so that you can complete the form appropriately.
You will have three small group conferences with the lecturer over the course of the semester. The better prepared you are for your conference the more you will get out of it, wherefore the purpose of this guide is to help you prepare as well as possible for sitting down in a small group with the lecturer and a few of your classmates, to look closely at your work and theirs. While the instructor gives you assignments, remember that you own your work and you share ownership of the conversation about your work. When you share your work with others in a small group conference you can co-direct the discussion by articulating questions you want to ask about your work. Do your best to have a well-organized paper and well-developed ideas ahead of the conference, then use the conference to get feedback on those two major areas – organization and ideas – for the purpose of improving them before the second draft is due.
We will approach revision in a top-down manner by addressing global issues such as thesis, argumentation, and organization first. Minor or local issues such as grammar and mechanics will be addressed later. In preparation for the group conference formulate questions that focus on the content and organization of your draft. Here are some suggestions about how you can prepare so as to get the most out of the group conference:
- Begin by evaluating how your argument addresses your rhetorical situation—that is, the specific context surrounding your writing, including the audience, exigence, and constraints. Does your writing do everything you are asked to do in the assignment instructions?
- Analyze your thesis statement for clarity.
- Evaluate the global organization of your text by writing a reverse outline. Unlike traditional outlines, which are written before drafting, reverse outlines reflect the content of written drafts. In a separate document or in your text’s margins, record the main idea of each paragraph. Then, consider whether the order of your ideas is logical. This method also will help you identify ideas that are out of place or digressive.
- Make note of things you’re not sure about and identify parts of your draft you think are weaker than others or need to be improved.
- Try to figure out what might be making some parts of your draft less good than other parts
Prior to the conference make sure you accepted or rejected all suggestions and resolved all comments in your draft.
In the conference, take lots of notes. After the group conference make any changes to your draft that you consider appropriate.
– Adapted from Lumen, English Composition 1, “Writing Process: Revising,” accessed August 9, 2018 text-higher-order-concerns