CRWE | Lesson 21: Self Review - Content and Structure (REVISING)

Over the next three lessons, using a rich collection of constructive responses to your first draft—self evaluation, peer reviews, instructor feedback—you’ll improve the quality of your essay by making revisions to content (ideas, information, argument), organizational structure, and language. This lesson focuses on content and structure.

Early drafts require more than mere tweaking; they almost always need a large-scale overhaul. Competent writers routinely make substantive revisions to the content and structure of their compositions. Through revision, they strive for greater clarity, they bolster support for their claims, tighten their focus, better organize their ideas. They delete elements that, upon reconsideration, prove redundant or unnecessary. They add information and language where needed to shore up their essay’s analysis and persuasive power.

Competent writers thoroughly appraise and re-work their compositions, as a routine part of their writing process.

You’re asked in this lesson to rigorously evaluate the content and structure of your draft, and to make substantive changes as needed to improve its quality. These are changes that impact the meaning and substance of your essay, not corrections to grammar and language mechanics; Lesson 22 focuses on language-level revisions.

Evaluation

Evaluate the following elements of your draft, and revise accordingly:

CLARITY

Since you first assembled your preliminary outline in Lesson 10, you have been working to create a clear, logical line of thinking in your essay from beginning to end. Have you succeeded? At any point is your reasoning or meaning less than precise?

DEVELOPMENT

Development describes how the ideas in your essay are presented and supported. As you know from drafting the body of your essay, it’s not enough to simply state an idea; you must also discuss it in a way that makes your meaning clear and your idea persuasive to your reader. Through development, you reveal the significance of your ideas, the fullness of their meaning, and the depth of your thinking.

ORGANIZATION

Overall Composition

Throughout the "Drafting" section of CRWE, you worked to build your essay around a strong organizational structure. Are the introduction, body, and conclusion doing the work required of them?

Paragraphs

In addition to building a strong organizational structure for you essay overall, each paragraph should also be well organized.

You are fully aware by this point that a well-crafted essay presents a clear, logical line of thinking, with each idea preparing the way for the next. We can think of a paragraph as one of these carefully sequenced ideas, fully developed and supported.

There are many ways to construct a strong paragraph, but a good rule of thumb is to think in terms of three parts:

1) Topic sentence: a strong, clear statement of a single idea—one in the logical sequence of ideas that traces through the essay;

2) Supporting development: some explanation, analysis, evidence, illustration, or example that makes the idea in the topic sentence absolutely clear and convincing to the reader. Deciding what is needed as supporting discussion is a matter of context and good judgment—a skill that improves with experience;

3) Conclusion: a statement of the primary point the reader should take away, often tying back to a previous point or leading logically into the next paragraph.

Again, this structure is only a rule of thumb, and not every paragraph need follow it exactly. By definition rules of thumb don’t always apply, but they serve as helpful guides in many cases.

Consider these paragraphs from the model student essay:

Sample: Revision - Paragraph Structure

REVISION: PARAGRAPH STRUCTURE

Essay: Universal Basic Income

Paragraph 1:

Commentary:

One of the primary worries about UBI is that it would remove the incentive to work, leaving vast numbers of people unwilling to provide for themselves.

According to Clyde Wayne Crews, writing in Forbes magazine, UBI threatens to “normalize paternalism and dependency on government.”

In particular, according to this critique, UBI would dampen entrepreneurship, the very engine of economic productivity that might both counter the impact of technological unemployment and reduce dependency on social support systems.

Topic sentence: a clear statement of the single idea that this paragraph is about.

Support in this case takes the form of a quote from a UBI critic; it offers evidence of the claim made in the topic sentence, clarifying, substantiating, and developing it.

The key point the reader should grasp; it develops out of the topic sentence, but also moves the discussion forward, leading logically into the next paragraph.

Paragraph 2:

Commentary:

This critique reveals a central question about human nature that lies the heart of the UBI debate:

Given a guaranteed income, what would most people do with it? Would they put it to productive use, investing in themselves and their communities? Or would they use it to slack off, content to be unproductive and dependent?

The current and planned experiments may provide some insight into that question.

Topic sentence: a clear statement of the next idea in the logical sequence of ideas that trace through the essay. Note how “this critique” connects this paragraph to the one before.

Supporting discussion that clarifies and develops the question introduced in the topic sentence.

The primary point that follows from the discussion and leads into the next idea in the logical sequence.

As you review your paragraphs and work at revising them, ask:

Does the paragraph have a strong, clear topic sentence?
Is the idea expressed in the paragraph adequately developed with explanation, analysis, evidence, illustration, or example?
Does the paragraph conclude with a clear point for the reader to grasp?
Is the paragraph unified, with all of its sentences in clear relationship to the others?

FLUENCY

Strong paragraphs are unified within themselves, with each sentence bearing a clear relationship to the others in support of a single idea. At the same time, the reader should in every case be able to see clearly how the paragraph as a whole fits into the overall line of thinking, what work it is doing to advance the essay’s logical sequence of ideas.

“Fluency” describes the unbroken line of thinking connecting paragraph to paragraph. Fluency from one paragraph to the next should be apparent to the reader. Consider the following example. The ideas follow logically from one to the next. In constructing each paragraph, the writer makes sure that the reader can readily follow this logical sequence.

Sample: Revision - Fluency

REVISION: FLUENCY

Essay: Women and Video Games

Paragraphs:

Commentary:

The uproar surrounding Sarkeesian’s treatment, along with other high-profile scandals involving hostility towards women, exposed a deep, troubling strain of sexism in the world of video games. In response, the industry made efforts to hire more female developers and raise awareness of sexist depictions of women in games.

Unfortunately, these efforts have not been entirely successful. The number of female developers is still very low relative to males, and people who speak out against sexist games still encounter threats and hostility. Perhaps most troubling, plenty of video games still perpetuate negative stereotypes of women and even glorify violence against them.

The persistence of the problem of sexism in video games begs the question of what more should be done. Given the widespread popularity and influence of video games, this is an important question to answer if we are serious about advancing equality and improving safety and respect for women.

The highlighted text shows how each paragraph is connected to the one that follows. Together, they form a logical sequence of ideas:

The industry made efforts to address sexism;
Those efforts have not been successful;
Their failure raises a new question: what more should be done?

The writer achieves fluency by constructing paragraphs around each idea in the logical sequence of ideas that runs through her essay. At each point, she makes clear to her reader how the ideas are connected.

As you revise for fluency, ask the following of each paragraph:

Is it clear how the paragraph serves in the essay’s overall line of thinking?
Does each paragraph lead logically into the next?

Below is a worksheet for evaluating your draft. The “Universal Basic Income” essay serves as a model; the original and revised drafts are presented side-by-side, so that you can see how our model student writer changed her essay in response to her self evaluation.

Example Box: Lesson 21 Writing Assignment - Self Review - Content and Structure
EXAMPLE Lesson 21: Writing Assignment - Self Review - Content and Structure *Essay:* Universal Basic Income 1) Is the essay meeting the requirements of the task? Not entirely. My draft is well over 1400 words long. The task is to produce an essay 800-1200 words. Thus, I need to cut more than 200 words from the essay. 2) *Is it satisfying the needs and expectations of its audience?* My audiences expect a clearly written, logical argument that draws support from credible sources. I believe my draft is meeting those expectation. 3) *Is it persuasive, making effective use of ethos, logos, and pathos?* Yes, I now have some detailed knowledge of the topic and an understanding of the conversation around it. Knowledge based on both my research and personal experience are reflected in my draft. I use my parents as an example, which contributes both ethos and pathos to the persuasive impact of my essay. 4) *Are the introduction, body, and conclusion doing the work required of them? Are the paragraphs well organized and ideas fully developed?* For the most part, yes. However, I feel the claims supporting my position should be developed a bit more. They need to draw more fully on my sources. Also, I should make clearer how each claim directly supports my position. Thus, I need to add language to my supporting argument, while also cutting elements from elsewhere in the essay to meet the page-length requirement. This will be a challenge. 5) *Does the essay exhibit a clear, focused, logical line of thinking from beginning to end? Does it read fluidly from paragraph to paragraph?* Yes, though I think some information in the draft is not absolutely essential to the argument, and so can be cut.

In response to this evaluation, the student trims her draft from more than 1400 words to under 1200. In addition, she re-works her argument, developing her claims, adding support from her sources, and more clearly tying her claims back to her position. As a result, not only does she satisfy the task requirements, but her revisions tighten the focus of her essay and improve its persuasive power.

Note that the writer is not yet citing her sources. She will add citations in Lesson 22.

Example Box: Revision in Response to Self Review

EXAMPLE

Revision in Response to Self Review

Essay: Universal Basic Income

First Draft

Revised Draft

Introduction

The idea of a society providing all of its members with a guaranteed income to meet their basic needs is not new but has gained increasing consideration in recent years. Business and technology leaders are exploring universal basic income (UBI) as a hedge against predicted mass unemployment resulting from the automation of jobs. At the same time, reformers on both the right and left are interested in UBI as a possible alternative to traditional welfare programs.

Experiments with UBI are currently underway around the world, from Kenya and India to Canada and California. The findings from these experiments could be world-changing. If UBI turns out to be viable, it could cushion the impact of the social and economic upheaval that many experts believe is all but inevitable for many millions of people.

The success or failure of UBI hinges on a question about human nature: Would the security and freedom resulting from a guaranteed income make people more inclined to create and be productive, or would it result in massive idleness and dependency?

The current experiments with UBI are still a long way from providing answers. Until they do, we should be training and equipping more people to start their own businesses. Whether or not UBI succeeds, entrepreneurship offers at least a partial, perhaps a substantial, solution to the problems UBI is aimed at addressing.

Body

Providing everyone with a guaranteed income is an idea with a long history in the U.S. Thinkers from Thomas Paine to Martin Luther King Jr. to free-market economist Milton Friedman have promoted the idea in one form or another. To-date it has not taken hold, but that might be changing. Leaders at the top of U.S. business and technology—Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and others—believe UBI might be necessary in coming decades. As artificial intelligence and robotics improve, not only will manufacturing jobs be taken over by machines, but also a host of white-collar occupations in law, medicine, finance, transportation, and other sectors. With a scarcity of jobs available for humans, UBI proponents believe that society eventually will have no choice but to subsidize its citizens. As a way to begin testing how such a program might work, business leaders in Silicon Valley are planning an experiment that will give 100 residents of Stockton, California, $500 a month for 18 months.

UBI is also attracting attention from people who want to reform existing programs designed to relieve the effects of poverty and inequality. A three-year pilot study in Ontario, Canada, is providing 4000 people with $17,000 CAD per year. Reformers on both the right and left are interested to see whether UBI can not only relieve poverty but also save administrative costs and reduce welfare bureaucracies. Other UBI experiments are underway, or under discussion, in Kenya, India, the Netherlands, Italy, and Hawaii.

For all its potential promise, UBI also has its critics. Some economists believe that it would simply be too expensive to sustain at a nationwide scale. Others fear that UBI, as a replacement for existing social support programs, would leave too many people behind. Many ill, disabled, and elderly people, for example, need targeted programs to help them manage their daily lives or receive specialized care; a check by itself would not meet their needs.

One of the primary worries about UBI is that it would remove the incentive to work, leaving vast numbers of people unwilling and unable to provide for themselves. According to Clyde Wayne Crews, writing in Forbes magazine, UBI threatens to “normalize paternalism and dependency on government.” In particular, according to this critique, UBI would dampen entrepreneurship, the very engine of economic productivity that might both counter the impact of technological unemployment and reduce dependency on social support systems.

This critique reveals a central question about human nature that lies the heart of the UBI debate: given a guaranteed income, what would most people do with it? Would they put it to productive use, investing in themselves and their communities? Or would they use it to slack off, content to be unproductive and dependent? The current and planned experiments may provide some insight into that question.

Whatever the UBI experiments reveal about the idea’s viability, we should be taking measures now to promote more entrepreneurship. Though I disagree with his rationale, I believe Crews is right to lift up the ability of people to innovate and start new business ventures as at least a partial solution to both of the problems UBI is aimed at.

If UBI does not turn out to be a workable policy, then encouraging entrepreneurship still seems a sensible response to an impending unemployment crisis. Studies show that an increase in entrepreneurship can reduce unemployment, as startups not only provide an income for their founders but also create new jobs for others.

On the other hand, if experiments show that UBI is indeed worth implementing, then programs promoting entrepreneurship will help more people find creative and productive ways to make use of their newfound time and resources. The Canadian experiment, at least initially, suggests that starting a new business is high on the list of things people would try if they had the opportunity.

Crews and others who fear that UBI would dampen the entrepreneurial spirit doubt that people with a guaranteed income would be motivated to work. As Crews writes, “need rather than comfort drives and underlies human action and entrepreneurship.” But on what basis can this be said to be true? It seems to me more likely that people become entrepreneurs not because they have no other option, but because they are driven by an inner desire to create, to succeed, and to be independent.

That certainly was the case with my own parents. They started a financial planning service more than two decades ago, when they were first married. They have run it successfully ever since, employing at times up to ten other people. Both my mother and father could have taken jobs with other companies when they got out of school, but they instead decided to risk running their own business so that they could control their own economic fate and enjoy the satisfaction of creating something of their own. Contrary to Crews’s pessimistic view of human nature, entrepreneurs such as my parents start businesses not because they have no other options, but because they are motivated by a personal desire for independence and success. This suggests that a guaranteed income, by boosting opportunities for ambitious and independent people, may well lead to more rather than less economic initiative and innovation.

Entrepreneurial success is not a given; people starting their own businesses need time, know-how, and at least some resources. Programs boosting opportunities for success might focus on education and training, seed money, mentoring, and networking. Many people with a guaranteed income at their disposal would welcome help in starting and managing new ventures. No doubt many people faced with the prospect of a jobless future likewise would embrace assistance in building a business of their own.

Conclusion

If it is true that workers today face a future that may provide neither a reliable social safety net, nor dependable employment opportunities, then there is little wonder that people are taking a radical idea such as universal basic income seriously enough to invest in long-term experiments. Before a crisis truly hits, they hope that perhaps these experiments will help answer the long-standing question of whether the economic well-being and freedom of individuals is better served by government assistance, or by its absence.

Perhaps in the case of UBI this question pitting individual initiative against government assistance need not be so starkly drawn. That is, there is no reason yet at least to rule out a policy that both subsidizes income and promotes activities that would put that subsidy to productive uses, including helping individuals start new businesses that can both relieve the impact of mass unemployment and reduce dependency on social supports.

The success of such a policy hinges on a fundamental question of human behavior: freed from the necessity of providing for their basic needs, what will most people do? Build something new? Improve their lives and communities? Or settle into idleness and dependency? At least some UBI proponents are betting that most people will do something positive with their freed-up time and resources. With hardworking, self-starting parents like mine, I share their optimism.

But even if extended trials show that UBI has no net positive impact on people’s lives, that only reinforces the necessity of promoting an entrepreneurial spirit now, in as many individuals as possible. With neither social supports nor employment prospects to rely on, we will have no choice but to try and make a living on our own. If that’s the future, then we had better start preparing ourselves now.

Introduction

The idea of a society providing all of its members with a guaranteed income has gained increasing consideration in recent years. Business and technology leaders are exploring universal basic income (UBI) as a hedge against predicted mass unemployment resulting from the automation of jobs. At the same time, reformers on both the right and left are interested in UBI as a possible alternative to traditional welfare programs.

Experiments with UBI are currently underway around the world, from Kenya and India to Canada and California. The findings from these experiments could be world-changing: If UBI turns out to be viable, it could cushion the impact of future social and economic upheaval for many millions of people.

The success or failure of UBI is tied to a question about human nature: Would the security and freedom resulting from a guaranteed income make people more inclined to create and be productive, or would it result in massive idleness and dependency?

Whatever the answer to that question turns out to be, I argue that we should be training and equipping more people now to start their own businesses. Whether or not UBI succeeds, entrepreneurship offers at least a partial, perhaps a substantial, solution to the impending problems UBI is aimed at addressing.

Body

Leaders at the top of U.S. business and technology—Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and others—believe UBI might be unavoidable in coming decades. As artificial intelligence and robotics improve, not only will manufacturing jobs be taken over by machines, but also a host of white-collar occupations in law, medicine, finance, transportation, and other sectors. With a scarcity of jobs available for humans, UBI proponents believe that society eventually will have no choice but to subsidize its citizens. As a way to begin testing how such a program might work, business leaders in Silicon Valley are already conducting limited experiments with UBI in Stockton and Oakland, California.

UBI is also attracting attention from people who want to reform existing programs designed to relieve the effects of poverty and inequality. A three-year pilot study in Ontario, Canada, is providing 4000 people with $17,000 CAD per year. Reformers on both the right and left are interested to see whether UBI can not only relieve poverty but also save administrative costs and reduce welfare bureaucracies. Other UBI experiments are underway, or under consideration, in Kenya, India, the Netherlands, Italy, and Hawaii.

One of the primary worries about UBI is that it would remove the incentive to work, leaving vast numbers of people unwilling to provide for themselves. According to Clyde Wayne Crews, writing in Forbes magazine, UBI threatens to “normalize paternalism and dependency on government.” In particular, according to this critique, UBI would dampen entrepreneurship, the very engine of economic productivity that might both counter the impact of technological unemployment and reduce dependency on social support systems.

This critique reveals a central question about human nature that lies the heart of the UBI debate: Given a guaranteed income, what would most people do with it? Would they put it to productive use, investing in themselves and their communities? Or would they use it to slack off, content to be unproductive and dependent? The current and planned experiments may provide some insight into that question.

Whatever the experiments reveal, however, we should be taking measures now to promote more entrepreneurship. Though I disagree with his rationale, I believe Crews is right to lift up the ability of people to innovate and start new business ventures as at least a partial solution to both of the problems UBI is aimed at.

If UBI does not turn out to be a workable policy, then encouraging entrepreneurship still seems a sensible response to an impending unemployment crisis. Studies show that an increase in entrepreneurship can reduce unemployment, as startups not only provide an income for their founders but also create new jobs for others. Indeed, according to research, “higher levels of entrepreneurial activity significantly lower subsequent unemployment levels,” which means that encouraging entrepreneurship now may help preempt the expected future downturn in job opportunities.

On the other hand, if experiments show that UBI is indeed worth implementing, then programs promoting entrepreneurship will help more people find creative and productive ways to make use of their freed-up time and resources. Researchers backing the Canadian experiment include starting new businesses on the list of new ventures UBI recipients are likely to try. Other UBI proponents believe providing for basic needs will spur innovation, including innovative new businesses that can generate jobs and economic growth.

Crews and others who fear that UBI would dampen the entrepreneurial spirit doubt that people with a guaranteed income would be motivated to work. As Crews writes, “need rather than comfort drives and underlies human action and entrepreneurship.” But this view is not borne out by evidence. According to an international group of researchers, while some entrepreneurial activity arises from people who have no other employment options, far more comes from people who do.

The latter certainly was the case with my own parents. They started a financial planning service more than two decades ago, and have run it successfully ever since, employing at times up to ten other people. Both my mother and father could have taken jobs with other companies when they got out of school, but they instead decided to risk running their own business so that they could control their own economic fate. By boosting opportunities for ambitious and independent people such as my parents, UBI may well lead to more rather than less economic initiative and innovation.

Entrepreneurial success is not a given; people starting their own businesses need time, know-how, and at least some resources. Programs promoting entrepreneurship might focus on education and training, seed money, mentoring, and networking. Many people with a guaranteed income at their disposal would welcome help in starting and managing new ventures. No doubt many people faced with the prospect of a jobless future likewise would embrace assistance in building a business of their own.

Conclusion

If it is true that workers today face a future that may provide neither a reliable social safety net nor dependable employment opportunities, then there is little wonder that people are taking a radical idea such as universal basic income seriously enough to invest in long-term experiments. Before a crisis truly hits, they hope that perhaps these experiments will help answer the long-standing question of whether the economic well-being and freedom of individuals is better served by government assistance, or by its absence.

Perhaps in the case of UBI this question pitting individual initiative against government assistance need not be so starkly drawn. There is no reason yet, at least, to rule out a policy that both subsidizes income and promotes activities that would put that subsidy to productive uses, including helping individuals start new businesses that can both relieve the impact of mass unemployment and reduce dependency on social supports.

Word count: 1470

Word count: 1155

Use the worksheet linked in the assignment below to evaluate your draft, then revise accordingly.

Lesson 21: Writing Assignment - Self Review - Content and Structure

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