Matt Fuller Revision Reflection English 250H McGough December 18, 2013 Reflection of Argument Revision For the

e revision section of the course, I chose to display the causal argument paper that I wrote about violence and video games. For this piece, we were told to revise the paper as if it was going to be read by an older middle school student; perhaps a 13 or 14-year old. This was obviously quite a shock to me and called for some serious revising. I felt that the adaptation required for this assignment made it the best example to show for the fulfillment of the revision requirement. With this new audience of middle school students, I really had to think about what kind of information would appeal to them. To do this, I added in a lot more wording that defended video games themselves, rather than an argument that supported environmental causes of violence. This would certainly be more likely to appeal to average children; many of them enjoy video games and would want to read an article defending them. In addition to the defense of video games, I also added a visual element that would likely get an emotional reaction from a child. I went with a picture that shows children crying out in terror as they are being led away from the shooting at Sandy Hook. The horror and anguish displayed in the image would almost certainly invoke similar feelings in the intended readers. Finally, I added a title that most middle school students would likely support: Dont Blame Video Games! Given that the paper was originally written to be read by a college-level reader, I was forced to delete a lot of the more graphic descriptions that would have invoked an emotional response from an older reader. In my rough draft, I had intended to discuss that fact that children were mercilessly gunned down in their classrooms; this seemed a bit much for a paper to be read by middle school students. I also was forced to delete some of the more advanced vocabulary; words such as inevitable were replaced with unavoidable. This is not too much of a reduction in vocabulary, but just enough to make it more readable for a younger audience. Also removed was some of the more technical argumentative content regarding the evidence supporting environmental causes of violence. This was also to add the readability for an average middle school student. To my surprise, there were considerable parts of the argument that did not require much - if any change at all. First and foremost, my selected topic turned out to be spot-on for the middle school audience. Many young teens enjoy playing video games, some of them violent, and to see these games formally defended in a paper would likely pique their interests and encourage them to

read on. I simply re-worded my argument slightly to talk more about the absence of evidence against video games in order keep the paper interesting and readable. In addition, I was able to keep much of the mid-level vocab, with words such as brutal and undocumented. I believed this to be appropriate because, as these children enter their early teens, they will be asked to comprehend slightly more difficult writing than they may be used to. This would be one of those more challenging pieces that are used to help develop a childs reading ability. The reader change for this piece really opened my eyes as to how dramatically the intended audience can effect the composition of writing. I found that, while my overall style remained intact, I had to simplify some of my points and vocabulary. This was an uncomfortable process, but it will certainly help in the future when I have to write different pieces for different audiences, whether it be a lab report for a professor, or a cover letter for an employer. Whom the audience consists of is a vital factor of how one composes a piece of writing.