Webinar Transcripts:

Revising & Self-Editing a Doctoral Capstone

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Presented December 11, 2018

Last updated 2/1/2019

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Housekeeping 

• Recording
  • Webinar is being recorded and will be available online a day or two from now.
• Interact
  • Polls, files, and links are interactive. 
• Q&A
  • Now:Use the Q&A box.
  • Later:Send to editor@mail.waldenu.edu
• Help
  • Choose “Help” in the upper right-hand corner of the webinar room

Audio: Beth: All right well, hello everyone, and thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Beth Nastachowski. And I'm just going to get us started by going over a couple of quick housekeeping notes before I hand this session over to our presenter today, Carey. 

So, a couple of quick things here, the first is, I that have started the recording of this session, so if you have to leave for any reason or you’d like to come back and review this session, you are more than welcome to do so. We’ll be posting this recording in our webinar recordings archive and that’s available anytime. I’d also like to take a moment here to remind everyone that we record all of the webinars in the writing center, so if you ever see a webinar that’s being presented live and you can’t attend at that time, please feel free to access the recordings archive it will be available there and we always have all of the sessions listed there as well. So, if you’re ever looking for help on a particular writing, APA or grammar topic, that's a great place to go.

I also wanted to note that there are lots of ways for you to interact both with Carey our presenter as well as Sam one of our facilitators and your fellow Walden students. I know Carey has a poll, a couple of polls and some chats that she’ll be using throughout the session to engage you with. And there are also links throughout these slides to further resources and information. So, feel free to click those links they are live right now during this session. And they’ll open up on a new tab in your browser. You can take a look at them during this session or afterwards. 

Additionally, it's always helpful to download the slides, and that way you have access to the examples as well as the links that are throughout them as well. And those files are available in the files for download section at the bottom, right corner of your screen. If you take a look at that, the slides are listed there, along with a number of other handouts. So, please feel free to download all of those and save them to your computer so you can take a look at them during the session or later. If you aren't able to download them now during the session, you always can go back to the recording and download them there, as well. They are also available there as well via the recordings.

We also have a Q&A box on the right side of the screen, and so we welcome your questions or comments throughout the session. We want to make sure that we clarify anything that might be confusing to you and we get your questions answered. Sam and myself will be monitoring that, so we welcome those questions and comments throughout the session. And then we will also be sure to let Carey know if there are questions that would be helpful for her to address out loud to the entire group. 

Whoever, also note that at the end of the session, if we can't get to all the questions -- sometimes there's a big rush at the end or if you think of a question after the session, please feel free to email us at editor@mail.waldenu.eduand the editors would be happy to take your question there, as well. 

 

And then finally if you have any technical questions or issues, please feel free to let me know in that Q&A box, I have a couple tips and tricks I can give you. But there's also the Help button at the top right-hand corner, as well. And that’s a great place to go if you have any significant technical issues with the webinar recording here.

 

Visual:Slide changes to the title of the webinar, “Revising and Self-Editing a Doctoral Capstone” and the speaker’s name and information: Carey Little Brown, Dissertation Editor Office of Academic Editing, Walden Writing Center

Audio:All right and so with that, then, Carey, I will hand it over to you.

Carey:Thanks, Beth. Hi, I’m Carey Little Brown, and I am one of the Dissertation Editors in what is now called the Office of Academic Editing in the Walden Writing Center. And the group that I’m in is responsible chiefly for the Form and Style review, which most of you have probably heard something about. That happens near the end of the capstone approval process, after the final URR review and before the oral presentation. During that process, we look at and actually do some editing in and make suggested changes to every document, spending between 6 and 10 hours with each document. 

So, this presentation on revising and self-editing the doctoral capstone is very close to my heart and I think, too, the hearts of those on my team, because this is very much central to the work that I do. And so, I'm excited about sharing some techniques that we've developed for revising and proofreading that I know I apply, actually, when working with my own academic writing, as well in my work as the Form and Style editor. I hope that will be useful to you.

As Beth mentioned, we are going to be having some polls and chats throughout this presentation so I can get a little more information about your experiences with revising and editing in doctoral writing.

 

Visual:Slide changes to the following: Learning Outcomes: 

After this webinar, you should be able to …

 

•      Understand how to prioritize revision and proofreading tasks when preparing a doctoral capstone manuscript

•      Identify good revision practices when working with a longer document, over a long period of time, with multiple rounds of feedback

•      Develop skills for proofreading and polishing a manuscript for grammar, style, and scholarly writing expectations

•      Access support resources for revising and self-editing doctoral capstone documents

Audio: So, there are four primary things that we are going to do in this session. Ideally, after this webinar is over, you should be able to do the following: understand how to prioritize revision and proofreading tasks when you're preparing your doctoral capstone, how to think about kind of segmenting and ordering those tasks. That's actually a big part of this presentation, is thinking about how to approach that in terms of strategy. And, we're going to talk about revision, generally, after outlining what I would propose are the differences between revision and proofreading. We will talk about revision, then, and what are some good strategies to use when you're working with a longer document like a capstone over a much longer period of time then you may have worked on any document previously, where you are receiving multiple rounds of feedback from multiple people who may have their own focuses and agendas that you have to reconcile in all of your revisions.

Then, we're going to talk about the more granular proofreading tasks and what’s involved in polishing that manuscript to produce that really professional final study. And then at the end of the presentation, I'll be introducing a variety of resources that we offer through the Writing Center and other centers at Walden that can be especially helpful to you as you're revising and editing, proofreading your work.

As Beth mentioned, please feel free to ask questions in the Q&A box. I will let Sam know, too, feel free to interrupt me at any point if there is any need for clarification or expansion on anything that we're talking about.

 

Visual:Slide changes to the following: Revising and Proofreading at the Capstone Writing Stage

            Revising

·      Addresses global or “big picture” concerns of a draft (organization, focus, content/idea development, and flow/cohesion)

·      Should be done first, as this could change, add, or eliminate smaller, local-level concerns

            Proofreading

·      Addresses local or “small picture” concerns of a draft (grammar, citations and references, sentence construction, and word choice)

•      Should be done as the final step before submitting

Audio:Okay, as I mentioned on the last slide, one of the ideas in this presentation is that there is a useful distinction that can be made between revising as a task and proofreading as a task. And this slide gets to the heart of that. 

So, the idea behind revising in this model is that revising is more of a global or big picture task. When you’re revising, you're looking at issues of content and meaning and flow and overall kind of macro structure of the argument. And again, I think of revision as being a very content and meaning driven kind of process. So, at that point, you're looking at, when you're revising the draft, you're looking at organization, idea development, clarity and coherence, the flow from one idea to the next within paragraphs and between paragraphs, that kind of thing.

We tend to say, among the form and style editors we're advising students at earlier stage of the process in some of the other capacities that we work that that revising should be approached first, because as you’re moving that content around and changing that content in the micro, structural, you are making broader changes that could end up undoing that more granular level polishing. So, it tends to be most productive to deal with the broad revision tasks, first. And that can be a fairly lengthy stage of the writing and revision project.

And then in contrast, proofreading, then, is what you might think of as copyediting or, we often use the term proofreading to talk about this. It’s addressing more of that granular, local, small picture issues in the draft. Are you following APA rules for your citations and references, and for different kinds of formal things like the use of numbers, that kind of thing? Are your, are all of your verbs presented correctly, have all of your tenses correct? Are you using full and complete sentences? Are you choosing the best words to convey the individual ideas? Proofreading tends to work more at that word or sentence level. Revision works more at the kind of paragraph, chapter and argument kind of level.

So, proofreading is that final kind of pass or number of passes that you will do in your work before you submit that very final draft. Although of course, there are going to be proofreading stages throughout the capstone process, too, as you're completing and submitting your best versions of various components of the work to the people who are reading them.

 

Visual:Slide changes to the following: Revising and Proofreading at the Capstone Writing Stage

You will not be able to address everything at once! Part of self-editing is learning to prioritizeand plan forchanges to your document.

•      Decide on a handful of things to focus on in each round of revision, moving from “big picture” to “small picture” concerns

•      Divide the draft into pieces, revising in shorter sections first

Audio: Now, one thing to keep in mind as you're going about what can be, sometimes, a kind of overwhelming feeling process of approaching the self-editing of your own work throughout writing the capstone is that it’s usually, I would say, certainly for me, despite having edited for many years, I simply cannot address everything in a text in one pass. And I think most of my colleagues would agree with me. 

And I think if you try to do that, it makes for a very frustrating process. I would argue -- and I think there is some basis for this, although I certainly can't offer you some real solid citations about this, but I'm sure they exist -- I think that the argument level of your writing really uses a different part of the mind. It certainly feels that way for me, then that more granular, making sure all my punctuation is correct and spell-checking part of my mind. And the load of trying to keep all of these active really is too much, I think, for most people. 

Part of being an effective self-editor is learning how to prioritize, order and plan for the various stages of revision and proofreading in your document. And a general principal guiding that, that I have found useful in my own approach as I said, to my own work as well as other people's work, is deciding what I'm focusing on in a specific task if I'm doing an intensive editing of a document, and to move, again, from the big picture concerns to the small picture concerns, usually in separate passes through it. Dividing the draft into pieces when you're revising your own work can be really helpful, not trying to run a marathon unless you really want that kind of immersive focus. Thinking about how to segment that work and how to segment the editing task into manageable pieces can be really helpful.

 

Visual:Slide changes to the following: Revising and Proofreading at the Capstone Writing Stage

            Keep these three things in mind throughout the process:

•      Did I address the requirements for my degree program?

•      Did I present the best version of what I wanted to say?

•      Did I follow my faculty’s guidance and recommendations?

 

Audio: So, there's some general questions to keep in mind as you're revising and proofreading your capstone, throughout the process. Are you addressing the requirements of your degree program? And we’ll be talking a bit more about the resources you can use to ascertain that you're doing now. Are you presenting the best version of what you wanted to say? Are you presenting your content in the most effective, most streamlined, most focused, and most coherent way? And are you following the guidance and recommendations of your faculty so that you can move forward into the next step of that approval process?

 

Visual:Slide changes to the following: Poll

How long do you typically spend revising a draft between submissions?

Audio: So, we're going to talk a little bit more about this broad revision, you know, content driven approach. But before that, I have a poll I was curious to see how you answered. The question is, how long do you typically spend revising a draft between submissions? And by that, we mean when you have to submit something to your chair or other faculty and you get it back. How long do you take with that draft, on average, before you submit it again? 

I see some responses coming in. I'll give that a few more moments. 

[silence as students respond]

And this is always really fun for me to see, because this is part of this process that, as a Form and Style editor, I don't have as much exposure to. 

It looks like there's a clear winner on the results, although I see, I think, okay, it looks like we might be, I think we might be done getting responses. It looks like most people are saying a few days, about 72%. And that seems reasonable to me. And of course, there's going to be I some people who are saying a few weeks. 19% saying several hours. There's no right answer to any of this. I think that's interesting to see. I think a few days or longer can be really helpful just in spreading out that process, I think it helps to not feel quite so time pressured and frustrated. Not that this process ever gets frustrating. [LAUGHS] I think perhaps sometimes it can. 

Okay, thank you for contributing to that, I think that's interesting. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Revision and the Doctoral Capstone Writing Process

Check out the Revision Strategies and 

Revision Checklist documents available to 

download in the Files pod in the lower right corner

Audio:As I said, this next section of the presentation focuses on that broader provision part of the editing process when you're working on your capstone. As Beth mentioned, we have quite a few resources that one of my colleagues have developed and they are great, and compiled here. You don't need to open those now, but this could be helpful to you, this kind of supplements the material we are talking about today. 

And relevant to this section, in particular, are the revision strategies document down in the files pod, and the revision checklist. Again, you don't need to open those now unless you want to. We're going to be covering a lot of the same content. It's really for you to use later in ways that are convenient to you.

 

Visual:Slide changes to the following: Linear vs. Iterative Process

            Linear

•      Collect

•      Organize

•      Outline

•      Write

•      Submit

            Iterative

•      Collect /generate information

•      Organize information into sections and subsections

•      Outline content in sections & subsections

•      Write a draft

•      Read draft (have someone else read it) and revise

Audio:One thing that we stressed -- I think you may have seen this kind of graphic before if you've been to any of our presentations about, say, writing the literature review or approaching revision to your work -- we try to encourage people to think about writing and revision with the capstone not as a linear process where you're collecting your information or data, organizing it, outlining it, writing it, submitting it and boom, you're done. 

Unfortunately, that's typically not the case with something like a capstone with all of its many phases and stages. Instead, it tends to be an iterative process, and more circular, so that you're collecting and generating information, gathering data, searching the literature, etc., organizing all that into sections and subsections for your writing, and that involves some outlining, and then you’re writing the draft. Then when you have material drafted, you are reading it, you’re sending it to other people to read. Then typically, you have gaps to fill in, you’re going back and starting that process again.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Revising at the Capstone Stage

•      Do not try to write a perfect first draft

•      Make revisionthe most important stage in your process

•      Give yourself enough time

–     Take time away from your document before rereading

–     Leave room in your schedule to rework what you write

Audio: And so, corollary to that idea of this being an iterative process is that you will be revisiting things. There's no reason to try to write that elusive, perfect first draft of the various sections of your document. You should be planning to go back into it. So, revision is really a key component and arguably the most important component in that process of writing the capstone. 

And so, part of this, of course -- and this sounds a bit preachy, it's something I have had to learn that I am probably still learning in my own writing, is budgeting enough time. Not just for getting the ideas down, but for doing that revision work where your work can really start to make sense and shine and be at its best. A part of that usually is taking some time away from it, getting sleep, allowing your ideas to percolate and leaving room in your schedule to rework what you’ve written.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Global or “Big Picture” Concerns

These affect the draft overall and require abstract thinking and critical assessment of your own work

•      Does it address all requirements?

•      How is it organized? Is there a logical structure to the ideas?

•      Is it coherent? Are the main ideas clear?

•      Do you see any patterns of things you want to fix or change?

Audio:So, what are the global or big picture concerns involved in revision? These are the ones that affect the draft overall. They require abstract kind of broad conceptual thinking, I find, which is why, just being the kind of person I am. If I am going through a document, and I’ve been an editor, academic editor in APA for 16 years, which is kind of embarrassing, but I will tell you, if I have to go into a document and I want to produce perfect APA, I’m going to do fabulous proofreading, I cannot think about meaning, at all. Because I think the kind of abstract thought that's required in meaning development and content development, I think of it as a very separate thing in a lot of ways and I think that may be true for many people than doing that fussing over APA details and so forth. 

And I think critical reading, critical assessment idea development are all part of that abstract process overall revision process. Some of the things you think about at that stage is, as I said before, are you meeting all the requirements of your program? Are you presenting everything you need to present? How are you organizing that argument and content? Are you following the rubrics and checklists for your program? Is the idea development in your literature review logical, or is it kind of all over the place? Are the main ideas emerging from the individual paragraphs and then from the sections that those paragraph compose? Will readers understand what those main ideas are? And are you seeing patterns of things that you want to fix or change as you're reading with this in mind?

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Ways to Develop Revision Skills

•      Be self-aware of your strengths and weaknesses

–     Too wordy? Too terse?

–     Forget topic sentences? Trouble with transitions?

•      Become a peer reviewer

•      See your work as a reader and not the writer

–     Read the document aloud or have it read to you

–     Change how the text looks on the page when you read over it

Audio:So, developing revision skills will be an ongoing process throughout the capstone and for most writers, I would say, throughout life, for people who are doing writing on any level. I think, and I'm sure you developed those skills in previous academic work, you know, to get to this doctoral stage, so, you probably are aware of some of your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. And, using revision effectively means really keeping those in mind and looking critically at your work to see where you might want to adjust that. Are you being too flowery and wordy? Do you have a tendency to be so terse and using such short, clipped writing that the writing is perhaps not as interesting as it could be or perhaps doesn't have enough detail so that people understand what you're referring to? Are you good at crafting paragraphs and making them clearly cohere around a main idea? Or do they tend to be a little more awkward or scattered? Being aware of those strengths and weaknesses can help you figure out what to focus on in these revision passes.

I would say, strongly from my own experience as someone who is reading other people's work, frequently that being a peer reviewer or being an editor, basically, whether it's officially or informally for other students, or friends and family, I think can be highly instructive in teaching you ways to look at a document, ways to be critical, ways to be constructive and rework something. Or make suggestions that you can then apply to your own revision process with yourself.

And part of that process and I think the usefulness of the process and peer review is that it gets you into your work as a reader and not necessarily as a writer. Kind of defamiliarization, defamiliarizing your text can be very useful in finding what you might need to do to make that revision as effective as you can. And, we have in some of the files in the file pod under revision strategies and so forth, we have some different strategies there that you can try to get that distance from your work that I think can be really productive when you're thinking about how it flows, how it sounds, how the ideas are coming across.

One thing that I do that people who have lived with me don't necessarily enjoy, but I find very helpful, is when I'm editing something, whether it's my own or someone else's, reading that aloud during one of the passes I think is really helpful in that one, it slows you down enough to really see every word on the page. So, in that sense its useful for proof reading and revision. case it’s really attend to what's there if you have to attend to the words individually. It also allows you to get into a different modality. And I think I kind of hearing it rather than simply reading it, you're engaging with it in a slightly different way. That's an option for you.

So, reading that document aloud or having it read to you can be helpful in that way. One just practical thing that I rely on absolutely every day is changing some of the settings in Microsoft Word when I'm revising a document, actually, when I'm writing, too -- part of this is that I'm over 40, I wear bifocals, I can't necessarily see the computer that well after staring at it for hours but also, I think, for really looking at text, it can be helpful to have that look certain ways or sometimes different ways on the computer. So, for me, that means zooming in using settings in Microsoft Word in the views section, so that is, for me, I used to do 150%, now I do 175 because that's what I need to see all those little spaces and periods and semicolon and so on, accurately. But there are various things that you can do so I would encourage you to experiment with those various settings in Word and all the ways that you can change the way the document looks without actually changing the document. And that is in the view area.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Revision Strategy 1: Following degree requirements

•      Become familiar with the guidebook, handbook, checklist, and/or rubric for your degree

–     Visit the Office of Student Research Administration to retrieve professional doctoral and PhD dissertation program documents

•      Follow the appropriate guide or checklist to ensure that your draft includes all necessary information

Audio:So, the next few slides cover some specific revision strategies that you can use and I think of these as, like, you can apply one of the strategies within a specific pass through a section of your document or the document as a whole, and that could be a productive approach.

So, the first one of the strategies has to do with those degree requirements so they’re going to be specific to a program. And while we can't really speak to those in detail as writing specialists at Walden -- because that's really the domain of the individual programs and departments -- we can direct you to where you can find those materials. There's a link on this slide, if you download the slides to the Office Of Student Research Administration, I believe on the left of that page, links to all of the doctoral programs where you can get to the various checklists and rubrics and so on that are going to be used to evaluate the content and structure of your doctoral writing. And those can be really helpful as you're structuring each part of your document.

One thing I think isn't on the slide but that's part of that is, by using the template for your specific program, which you can get on our Form and Style website, that has less information about content in it. However, it does tend to have the basic skeleton of the document there in terms of, certainly, the major chapters. And depending on the program, sometimes some of those required subheadings are in there, and that can be really helpful in thinking about which components you need to add. But the rubrics and checklist from the Office of Student Research Administration are really the critical documents outlining content.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Revision Strategy 1: Following degree requirements

•      In your draft:

–     Note in the margins what the checklist or guide requires for each section of your document. 

–     Highlight the passages that address each requirement for that section.

            Visit the Academic Skills Center for more information on using MS Word editing tools.

Audio: So a way that you can leverage that when you're doing revision is using, having like the, whether you like it electronically or printed out in a hard copy, having the checklist or rubric document or documents with you while you're reviewing your draft, and then, you might, depending on your own preferences, develop some kind of system for tracking whether you've met all those requirements. 

That might mean using the comments tool in Microsoft Word to note in the margins what the checklist or guide requires for each section in your document, and then noting to yourself whether you have completed that or not. You know, of course you can also print things out and write by hand on the rubric document, itself, or on your document. But find a system that works for you so that you can really use that to best advantage to guide your revision process.

And there's a link on the slide here, if you download these slides, about, it’s a link to the Academic Skills Center's Microsoft resources where you’ll find more information about how to use comments in Microsoft Word and other tools that could be helpful to you in this process.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Revision Strategy 2: Summarize each paragraph and what it’s doing there

•      For some parts of your draft, the program requirements are very prescriptive, and the guide or checklist will provide all the structure you need.

•      For other parts of your draft, such as the literature review, the necessary subsections and the organization of paragraphs depend on your topic, the available literature, and what you determine is the best way to present your synthesized assessment.

•      Paragraph organization strategies such as the MEAL plan can help you determine what is missing from existing body paragraphs in the draft, such as topic sentences.

Audio: Now the second revision strategy that I wanted to cover has to do with paragraph development, and I think that's a major issue for a lot of writers. And it goes, really, to the heart of creating a clear, coherent document, and one that where the ideas flow in a way that readers can follow and that’s engaging the readers, as well. So, this revision strategy is focused on looking at these paragraphs, and thinking about what function each one is serving.

So, as we we’re talking about in the previous section, for some parts of your draft, depending on your program, the requirements and the rubric or checklist may be pretty prescriptive, and so the guide and checklist may be giving you a pretty clear idea what your paragraphs are going to be addressing in the various sections, certainly in some areas of your draft. And the programs really vary in the level of specificity those rubrics and checklist provide. But often there is quite a bit of information there about some of those subsections you need, particularly in, say, the introductory chapter and what you might need to be saying in those subsections.

But then for other parts of the draft like the literature review, you really are going to have to come up with the organization yourself. There’s the, most of the structure of the literature review beyond where you talk about, say, how you did your research in the library and I how you organized your sources and how many you used and so forth, there might be prescriptive information about that, as well as how you talk about, say, your conceptual or theoretical framework in your rubric documents. But particularly, when you get to the meat of the literature review where you're really talking about the content of the literature that informs your own study, your kind of on your own in figuring out how to structure that. That's where really careful paragraph development and outlining can be really important in getting that structure to be logical and effective. 

Now, we talk about the importance of paragraph organization within each paragraph and then also the connection of ideas between paragraphs. For the within the paragraph structure, there's something we often refer to the Writing Center but I believe was developed at Duke University at their Writing Center called the MEAL Plan. And that is a way to organize paragraphs that I think can be extremely helpful in academic writing, specifically, especially when you're talking about the literature when you're dealing with evidence from the literature. And, it's not a structure you absolutely have to use with every paragraph. There's no rule that you must. However, I think that it is extremely helpful in making sure, especially if you're struggling with coherence in your paragraphs and with organization, in general, it can be very helpful in making sure you have all of the elements that you need.

 

Visual:Slid changes to the following:The MEAL Plan

♦Main Idea ♦Evidence ♦Analysis ♦Lead out

Multiple studies have indicated a strong link between transportation availability and student engagement in extracurricular activities. Author X (2010) argued that the cost of public transportation in the Midwest affected student participation in afterschool activities, which was similar to findings in studies across the country. Author Y (2012) reported that 60% of high school students in the United States relied on school buses to get home, meaning that the majority of students had no alternative means of getting home if they decided to stay after regular school hours. According to Author Z (2009), in a study of afterschool program attendance, most of the participants (74%) received rides home from parents or friends. In addition to transportation availability, researchers have noted a strong correlation between student participation in extracurricular activities and parental involvement . . .

Audio: So, the next slide shows an example, and I don't know how well you can see the specific content here, but of what a MEAL Plan paragraph might look like. MEAL is an acronym. M is Main idea, E is Evidence, A is Analysis and L is Lead out. So, this example shows what that might look like.

So, the main idea is like your thesis or topic sentence. Often that's at the beginning. It doesn't have to be, but the beginning is a convenient place.

And, so in this paragraph here, the main idea sentence is, [READING SLIDE TEXT] “Multiple studies have indicated a strong link between transportation availability and student engagement in extracurricular activities.” 

And so, everything else in this paragraph needs to be in support and related to in some way that main idea sentence. And I would say that whether you're using MEAL plan or not, each of your paragraphs really needs to go here around some clear focus or main idea. And that is one of the most common things when I am advising people earlier in the writing stages before the form and style review, sometimes at the form and style review, is that the argument is difficult to follow, often it is a function of paragraphs not having a single, clear focus. By going through and reordering things a bit so that you really make sure that there is some clear topic you can draw out of each one, you can go a great deal of the way toward making a more coherent argument.

So, then the evidence, which is green in this picture -- and I won’t read all this out -- are these facts from the literature. And in this case, there are some statistics, along with citations, that are supporting that main idea conveyed in red at the beginning paragraph.

Then, just presenting evidence is not enough in academic writing to have a meaningful synthesis at the doctoral level. And I'm sure you have heard about this in other content and other courses and Writing Center materials. That synthesis element needs to be there where you are relating the literature to each other and importantly, to your work. And that's within blue in this MEAL illustration. That's the analysis piece. 

So, you can see, there's phrases like something was “similar to findings some studies across the country," there's another place where the writer here is saying, it's explaining some of the evidence in green by, there's this blue statement explaining what this evidence means. When you're analyzing something, you're making links between ideas, between sources, connections to your own work and interpreting information for your readers.

And then in purple at the end of the paragraph is that lead out sentence. And that can mean a variety of things that you don't have to, I think people sometimes think they have to say, "In my next paragraph, I am going to talk about X." You really don't have to do that, often it's best not to, that can be kind of repetitive. But the function of the lead out sentence is something that gives you a sense of summarizing and raping up of the ideas of the paragraph you have just presented, or a kind of pivot to the next idea that feels natural. So that can take a variety of forms. 

We have lots of great information on our website about the MEAL Plan, lots of great examples and materials. So, if this is an area where you feel like you would like to do some more development, I would strongly encourage you to do that. There's a link here on this slide that you can use when you download the slide deck.