Year-End Capstone: Revision, Works Cited, and a Year of World Literature in Review

Revision is different from proofreading, and a strong final pass does both, in the right order. Revision means reconsidering the argument itself: is the claim as specific and arguable as it could be, does the counterclaim get a genuinely fair hearing, does every piece of evidence actually support the claim it is attached to? Proofreading comes after, and means checking the sentences themselves for run-ons, comma splices, and consistent citation punctuation -- the mechanical accuracy that lets a strong argument be taken seriously rather than distracting a reader from it. A finished research-based essay also needs a works cited page, listing every source actually cited in the text in the specific format its citation style requires, alphabetized by author's last name.

This is the year's final week, and it is worth looking backward across genuine range: from a Greek stage twenty-five centuries old, through short fiction spanning Russia, Central Europe, and Argentina, through poetry in Japanese, Persian, and Chinese forms, through a Nigerian novel confronting a changing world, through Shakespeare's Rome, to this final unit's researched argument. The same close-reading and evidence-based reasoning habits carried across every single one of those very different texts and cultures -- naming that continuity specifically, not just vaguely, is its own valuable skill, and exactly the kind of precise, evidence-based self-assessment this entire course has spent thirty-six weeks building the capacity to make.