TO: Elizabeth Benedict

FROM: Isaac Alderete

DATE: 5/13/16
SUBJECT: Reflective Revision Memo

I revised two of my documents, the proposal and analytical report, to make the
arguments stronger and clearer. In both documents, the driving force behind the
revisions were your comments and feedback. By implementing your solutions, the focus
and solutions of my projects became clearer and more presentable.
My first revision was to work on resolving the issues that you pointed out in my
groups proposal document from project two. These problems worked against my
argument and needed to be addressed. One of our biggest flaws was that our document
did not clearly identify the audience that we were writing to. There was also a lack of
information in both the problem section and the solution section while new things such
as health benefits were introduced into our cost/benefit analysis. This made the
document unclear and unorganized, which really weakened our argument. On top of
that, there were many grammatical errors present. In my revision, I worked to eliminate
all of these issues, starting by defining my audience better. I did this by making my
document more personal by saying things like your people and your reservation,
which makes it clear that I am directly communicating with leaders of Navajo
nation. The next step I took in my revision was to add more information into the
problem section. I did this through talking more about the health effects that food
deserts have on people and I explained how diabetes affects many Navajo individuals
and how it can cost a lot of money to treat it. I then edited my solutions section by
adding headers for each step of the process and then clarified some of the information
our gardens models by being more specific. Lastly I worked to clean up all the grammar
and spelling mistakes in the document.
The second revision that I made was to my recommendation report to Lobo
Village. In the report I discussed how its shuttle system lacks universal design features
for people with limited mobility. I felt like I made a good argument and presented solid
solutions, however I could have been more specific. The first change I made was to
forecast my document in my introduction. Initially it was lacking in the document which
weakened my intro, but by adding this information it made it clearer and gave my
audience a better sense of what was to come. The next area where I corrected was my
methodology section. Originally I did not include some specifics such as the time and
day of my research and the amount of people surveyed. By adding these specifics, I
am able to give a better set of instructions on how I came to get the results that I got. I
also revised my results section to be more direct rather than explaining my methodology
again before I even presented my results. Finally, like my revision for project two, I
corrected grammatical errors that distracted the focus of my argument. These changes
that I made have helped my report become stronger and much more persuasive, which
will ultimately help me in my ability to compose better documents in the future.