Thank you all for both your reflections on the peer review
process and your comments on the sample papers, which I found very insightful.
Judging from the survey results, there was definitely clustering around the
assigned grades, which is exactly as it should be. As a number of you
mentioned, the grading criteria is pretty nuanced in the distinctions between
things like a B and a B+, so there’s definitely room for discretion. I actually
think that a number of you were right to point out that Paper X/C seemed like a
C+ more than a C—looking back at my records, it seems that it received the
lower grade because it was handed in late. So, good job for pointing out that
discrepancy!
As you can see, Paper Z/A does something quite different
from the other two, in part because it’s dealing with three texts instead of
two. This example, not from my own class, shows the way that working with
multiple texts forces you to move beyond comparison and contrast between others’
arguments and instead makes you place emphasis on using the texts as support
for your own independent, original argument. I particularly like the way the
example of the yogurt, for instance, doesn’t seem connected to the writer’s
topic sentence except in the way that the author interprets its
significance. It’s not an obvious connection, in other words, and is all the
more interesting because of that.
Hopefully this exercise, along with peer review, has given
you some direction for your own paper revisions. I’d also like to offer you a
few suggestions based on what I’ve noticed from reading your rough drafts.
Judging from your blog posts, it seems that a number of you have noticed a need
to cut down on summary—I agree wholeheartedly. In many cases, students were
summarizing the arguments of Johnson and Davidson before turning to their own
claims, which is unnecessary. As someone pointed out in their comments on the
sample papers, the A paper has a “captivating” argument, whereas the B paper’s
thesis is somewhat obvious and/or broad. Given the amount of prefatory material
that was in some papers, you might find it most effective to take the claims at
the end of your paper and make them the starting point for a new, more specific
thesis.
Another area that needs work in many of your papers is
organization. As you can see from the sample papers, strong papers make
connections within the paragraphs organized around a particular topic. As you
go through your rough drafts, you should be isolating each paragraph and asking
yourself, “what is my claim here?” If it’s a claim you develop in another
paragraph, consider linking those paragraphs together. You can also try
isolating your topic sentences and quotations from each paragraph in a separate
document. Then, in a few sentences, explain why you need those quotations to support
your topic sentence. Both of these techniques are a version of what’s called
the “Post-Draft
Outline.” We’ll have time to talk about it more in the future, but feel
free to try it on your own for this paper.
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