PAPER #1 PEER REVIEW
Jessie,
I thought that you did a good job at keeping the ideas you had for this paper very organized and concise. It was very easy to read and follow. The notes that I made on your paper focused on some sentence structure things and other additions that I thought would make your point come across a little bit stronger. As the paper progressed I thought that some of your ideas began to become slightly muddled, but I highlighted where I thought this was occurring in my notes. I would say that one thing to watch for when you are writing is the way you are wording your sentences. For the most part they were fine, however, at times you had extra filler words that were unnecessary. For these words I made notes to remove them because I found that it took away from the strength of the sentence. Overall, I thought you did a really great job on the paper and I honestly was having trouble finding things that you could improve on. Good job!
Mike,
I feel as though you might need a little more work with figuring out your ideas and putting them together effectively in the paper. I had trouble following the progression of your thesis throughout this paper. I found that your essay contradicted itself in multiple of your paragraphs. The wording and order of the paragraphs was not very well organized, but I think this could be fixed if you had a strong thesis in mind. Your essay made it seem as though you didn’t have a specific opinion on the topic. My biggest suggestion for you would probably be to take a step back and figure out which direction you really want this paper to go in. I would also suggest going back through what you wrote and really paying attention to your sentence structure and what you are trying to portray. SASC also has some really good writing tutor that would definitely help you out with organizing some of your thoughts and cleaning up your sentences. After going back through an re organizing some of your paragraphs and sentences I believe it will be a lot stronger.
PAPER #2 PEER REVIEW
(feedback letter also included on PDF)
Hi Braden,
I feel as though you have an idea of the direction you want this paper to go in, but you just haven’t quite found the evidence from the text to support your ideas just yet. Since we are supposed to be working with four different texts, it can be a little tricky incorporating all of them into a single paper without ideas being to jumbled. However, I think if you are able to go through the food archive on the English site and read through the different papers it might help you find specific ones to help support what you want to say in this paper. I mentioned in one of the notes that I think it would be a good idea to try and introduce the texts that you will be discussing in your introduction paragraph. By doing this you are giving the reader some more context about what exactly you are talking about when you simply refer to “Julia Childs show”. I also mentioned that splitting up your introduction paragraph into potentially a smaller paragraph with some more concise thoughts could also be a good idea. You really want your introduction paragraph to get the main themes of your paper across to your reader, and I think your introduction paragraph could use some work with figuring out exactly what you are trying to say in this paper. Finally, I think that you need to think about you want your thesis to say. Elaborating on your thesis will make it more clear to the reader what exactly you are talking about, and what essentially he theme of your paper is.
Hi Thomas,
So it looks like you have a good start to your paper here. I can tell that you have definitely read through Pollan’s essay and have made an effort to connect it to the other pieces that we are working with. I thought that you did a good job introducing Pollan’s piece in the introduction so the reader knows what text exactly you are referring to throughout your essay. I do think that you could work with you thesis a little bit more to try and incorporate all of the pieces you are working with into it. You might not have to change it , but maybe instead you could consider adding another sentence or two to make it a stronger more clear point. For your third paragraph I felt as though you rambled on for a little bit throughout it. Your point seemed clear about how cooking shows are scaring viewers from the kitchen, however, I believe you could say that without rambling on as much. It just seemed as though you were over explaining the quote, and the quote doesn’t need that much explanation. It seems as though you do have a progression within your essay and a direction that you are moving towards. Keep progressing your paragraphs and make sure to incorporate the texts we are working with whenever you can. The more evidence that you have to back up your statements the better your paper will be. Good job.
Hi Cameron,
I really like the work you have put into your paper so far. It is clear that you have clearly thought out how to incorporate your quotes in the best way possible. I felt as though you did a good job at introducing Pollan and his work in your introduction paragraph. However, I did make a note in your introduction because I felt as though the structure of the paragraph was somewhat choppy. Adding a couple more sentences in there to provide some more information, and let it flow better would be beneficial in my opinion. I also feel as though you could elaborate on your thesis a little bit more than what you have thus far. Your thesis at the moment seems to be a little bit broad, and although you mention the texts you will be discussing throughout your introduction, you don’t really encompass them in your thesis statement. Elaborating to your thesis will make your paper stronger. You did a really good job working with the texts in the body paragraphs that you have put together this far. Keep working with the texts and I think you will be all set. Good job!
PEER REVIEW PAPER #3
(feedback letter also included on PDF)
Hi Thomas,
You seem to have a good start with the ideas you want to express in your paper. I really liked the first part of your introduction paragraph, I thought that it caught my attention. Using two paragraphs for your introduction is an interesting idea, and has the potential to be a very strong move in making your paper definitive. I do think that you need to make your thesis more specific. If you are going to use two paragraphs to lead up to your thesis you really want to make sure that your thesis statement is clear and definitive, so that the reader knows exactly the direction you are taking your paper in. Your other two paragraphs had a very clear topic, in the sense that they were specifically talking about on of the texts. Based on the fact that this paper is meant to based solely on the lobster paper by Wallace, I felt as though you kind of lost Wallace in the summaries/ analysis of the other two texts you decided to use. I don’t necessarily think you need to remove the summaries entirely, but if you could incorporate some direct quotes from Wallace in order to support the points you are attempting to make with the other texts, it would be much more beneficial. Once you figure out exactly what you are trying to say with your thesis statement, you should also try and tie your paragraphs together with this thesis as well. I think your paper will be great, just work on cutting down the summaries and incorporate more evidence from the texts to support the thesis statement you are going to elaborate on.
Hi Emilee,
You seem to have good start to your paper. Your ideas seem consistent throughout the paper, and I have a clear understanding on where you stand on the topic. I made a note about switching the language that you used in your thesis in order to make it come across as a more definitive statement to the person reading your paper. The language that you use can really change the tone of what you are trying to get across. I had some trouble understanding the purpose of the large quote that you inserted in your first body paragraph. The quote itself seems to be talking mostly about some of the cosmetic flaws with the lobster festival. The major cons that Wallace is trying to get across to the reader are bigger than what this quote suggests. You could pick a different quote here or simply make the language leading up to it different. You seem to still be working on incorporating the other author into your argument, so there isn’t much to say there. Lastly I would suggest trying to streamline the ideas you are trying to get across in your second body paragraph. I got a little lost in the point that you were trying to make, and I made a note on the paragraph to give you some more insight. Overall, really good job so far.
