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#Post#: 117--------------------------------------------------
Outside Reading Assignment #9: Old Essay
DIR By: MrLyon
Date: January 3, 2013, 9:03 am
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Our next composition deals with analytic writing, or the form of
writing that you are most familiar with from your traditional
English classes. In preparation for writing this piece, I'd like
you to take a close look at an analytic essay that you've
written for another English class.
First, write a 300-word response to this essay as a reply to
this post. Examine your essay's strengths and weaknesses as they
relate to the "Magnificent Seven" rubric. What ideas did you try
to bring to the table? How did you attempt to incorporate
evidence? What organizational structure did you utilize? What
word choices and sentence structures helped to make your point
or could have been improved upon? What lessons from this essay
will you take with you into future assignments? This posting is
due on Friday, January 4.
Second, print out a clean, uncorrected copy of this essay and
bring it to class on Friday, January 4.
#Post#: 118--------------------------------------------------
Re: Outside Reading Assignment #9: Old Essay
DIR By: cblock12
Date: January 3, 2013, 4:29 pm
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The essay that I chose was a recent essay, that I wrote in
English class this November. This essay what about a book we
read called The Great Gatsby. What I noticed that I did
throughout my essay I didn’t use strong vocabulary and could
have used stronger word choices. I also didn’t revise it for
small errors that thoroughly. The main message of the essay was
mostly on target, although I did sidetrack sometimes. The
organization, I think, was extremely neat and really shaped the
essay nicely. The voice seems to be mostly in the same tense,
and I don’t recall flipping into another tense by mistake. Most
of my essay’s I have noticed is pretty much on target. Word
choice was somewhat of a struggle in some of the areas of this
essay, while were “awk” while others were placed in the right
spot and were advanced vocabulary. The sentence structure of my
essay was mostly smooth and blended right into quotes and
connected to the other ideas. My essay had good rhythm and made
sense. Some sentences that connected quotes to the main idea
were a little rough. The general mechanics of my essay fit in
smoothly and was not terrible, although it could use some work.
Most of the errors, however, were small and didn’t make a huge
difference on the overall appearance of the essay. The
presentation of the essay was neat, and didn’t have anything
less than perfect format. I indented, capitalized each word, and
the paper wasn’t crinkled and was neat. I would have given my
essay a B- to a B for quality effort, good sentence fluency, and
great organization.
#Post#: 119--------------------------------------------------
Re: Outside Reading Assignment #9: Old Essay
DIR By: cblock07
Date: January 3, 2013, 7:15 pm
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The essay that I chose to write about was a college essay that I
wrote in October in English class. In this essay I wrote about
trying out for indoor track for the first time. Trying something
new for the first time can be a challenge and there are always
some obstacles to get over as you first try. The prupose of my
essay was to show how trying something new can show how
something new can be hard for someone to change to doing
something different. I mainly stuck to the main purpose in this
essay. I also included many stories about my experiences how I
started out doing this sport. In this essay I also used good
examples on describing my experiences, and struggles I faced. I
think I had great organization in this essay. I think I could
have improved a little more in vocabulary and expanded more in
each paragraph. Staying on the same topic was easy enough. Each
paragrph explained one idea that I had about this essay. I could
have also had done better with word choice. One great thing
about this essay was that anyone who reads this, can really
picture me saying all of these things. I think readers can
picture me doing everything that I talked about in this essay.
My essay made perfect sense and I stayed focused on what I was
trying to say. I only had a few errors in this essay. They were
just fixing certain sentences, and the way I wrote things. Some
things should have been written a little different. In the end I
thought it was very good. I think it was one of my best essay's
this year. I would have given my essay B to a B+. Everything was
organized and neatly done.
#Post#: 120--------------------------------------------------
Re: Outside Reading Assignment #9: Old Essay
DIR By: cblock09
Date: January 3, 2013, 8:23 pm
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The essay I am evaluating is my personal narritive I wrote in
English class earlier this year. I talked about my trip to
Haiti. The message was that everyone should be happy with what
they have. There are people who literally have nothing. I would
say my narritive is well organized. I started off with what I
saw on the plane, leading to what I saw in the country. My first
time seeing a house and how that impacted me. Ended with how I
took my experiences back to America. I think this essay very
well displays the ability to paint a picture in someones head of
what I saw. "Beautiful mountains, tan sand, and a clear blue
ocean." "A house that was held up by a four metal roofs as the
walls, tarps so no rain would enter, and no doors or windows."
Anyone reading my narritive can see what I saw. My word choice
was good when describing what I saw but I dont use very rich
vocabulary. That is what I need to improve on in all my writing.
The sentences flow very smoothly. One paragraph leads into
another. Going from what I saw on the plane, in the country, the
house, my reaction to the house then how I use my experience in
America. I dont believe their are any grammatical errors. This
narritive combines with visual and textual elements. Visually
describing the house I saw and explaining how it impacted me.
#Post#: 121--------------------------------------------------
Re: Outside Reading Assignment #9: Old Essay
DIR By: cblock04
Date: January 3, 2013, 8:37 pm
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The essay that I chose was written by me during my Freshman
year. It is a short story, so the ideas of the story are kind
of basic. The story simply shows the reader that he or she
should listen to his or he parents. As I reread this story I
realize that it is very bland and could use more descriptive
wording to emphasize certain points, and create imagery. The
ideas definitely need to be added on to in order to make this an
entertaining essay because the ideas are too basic the way they
are. The essay is organized normally; paragraphs are separated
because of their different content. The essay also has dialogue
that is split up properly. The way I read it, it doesn’t seem
like there is much of a voice to this essay. The dialogue
doesn’t sound like a real conversation; this could easily be
fixed with some extra thought on how people would speak in this
kind of situation. As stated earlier, the word choice is very
basic, which is understandable from a Freshman. As for the
sentences, I wouldn’t go as far as saying they flow well; they
make sense together, but lack the descriptiveness to be
considered fluent. While reading through this essay quickly, it
was not hard to pick out the incorrect grammar used. “Her
father said with excitement, ‘I’ve got it! Give a hoot, don’t
pollute! And you can put a picture of an owl on the poster.’”
In this quote there should be quotation marks around the “Give a
hoot, don’t pollute!” I also think there should be quotation
marks around “Woodsy Owl” when he is mentioned throughout the
essay. The presentation of this essay is standard for any
school essay; there is a bold title and the rest of the essay is
twelve font with black ink.
#Post#: 122--------------------------------------------------
Re: Outside Reading Assignment #9: Old Essay
DIR By: cblock10
Date: January 3, 2013, 9:53 pm
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The essay I am writing about is an essay that I recently got
back from my teacher. The ideas in the essay are strong but are
not expressed as well as they could be. They are hard to
understand and instead of focusing on having only active voice
to make the points stronger I used passive voice alongside the
active voice; it took away from my essay as a whole. The essay
as a whole is well organized but within the separate paragraphs
they are not structured the best. Some of the points are too
wordy, and/or badly expressed. Sometimes the sentences are hard
to follow and don’t transition into the next well. My word
choice does not use high diction, but it could. Instead very
simplistic and bland words were used. The fluency of my
sentences were not great. Sometimes the passages did not make
sense and lost the reader. The conventions were not great, there
were numerous mistakes that should not have been in the final
draft. My attempts to incorporate evidence was good but every so
often I put in unrelated quotes, and other times I did not
analyze my quotes clearly and the passage would lose the
strength in convincing the reader that it had. I used a basic
five-paragraph format with: intro with a thesis, topic one,
topic two, topic three, and conclusion. If I go through my essay
again – which I will actually do – I will change so that the
ideas are easier to follow. I will also try to make the passages
reader friendly, trying to get my point across as clear as
possible and in a less wordy and confusing manner. I will try to
make deeper analysis that makes the reader think more when
he/she reads it. I will try to change the overall format of the
essay: sticking to one verb tense, changing from passive to
active voice and incorporating some writing lab grammar lessons
(parallelism, sentence types ect.). I hope to use all skills
learned and shown to me to get a better grade by changing the
way it is written before changing the content. ;D
#Post#: 123--------------------------------------------------
Re: Outside Reading Assignment #9: Old Essay
DIR By: cblock13
Date: January 4, 2013, 6:47 am
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I chose to do an essay from this year. In my current English
class, we were asked to write an essay based off one theme from
the epic poem, Beowulf. The idea, thesis, and my support were
excellent. I provided enough detail for the reader to get a vivd
description of what i was talking about. i used active voice for
the most part. my teacher commented on my paper that I should
provide more detail that is relevant, but when reviewing my
paper after I got it back, I noted that my evidence was in fact
relent to the point I was supporting. One of my major weaknesses
was giving a solid conclusion paragraph. I tried not to state
the facts, but to show them with my detail so that they just
click in the readers mind. Mainly, my idea for incorporating
evidence was within the quotes from the poem. I started with an
opening paragraph, then had three subtopics of love, the origin
of the name, how boasting was displayed throughout the whole
poem. The main sentence that helped make me points was the
thesis and introductory sentences. I could most definitely
improve on is the style I write in. I also need to understand
that just applying quotes don’t always prove the points I’m
trying to make.
#Post#: 124--------------------------------------------------
Re: Outside Reading Assignment #9: Old Essay
DIR By: cblock03
Date: January 4, 2013, 12:52 pm
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The essay I took a look at was from my English class this year.
It has to do with the relationship between the Miller and the
Reeve from The Canterbury Tales. There are many strengths and
weaknesses in this essay, starting with the organization. The
essay is organized very well, having one paragraph dedicated to
each different part I was covering and not mixing things around.
However, what was a bit of a weakness was my thesis. I had a
thesis in it, but it was very basic and didn’t explain how my
essay was going to be organized, and it didn’t have supporting
details. Another strength that I had in writing this essay was
that I made sure to include text quotes in my body paragraphs as
evidence for the point I was trying to prove. Most of my
paragraphs had 2-3 quotes in them. Something else that was a
weakness was how I organized the text quotes. At first, I had
issues writing them the right way, with the page number coming
after the quote but before the quotation marks. One last thing
that was also a weakness was my concluding paragraph. Concluding
paragraphs have never been something that I am good at, so that
will be something I know I would have to work on. I’ll also have
to work on the other parts that were weaknesses.
#Post#: 125--------------------------------------------------
Re: Outside Reading Assignment #9: Old Essay
DIR By: Cblock08
Date: January 6, 2013, 6:57 am
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1/4/13 January, Fourth, 2013, Friday
In my essay, “Adjo” Means Goodbye, I can now clearly see some
mistakes which would have improved my grade. With these mistakes
I also can see some areas of strength. To start off as some of
my weaknesses, I did not include a thesis statement which would
help my reader understand what I would be writing about. This
greatly affected my essay. I had no set guideline to follow so I
was all over with details and explanations. I attempted to
incorporate evidence into my sentences by gently threading them
through so they would fit nicely. This helped my essay because
it sounded much nicer than dropping the quote at the end of a
sentence and than explaining what the quote means. As I went
through my essay a few minutes ago I noticed that I did not use
strong vocabulary which would change how the essay looked. If
people read an essay and in the first few sentences they hear
strong vocabulary than they are more likely to keep reading and
paying attention. If weak vocabulary is used than I have lost
the reader and they are just skimming over the essay with no
thoughts. The organization of the piece was very messed up and I
was even lost as I went over it. This was greatly affected due
to the lack of a thesis statement. The sentence fluency was good
in some places but poor in others. I believe that I perfectly
used my quotes in the sentences. Because I hand-wrote this
essay, the presentation was horrible and looked bad on the
paper. Some lessons which I will take into my next assignments
which I hope will improve my grade would be proof reading, and a
good amount of strong vocabulary. Also making sure I have a
thesis statement thats clear.
#Post#: 134--------------------------------------------------
Re: Outside Reading Assignment #9: Old Essay
DIR By: cblock06
Date: January 8, 2013, 7:33 pm
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The essay that I chose was from last year. I wrote about my
outside reading book titled Sold, we had to make a summary of
the book. Throughout my essay I realized that I just stated
thing without giving a lot of details. One strength to my essay
is that I stated everything that was required for it but, I
didn’t add a lot of description to the details and I don’t use
the magnificent seven very well. I got the main message across
in my writing and it was organized well but the tone of the
paper was boring. I stated everything in it and I did not use
imagery to try to show what the book was about. The word choice
of the essay was very vague. Some of my sentences were very
wordy and hard to understand which affected the sentence fluency
too. The conventions in the paper are pretty good. I used the
correct punctuation, spelling, and capitalization but there are
some grammatical issues throughout the paper. The overall
presentation of the paper is organized and clean. I incorporated
evidence by giving details and putting quotes to backup the
topic and then analyzing the quote and how it relates to the
story. I organized this essay by explaining what certain parts
of the book were in chronically order. The word choice I used
was very vague and did not add a lot of detail to the parts of
the story being described. From this essay I learned to use the
magnificent seven more. I also learned that I need to use better
and stronger word choices. The word choices I used made some
sentences sound very long and drown out. I learned that I also
need to proof read over my essays to catch the little
grammatical errors.
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