Essay Feedback
Writing Circle #1: Guidelines for Responding to Your Group Members Drafts
Your assignment is to respond to each of the other papers that are in your group. Keep in
mind that these are rough drafts that your classmates will be expanding and developing
into longer papers.
I have very specific guidelines for you to follow when you give feedback. Please make
sure to answer the following questions:
1. Identify the Thesis. What seems to be the papers main idea so far? Be careful
a thesis is different than a topic. A topic is simply what the paper is about. If you
say, Kevins paper is about the evil inside everyone, you havent identified a
thesis. Youve identified a topic. A thesis is what Kevin says about the evil
inside everyone. What do the examples Kevin discusses in his paper have to say
about this idea of the evil inside?
Its possible that the paper doesnt yet have a thesis. After all, its only a draft. If
thats the case its important to tell the writer that he doesnt have a thesis yet.
But can you also see that the paper might be moving towards a thesis? What
might the examples in the paper be leading to? What do all of the points seem to
add up to? Give some feedback that will help the writer figure out a possible
thesis.
2. Where does the paper summarize and where does it analyze? Summarizing is
just re-telling bits of the story. Analyzing means explaining why these bits are
important and what they have to do with the papers thesis. (So, for example, its
not enough to point out that Dr. Jekyll is upper class. If this is part of your paper,
then you need to talk about why thats important to the story and how it drives his
need to create Hyde.)
If there are places in the paper that just summarize without analyzing, point
them out.
If there are places in the paper that analyze specific passages or examples
from the story, point them out and explain how they are connected to the
papers thesis.
Its really hard to analyze instead of just summarizing. So one thing that you
could do thats really helpful is to try to make suggestions to the writer about
points she might make or how she might analyze her material.
Finally, please be specific. When you give feedback, do not simply say, Yes, you
analyzed enough or Yes, I think you have a thesis, or You could use some more
examples. Tell them where and what they analyzed, what their thesis seems to be, or
what other examples they might use.
Score: I will be looking over your feedback and giving you a score from 1-4. This score
will not count towards your grade, but I want you to know if you are doing a good job. If
you are giving good feedback, it probably means that you understand what want you to
do in your paper. If you are not giving good feedback, its important to understand what
youre doing wrong so that you dont do it wrong in your paper. What I want is for you
to figure this out now so that when it comes time to get a grade, youll do a good job.
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