Humanities Homework Help

Once you have read the entire draft, you will type a 300-500 word post to the essay’s project’s (Dear _________,) or offer a 3-5 minute video or audio response to the draft. Regardless of whether you choose a written format and post to the forum or embed video or audio, your goal should be to provide the writer with specific possibilities for revision. 

Make your feedback as specific as possible so that the writer knows exactly which section of the project you’re addressing. Refer to specific paragraphs. Quote language from the draft. In your responses, deal with areas such as purpose and thesis; larger stakes of paper; use of examples, description, or evidence; details; paragraph structure; and organization, title/introduction/conclusion, and style. 

Write your feedback in complete and clear sentences.  See advice for offering valuable feedback below. It is often helpful to the writer if you can point them to specific areas in the essay (In paragraph 4, you claim _______, but I wonder if __________). This specific advice helps more than a more general approach (“Sometimes you contradict yourself.”) See more suggestions and guidelines for providing feedback below.

Suggestions and Guidelines for Feedback: Your goal for your responses should be to provide useful and constructive feedback for the writer.  Remember, your goal is to help the writer improve the draft; your job is not to evaluate the quality of the writer’s work.  As you read, you should look for places in the essay that could be improved; you are not looking for “mistakes” or “errors.”

1. Ask Questions: In many cases, the best feedback you can offer comes in the form of questions.  Your goal should not be to tell the writer what to do; rather, you want to get the writer to think about parts of their writing and ponder ways to make improvements.  By asking questions, you will be able to simultaneously offer suggestions and create room for the writer to think of improvements on their own.
   • What would be a counter-argument to your thesis?
   • Why do you wait until the 4th paragraph to introduce ___________ ?
   • Do you have research to support the claim that ____________?
   • Is that the only example of ____________ or can you add others?
2. Show where the Writer could Provide More Information: An effective approach would be to ask for more information andto explain why you think the information would be helpful:
   • I would like to know more about . . . because . . .
   • Some background information on ___________ would be useful in order to __________.
3. Be Positive: Remember to provide positive feedback.  Don’t fall into the trap of merely looking for “what’s wrong” with the draft.  When writers know where they succeed, then they can try to improve other areas of their writing in the same manner.  However, don’t just say that you like something. As with your questions, explain why:
   • I like . . . because . . .
   • Your example of ___________ made me understand __________ because __________.

Some DON’Ts for Workshop Responses: For the most part, you can respond to essays as you wish.  Students have used a variety of approaches, tones, and styles in their responses, and the variety helps make the workshop experience valuable, personal, and interesting. If responses are overly formulaic, writers may lose interest in them, so feel free to explore different ways of responding.  However, you should avoid the following two strategies.

1. Broad sweeping comments such as “Your writing is awesome.  Keep it up” or “This draft is really good” will not aid the writer’s revision work, so please avoid using them.  The more you refer to specific paragraphs, sentences, and ideas in the essay, the more you will help the writer make changes.
   1. Your impulse may be to concern yourself with grammar and mechanics in responding to your group members’ drafts, but remember that the focus of the peer workshops is not copy-editing or proofreading.  Rather, we want to focus on macro level revision—“seeing the essay” again—which will lead to large scale changes in feeling, organization, content, focus, etc.  If the writer successfully makes large changes, the typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors may disappear because the content could drastically change.

Procedure for Workshop Day:

• Each group member’s essay will receive an equal amount of attention—somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes, depending on your group’s size.
• Try to alternate speaking during the workshop and have a conversation, maybe going paragraph by paragraph rather than one responder speaking and then the other. Go back and forth.
• When your peers are discussing your essay, you should avoid over-talking and/or defending your draft; instead, take notes on their feedback. This step is important so that you can remember the advice you received later on when you are making your changes.  Often, good ideas come up in discussion that no one had written down in their advice to the writer.  Remember, you want to gain your group members’ perspectives, so be open to their suggestions and insights; later on, you can decide which to use in your revision.
• When your peers have finished going through their comments for you, then you may ask them questions to help focus your revision efforts or you may then respond to issues they brought up or misunderstandings they had. Ask them to clarify points they made or ask them about aspects of your essay that didn’t come up in discussion.
• In making your revisions for the final submission of your essay, you should consider the feedback from your peers. You’ll never be able to use all of the feedback you receive in your essay, but you should carefully weigh your options and use the suggestions that best help you fulfill the intended purpose of your essay.