I hope our week of analyzing effective essays has helped you think about your controlled research paper and identify some strategies that you can use to strengthen your arguments. If you’ve been keeping up with my advice throughout this week, at this point you have the makings of a rough draft for your essay.
Next week, we will focus on revising those drafts into polished essays. In order to give you the time you need to complete your essay, I am not assigning any other readings next week. Hence, all of your energies for this class should be focused on your essay. Here’s how we’ll spend our time in class:
- On Monday, you should come to class with three printed copies of your draft. You will work with one of these copies in class, and the other two will be used for a peer review activity with your peers. Your draft might not be polished, but it should be complete (i.e., 1200–1500 words, with at least four sources). Our review activities next week depend on everyone being prepared, so I’m giving you fair warning right now: If you come to class without three printed copies of your paper, you will receive no credit for Monday’s activity or Wednesday’s activity.
- On Wednesday, will will complete the peer review activity that we started on Monday. Again, it is essential that everyone comes to class prepared, and we’ll discuss exactly what that means on Monday.
- I will be attending an academic conference on Friday, so we will not meet as a class. Please note that this does not mean you have nothing to do while I’m gone. I strongly encourage you to work with your classmates to complete a final round of editing and proofreading sometime before Monday, November 1, when your essays are due.
One final reminder: If you would like to submit a revised version of your Annotated Bibliography for re-evaluation, you must complete the revision process in Google Docs and send me an email before 1:00 p.m. on Friday, October 29, notifying me that your bibliography is ready to be evaluated.