Please see the requirements in the picture and also respond to two of my classmates:
1. Hi everyone!
It was interesting to read other students essays and compare it with my own. One of the essays I was given was amazing and I unfortunately could not give any feedback for improvements, could also be because english is not my first language and that essay was beyond my english knowledge. After reviewing all the essays i I realized that they had some trouble with the MLA style, I would strongly recommend to view the sample essay from week 3 to understand how to make the paper look like a MLA paper. Content sources was also a problem, it needs to be credible sources and I recommend to use scholarly articles which can be found through the library database easily. A clearly stated working thesis was missing in some of the essays I was handed for peer reviews. The strengths about all the essays was that it was interesting topics and I it was explained how and why that particular topic was chosen. What I would suggest for everyone to do while doing any type of school project, always look at the instructions carefully and follow the rubrics if it is available.
After reading the essays I will take inspiration from the one essay that I thought was amazing and try to improve mine. I will have to improve my structure, my choice of words and to improve my working thesis. I feel confident with my MLA style after comparing with the other essays. I am excited to see what feedback I will get in order to learn more and change my essay to improve it. When I first stated this class I was nervous about my english but I can see already now in only 4 weeks that I have learned a lot and becoming much better in my writing. This makes me more confident about my english and since it is not my first language I am happy whenever I feel that I get better.
2. The predominant weaknesses I caught while reading the four peer essays assigned to me were minor but prevalent MLA issues, organizational issues for the essay as a whole, and on the sentence level, typos and awkward or incorrect phrasing. Some people felt the need to use excessively formal language, but then reverted to less formal, making for inconsistent voice and style. I probably do the same on occasion–it’s difficult to let go of the notion that “big words” equal good writing. On the other hand, as far as strengths, each person seemed to be passionate about the topic they’d chosen and seemed committed to it. Most were not far off from a polished final draft. Noticing organizational issues in other people’s work has made me more adept at recognizing it in my own.
As for my own essay, I’m hoping to receive my peer reviews before I set to work on my final draft. So far I haven’t received any. I’ve always relied on feedback from editors or fellow writers to improve my writing, and while I don’t accept everything that’s thrown at me, quite often I apply more than half, especially if numerous people are telling me similar things.
