What’s the Point?

Literally, what is the point of an essay, what is the thesis. It can be conceptualized as the main claim one is making in the paper. There’s some conventions behind it, but ultimately the only important things are its clarity and properly fitting the essay. In order to begin the process of developing a thesis one can start by questioning what should be answered by the paper. This questioning is flexible in nature and a gradual process starting from broad to narrow, wherein you finalize with a highly polished question from which the thesis is derived.

Responding—Really Responding—To Other Students’ Writing

Reviewing a peer’s work as a student is often a tricky thing. There’s a certain balance to be achieved if one wants to do so successfully, while avoiding faux pas’ such as hurting sensibilities. A good place to start is to gestate oneself as a friendly reader. This way one can avoid overly critical reactions, while still being able to give constructive feedback. Additionally, one should primarily focus on content, clarity, logic, etc vs pinpointing every single minor perceived fault. All in all, when critiquing a peer’s work, your goal should be to deliver clear, constructive feedback on aspects of the essay which are harder for an individual to assess themselves.

 

What’s the Point Summary

By using general ideas in the beginning and asking questions about what you see and why it is important, a thesis can be built. From using these general questions it builds a foundation for the main argument. In describing what is seen, various lenses can be used and initial description as well. The importance of the information being put into the thesis should follow. The thesis should also not be too simple or general because the more specific the main argument is, the clearer it will also seem.

Responding Summary

Before responding, the context of the piece should be taken into consideration and there should be an expectation of the piece. You should also have an initial goal of making the writers piece better than it was. The stage of the piece should also be taken into consideration as the piece might still be incomplete and not fully thought out. It is also important to not sound too critical but as a helper who’s giving constructive feedback to push the writer in the right direction. When writing feedback  and responding, you should be concise and thorough because the writer needs to fully understand how to better they’re writing and what to change. It is also good to give advice or even ask questions to show the writer what is unclear from a readers perspective.

This week’s readings were quite different to each other, while both still pertaining to the writing process. The first one, “What’s the Point?” By Daniel Hengel, touched up on what exactly a thesis is, including debunking popular myths about theses made throughout high school, such as the suggestion that the thesis is about one or two sentences long. Actually, the thesis might as well be the entire introductory paragraph, and it doesn’t have to be as clear many think. Hengel also reminds us that we should always double check out thesis statement after we’ve completed our writing, just in case the essay kind of drifted away from the thesis itself.
The next section, “Responding- Really Reasponding- To Other Students’ Writing” by Richatd Straub explains how peer review works, and how to correctly peer review. He even provides examples on what to say, and an example of an exemplary peer review of an essay. Some things he emphasizes in this section is that we should be down to earth with our peers when reviewing, give as much praise as we do criticism, and to go over our peers’ papers like a peer, and not a teacher. It really makes me start to think if Straub has a problem with the way teachers review their students’ papers, but then again, he’s prabably saying that in order to ensure that we review papers in a way that’s doesn’t seem aloof, which is totally understandable. I remember in high school, when I would get my essays back from teachers, and critisicms would be short and concise (something Straub warns us not to do), but also written in a way that make it awkward if I went to ask my teacher about it, and I think that that is what Straub is trying to prevent here.

To create a good thesis for a paper or any essay, first consider the thesis as a question. The thesis can be represented as the macro- question, or the main/major question, while each paragraph can have a micro-questions leading up to the macro question. Follow the three questions: “what do you see? What do you make of it? Why does it matter?” to create a good thesis. The thesis should not be able to be answered with just a yes or no, yet it can’t be too broad being subjective to each person’s opinion. The most important thing is that the thesis is the most crucial part of the essay and the rest of the paper should support the thesis. However, if the subsequent paragraphs don’t support the thesis, the thesis can be changed to be supported by the evidence.

When peer editing writing pieces, the reader should keep in mind that they are only one of many readers to the paper. Therefore, the peer editor should not be rewriting the paper on the writer’s behalf. When editing, provide constructive criticism that’s honest but not too harsh, give detailed comments of what needs to be fixed and give praise for good points in the writing.

Summary and Response to “Whats the Point”

This text starts off explaining to the reader what a thesis is. The author states that it is the answer to a question youve raised about the topic. The thesis is the controlling idea of your paper. Its like the question you want to answer about your entire topic. The author then goes into explaining how he starts thinking about a thesis: where do you start? This article is beneficial to students who are having difficultly starting a paper, focusing on which specific question to ask. The most interesting part of this text was when he explained a thesis as a “macro-question.” Then he said all the little questions you use to help answer this were the “micro-questions.” I thought this was an extremely beneficial way of looking at a thesis because it doesnt make it too scary, it no longer becoming the make or break of your paper. With this ideology you can take a micro-question that you found extremely helpful and expand on it.

Summary and Response to “Responding…”

This text basically raises a bunch of questions about how to respond to a peers writing when editing it. The types of ideas that are talked about are “how you get started, how much to comment, how much criticism,” and many more. This text gives a quick look to students who actually want to help there peers and give them good feedback that they can use to better their paper. My favorite part of this text was the section titled, “How much should you be influenced by what you know about the writer?” I found this section extremely interesting because it said if the writer was being arrogant you should challenge the person ideas even more to make them have questions about the paper.

What’s the Point- Summary

What is really misunderstood about a thesis statement is that it is considered as the “answer” to one’s question. While, on the contrary, it really is the question that is answered by one’s essay, which is “so what?” David Hengel describes the thesis as the “macro-question” and the small little questions that help in answering the macro-question as the “micro-question” (also called the “controlling ideas” of the body paragraphs). Certain things to keep in mind is that this macro-question should not be a straightforward yes or no question or too extensive to answer. Also, it shouldn’t be focusing primarily on speculations. Lastly, a thesis statement should be flexible to change and shouldn’t be written in stone which is why one should thoroughly think of it before proposing his/her thesis.

Responding—Really Responding—To Other Students’ Writing– Summary

When offering a response to a peer’s paper, it is essential that you know who you are and never cross the line of being a peer editor. What you see is what you can suggest. It is neither good nor wise to force your ideas on your friend. All you can do is make suggestions and comments to his writing in a very respectful, encouraging and friendly manner that doesn’t make him doubt himself as a writer and leave the freedom of listening to your advice to him. But at the same time, this doesn’t mean at all that you should just sugar coat your opinion to not make him feel bad about the weaknesses of his writing. A good peer editor would not only praise and encourage the good parts of his friends writing while pointing out the bad ones, but he will also push his friend in exploring and widening the boundaries of his analysis.

Response

These two readings are extremely important considering our upcoming analysis paper. The first reading helped me in understanding the requirements that should be met to develop a clear and concise thesis statement. Not only will this make me write my paper more smoothly and coherently, but also help me map my thoughts in a more systematic manner. The second reading focused on responding to others papers rather than your own. I learned many different things about peer editing that I was a bit naive about previously such as being honest and pointing out the mistakes of your friend can save his grade instead of being nice to him and not telling him where his inaccuracies lie.

What’s the Point?

In this reading, David Hengel tries to reframe readers’ understanding of a thesis. He acknowledges that coming up with one or two statements that declare what your entire essay is about can be intimidating. Instead, a thesis can appear as more of a question. Even from there, thinking of a singular question to write an essay on can be a challenge, so it would be helpful to break it up into smaller questions. The three main questions a writer should focus on are as follows: What do you see? What do you make of it? Why does it matter? What you see should always be something meaningful, it should elicit some sort of response from you. What you make of it can be extremely helpful to form your thesis and often does result in operating as the claim of your essay. Why it matters is the key. It is the writer’s interpretation and is what gives insight to readers. It should be an original idea and reflect the writer’s own way of thinking. Hengel then goes on to mention the thesis question should not be too simple, broad, or speculative. It should not be a yes-or-no question or too reliant on opinion while also being specific. A thesis can appear anywhere in an essay. It needs to be concise and articulate. A writer’s thesis also usually may change throughout their writing since essays evolve as we write them.

I found Hengel’s approach to theses interesting. Throughout middle school and high school you’re always taught the thesis needs to be usually just one statement towards the end of the introduction that sums up what the whole essay will be about. It can be challenging to come up with the perfect claim to write about. I think posing the main point as a question seems like a much more helpful approach, both to the writer and reader, as it can give a more in-depth depiction of the writer’s thinking process. Also, I support the idea that the thesis doesn’t need to be in the first paragraph of a paper. Sometimes further context needs to be given, or maybe several other points need to be made before a writer can establish their main point.

Responding- Really Responding- to Other Students’ Writing

Most writing students have given a peer review, but not all manage to give thorough one. Peer reviews should be more than a simple grammar check. They should give insight to the writer and be a very useful tool when composing a new draft. As a reviewer, your main goal isn’t to criticize every little thing about like a cold editor. You should be speaking as more of a friend and giving insight to the writer. Report what you got from the text. When reviewing you can feel free to write notes on the margins of the paper or all as a separate note at the end. You should always address the most important issues of the paper. Smaller errors can be discussed some other time. Comments are essential to the peer review and should not be held back. They are meant to be thoughtful and detailed to fully articulate your thought to the writer. It’s also ideal to offer similar amounts of praise and criticism. Just like how a writer needs to be told what they’re doing wrong, it can also steer them in the right direction to tell them what they’re doing right.

This text seems useful and worth a read for any writing student. Although peer reviews are common, it’s usually not explained how to do them efficiently. The author really goes in-depth and gives some insight as to what a peer review should contain and mean to the writer. I like how the author frames that the review should basically be a report, almost an analysis of what the paper conveys to readers and how it manages to do so.

What’s the Point?

Author Daniel Hengel begins his argument by simply stating what he believes is the legitimate way to analyze and interpret a text. The idea of “asking questions of the texts” and he stresses the importance of needing to have some sort of claim called the thesis. The questions he gives are very accurate pertaining to most people that are conducting a similar sort of analysis paper. The ideal question that everyone most likely has is “Where do You Start?”, in which he provides three steps to apply to this question in order to structure your essay. The thesis is arguably the most important part of the paper, basically because it states the claim that you are taking and will provide evidence for throughout the body of the essay. Hengel urges to ask yourself “What do you see?”, “What do you Make of It?”, and “Why does it Matter?” By completing this task, it will ultimately provide a simple, yet accurate foundation for you to develop a thesis.

 

Responding-Really Responding to Other Students’ Writing

 

According to Richard Straub, the idea of discussing ideas amongst peers and reading each others’ work can be very beneficial towards both yourself and the writer as well. The ultimate goal when reading someone else’s paper is to take ideas from their writing, give them tips on what they could possibly do better, and point out their strengths and weaknesses regarding structure of their essay. It is not always good to be “short and sweet” with your comments, sometimes the writer truly needs that criticism on their work in order to fully develop themselves to become an overall better writer and not simply for that specific paper.

What’s the Point?
Sometimes, trying to write a thesis may be a daunting task, but it shouldn’t be too hard. Daniel Hengel suggests to think of it as a “macro-question” that will be answered with the help of “micro-questions” in the body. There are three steps to formulating a good thesis: identify something that stands out to you, form your own ideas about the text, and explain the importance of the text. Once you’ve completed those steps, you may be satisfied with your thesis, or you can change it multiple times to make sure that it isn’t too general or unanswerable. With lots of careful thought, creating a thesis can be easy.

Response:

David Hengel gave useful tips on how to create a thesis. With how it lets readers know what you’ll be talking about in an essay, the thesis is essential for establishing that idea in a sentence or a few. I think it’s also important to know that, like how a draft will be revised multiple times, it’s okay to have your thesis undergo multiple changes before you settle on the perfect one.

Responding – Really Responding – to Other Student’s Writing
When reading and commenting on a writer’s work, you shouldn’t focus too much on the technical writing stuff, such as spelling or grammar mistakes. Instead, it is important to give feedback on how the writer can improve on the content of his or her work. While keeping in mind of the goals of the writing assignment, the ideas that the writer wishes to portray, and the personality of the writer, you can form comments that would be beneficial to the writer. Whether they’re positive or negative, your feedback becomes valuable when you mean what you say and say it in a friendly manner.  For writers, editing their own work can be done quickly, but improving their ideas can’t be done without the help of readers’ responses.

Response:

This text gave us some great advice on how we can respond well to other writers’ work. Most of the time, we may feel inclined to correct spelling and grammar mistakes, but providing our opinions and asking questions about the work can be greatly beneficial for the writer. We should also be careful of how we give our comments to prevent the writer’s unique voice from being meshed or replaced with our own.

“What’s the Point?” Daniel Hengel (pgs 28-33)

Daniel Hengel’s “What’s the Point” deconstructs analysis and introduces a different interpretation of how to begin writing a thesis. Hengel institutes analysis as a intellectual curiosity about a texts that subsequently leads to the asking of questions. This initial process of  inquiries goes something like this: initial interpretation, identification, discussion, importance, extension, and reduction, These inquiries, completely subjective on both individual and text, eventually composes as a prefatory mental argument, or thesis. Although this does not have to be the structure of your thesis writing program, Hengel adds, it allows new trails of thought and experience as we write. In my own writing, a thesis often comes the moment I finish a text thanks to natural opinionated thinking that the public school system developed.Both importance and extension can take my thesis further and allow for a more complex analysis.

 

“Responding—Really Responding—To Other Students’ Writing,” Richard Straub (pgs 104-114)

In the interest of giving a meaningful peer review, Richard Strab lays out a checklist on getting started. Straub begins with thinking on the assignments purpose, content, and limitations followed by the writers interest and purpose. Something to also keep in mind when responding to a classmates writing is the substance of the work in class. Whether the work focuses on detail, developing arguments, or any other writing lessons, it is a big help to keep that classmate responsible for tying his work with these concepts and strategies. The content and level of your criticism should match the laud you are able to give. In a general sense, giving a constructive response requires you to approach the writing with both support and assessment.