What’s The Point?
Usually, before beginning an essay or a paper, you are asked to clearly state your “point”, “argument”, “position”, “purpose”, or “thesis” somewhere in the introduction. This “thesis” will basically outline everything that the rest of your paper will revolve around. In order to come up with a good thesis, there are several questions you must ask yourself. The first question is “what do you see?” This question will help you determine what your thesis will be focused on. It could be a word, a character, a theme, an object, an image, or anything that catches your attention. The second question is “what do you make of it?” This question will help you understand what you saw in the first question by determining how you feel on the topic. It will help you develop a personal opinion on the subject and expand the idea from there. The third question is “why does it matter?” This question will be the foundation of your paper and will determine what your whole paper will focus on answering or proving. It is also important to make sure that your thesis is not too simple or can be answered with a simple yes or no answer. It also should not be too broad or out of your ability to answer since the scope of it is too obscure. Questions that are too speculative should be avoided as well since those would be too difficult to provide supporting evidence for. Once all of these conditions are met, a suitable thesis should have been made.
Responding – Really Responding – to Other Students’ Writing
Peer editing another classmate’s paper can be challenging. In order to be a good responder and actually be able to give them constructive criticism, there are several factors that you have to consider when giving feedback. The first is that you can’t rewrite or edit any of their work, you are only allowed to give ideas and make suggestions since it is their paper and not yours. The second is to keep in mind what sort of assignment this paper is. Depending on the type of paper it is (personal essay, analysis, persuasive argument, etc), it should determine what kind of language the writer should use in their paper. The third is the writer’s interests or aims. This is basically what the writer wants to accomplish or prove when writing this paper. Depending on what their interests are, there should be several specific areas that they would want to focus their paper on. The fourth is what stage of drafting this paper is on. If it’s a first draft, then it’s fine if the paper is a little messy or unorganized because they will obviously be revising and rewriting the majority of it over again. If it’s a final draft, then it’s important to point out any small mistakes that you notice in their paper. Other important factors to keep in mind is that it’s always a good idea to make a few comments relating to the work that has already been done in class and to not sound too much like a critic.
Response
Overall, these two readings provide important insight on how to properly create a thesis and how to properly respond to another student’s writing as a peer editor. I learned a lot of different methods on how to create a suitable thesis statement/question and a lot of important techniques on how to phrase my comments when critiquing another student’s paper.