English

Based on your pre-writing ideas, pick one of your topics and expand it into a draft.  Keep in mind that you need to have a clear thesis and three descriptors.  The essay should flow naturally from this structure (intro with thesis, point 1, 2, 3, conclusion) so that you are using the body to describe your topic in terms of the dominant impression that you are trying to create for the reader. Save your document as either a .doc or .docx (Word document) and upload it to this discussion board by attaching the document to your post.  Do this by Wednesday at 11:59 PM for half of your credit.

Then, by Sunday at 11:59 PM, you must give feedback to the person who posted before you on the discussion board.  If you were the first to post, wait until the deadline passes then give feedback to the last person to post.  This way, we ensure that everyone who posts by the deadline receives feedback from a peer.  If you miss the deadline, you are not guaranteed peer feedback and will not benefit from this crucial step.  Long story short….mind deadlines and respect your classmates’ time by getting your draft in by Wednesday!

In order to give feedback, download your peer’s document, use the Track Changes function in Word to offer specific feedback, save it again with a modified title (add “Revisions” to distinguish it from the original) then post it back to your peer’s thread in the discussion board.  There is also a "Descriptive Essay Peer Review Worksheet" in the link to this discussion board in Week 3.  This should be filled out and sent with your revisions as well.

It is extremely important that you give quality feedback to your partner.  In giving “quality” feedback, we should always strive to be constructive and respectful in our comments, but avoid simply saying, “Great job!..Looks good!...etc.”  In the “Start Here” folder of this course, there are two documents that help outline what it means to give effective feedback to a peer.  Both documents (“What to Look for When Editing” and “Questions to Ask When Reading”) will be used to assess the second half of your grade for this discussion board, but are great resources in this course and beyond.  Notice on “What to Look for When Editing” that there are “Big Picture” and “Sentence Level” concerns that you can report back to your partner.  On the first pass through, you should be primarily focused on “Big Picture” concerns to ensure that the elements of the essay are represented and in the correct order.  Then, you can turn to sentence level concerns.  Think about it…why would you agonize about if a comma should go here or there when the paragraph itself may need to be deleted or revised?  When you give feedback to your partner, feel free to point out sentence level errors that you may find.  However, your primary focus is to help them with the “Big Picture” ideas at this point.