Self Review

Essay Self Review Questions

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• • Due Monday by 11:59pm 
  • Points 15 
  • Submitting a text entry box or a file upload

Please answer the following in regards to your rough draft that you have submitted.  You are required to use full sentences and explain yourself a bit.  Extremely brief and lazy looking responses will receive points that are proportionate to that sort of response...you have been warned!

1. The thesis of a paper is its main purpose...what its comment is upon a particular topic, and/or what it is trying to convince the reader of with the presentation.  What, if anything, is your intended thesis in the paper you wrote/are writing?  If you do not have a thesis, what could it be for the topic that you chose to write upon?  Basically, what is your paper attempting to argue?  Remember, having a topic is not the same as making an argument!

2.  If you have a specific thesis in place already, did it help guide the content of your paper, paragraph by paragraph?  Explain how/how much it influenced your organization, planning, and writing of the body.  If you do not have a thesis in mind, but have a paper written, how much editing/reworking do you think you will need to do to the paper to make its content purposefully support a thesis?

3. If you have a specific thesis in mind, is it directly stated in the paper or is it implied?  If you do not have a thesis in mind, will you insert a specific, directly stated thesis, or rely on it being more implied?  Why do prefer it to be direct, or why do you prefer it to be implied?

4. Remember that descriptive details thing I had I you do near the beginning of the semester?  That was intended to help you slow down and get specific descriptive details into place when you write, because most people think they are being vivid and descriptive, but they are really not.  Does your paper include specific details to help the reader really "see" things in your discussion?  If so, what are some of the more vivid details you think will really "pop" for the reader?  If not, where could you insert more specific description?

5. How confident are you in the grammatical correctness and flow of reading in your paper?  What types of mechanical/grammatical issues tend to be your biggest problem/challenge?  Did you specifically look for these errors in your draft, so you can fix them?

6. Does your paper include direct quotes as support/part of the analysis?  If so, how confident are you in their smooth incorporation into the body of the paper?  If you do not have quotes in place yet, have you planned what/where they will go when you revise the paper?  In either case, how confident are you in proper MLA style citations for those quotes?  Do you know where to go for the proper formatting instructions, whether online or in a book, such as A Writer's Reference?

7. What do you feel your paper's greatest strength is at this point in its development?  Why?  Explain briefly.

8. What do you feel your paper's biggest potential weakness is at this point in its development?  Why?  Explain briefly.

9. Compared to the other papers you have written so far this semester,how do you feel this paper stacks up and why?  Is it better than the previous?  Weaker so far?  About the same?

10. Does your paper have a unique title yet?  If so, what is it and why did you choose that?  If not, what do you think the title will be, and why?

11. If you could have any one superpower, what would it be, and why? (Aren't I odd?)