Week 4

 

  • Week 4 Introduction

    week 4
    This week you focus on helping one another revise the first draft of the profile essay you each submitted last week and transform it into a polished final draft. As you each would appreciate the honest feedback of others about their perceptions of your draft–especially feedback that can help you fix what’s not working and make a stronger final draft and earn a higher grade–so be sure that you are as honest with others and not setting them up for failure by being too nice to point out what’s just not the way it should be yet.
    Please remember that ALL assignments for Week Four are due on Monday (of Week Five) before 8 a.m. (Central Time) unless noted otherwise below.

    How do you revise a good first draft into a great final draft of a profile essay?Inquiry Question

    OBJECTIVES: What You Will Achieve this Week
    course objectives
    By the end of this week of study, you should be able to do the following:
    1. Demonstrate skill in the use of commas and in avoiding run-on sentences, comma splices, and sentence fragments;
    2. Provide useful feedback to others about writing a successful profile essay;
    3. Incorporate feedback from others judiciously while revising a profile essay;
    4. Revise and polish the first draft of your profile essay.

    WEEKLY TO-DO LIST: What You Need to Do this Week
    WEEKLY TO-DO
    To meet these objectives, you are to complete the following tasks:
    1. Review documents and exercises in the Common Writing Concerns menu item about sentence structure, run-ons, comma splices, fragments, and commas;
    2. Provide feedback to others about the first drafts of their profile essays;
    3. Submit the final draft of your profile essay.

  • discussion board
    In Week 3 you submitted your first draft of the Profile Essay for peer review. Now you will return to the group and forum in which you posted the first draft of your profile essay and provide feedback. Please read through the drafts posted by every other group member and offer some constructive feedback about each draft, feedback that you think should help the writer craft a stronger essay, and earn a higher grade. When you are ready to begin, please click on the link/title above to access the group Discussion Board for the first draft of the profile essay.
    Requirements and Guidelines for Your Feedback:
    • Complete your feedback for your peers by no later than 8 a.m. (Central Time) on Friday of this week in order to give your classmates a chance to incorporate your feedback in revising their final drafts.
    • Your feedback for each draft should include responses to the two Questions for Peer Reviewers on page 130 (including all sub-questions) at a minimum.
      • You are not limited, however, to addressing these questions only. If you see something else about the essay that needs attention and that these questions do not touch on, please bring that something else to the writer’s attention.
      • Do not concern yourself with grammar or spelling or punctuation errors at this point. Everyone should fix mistakes in those areas before submitting the final draft, but you are not proofreading one another’s essays.
    • Be sure to provide feedback for ALL drafts (in your group discussion board) that were submitted by 8 a.m. (Central Time) on Wednesday of this week. (You can safely ignore any draft submitted after that day and time.)
    As long as you make one post about each group member’s draft that contains a thoughtful and substantive answer to both of the required peer review questions, including sub-questions, by the due date and time, you will have satisfied the requirements for this assignment. I would encourage you, however, to read the feedback that others have posted, too, and to offer a follow-up post if needed to voice a different opinion about something if you think your classmate has received the wrong advice. You should each take the feedback you receive seriously, but whether you act on the advice of others is still entirely up to you and your judgment about the validity and utility of the feedback you’ve received.