For the first part of class, Chimuanya and I discussed what direction her third essay would go in. She is very interested in the ideas presented by the film Waiting for Superman and wishes to explore them further. She has already started her research and found two sources that she wants to use. That means she needs one or two more. She will continue research and write an outline and annotated bibliography for the essay this week.
Secondly, we reviewed Essay 1 and 2. The majority of revising and editing had already been accomplished, but there were still some lingering awkward sentence structures and poor word choices that we worked on and ultimately improved. Chimuanya is making good progress.
Amy:
I was very pleased with Amy’s second-to-last draft! It was very well written and she did a great job analyzing her examples and quotes! I was so excited about it–she seemed to really put in a lot of effort. The main thing I focused on during our class was helping her figure out how to restructure everything so that the argument flowed nicely. She seemed to grasp what I was saying, so I am looking forward to the final draft. One technique I used was copy/pasting all of her topic sentences into another document so demonstrate the lack of “flow”–I told her that after she is done re-structuring, she should try doing this again to see the difference. I think she will have a much improved final draft.
Nhung:
I am also very happy with Nhung’s progress! The paper she turned into me was written in much clearer English–whether she put more time into it or is becoming a faster writer is still unclear–but I was very pleased. She used complex arguments and examples and generally did a good job. For her final paper, she will be writing about 5 pages, and her assignment is to read several articles about Facebook, Google, and recent laws in the EU and US regarding privacy and individual information. Ideally she will develop her own argument on the issue. During class, I gave her feedback on her most recent paper as well as a history paper she’s working on, and then we discussed her next assignment.