Qi sent me the first draft of her second paper on Sunday. I didn’t get her email until around midnight, but in class she explained that she had sent it around 5 and sent it again later when she didn’t get confirmation from me. I know she’s been experiencing a lot of problems with her Wellesley email, so I said this was fine. It was a very good first draft with one glaring problem – she laid out evidence about whether the government or the Federal Reserve should be blamed for the housing bubble, but her thesis didn’t appear until her last two paragraphs. The first thing I had her do in class was write her thesis statement and include it at the end of the first paragraph. She felt that her argument was disconnected from her introduction, which was largely background about the crisis itself. We added another sentence to make the transition a little bit more graceful, but I agreed that she did need to keep the background information in her introduction. I explained that while there was not yet any basis for the claim in her thesis, the statement works as a promise to the reader that she will explain and support her argument. In the rest of her paper, she had trouble staying in the past tense and made some unclear word choices. We pulled out and revised some sentences that used abstract words like “integrity” and “flexibility” to stand for complicated ideas that I only could understand from her writing after she explained them. I also suggested she add definitions for monetary and fiscal policy. Her final draft is due on Sunday, and then we will start in on her research paper.
Chloe’s Blog 4/6
Ashley sent me an outline on Sunday instead of a complete first draft. She had written two different ideas for organization, picked out important quotes and explained them. I emailed her back with my thoughts on the two ideas for structure and pulled out a sentence that I thought would make a good thesis. She rescheduled class from Tuesday to Thursday because she didn’t feel well. On Thursday, she hasn’t done much more of her draft, but had finalized which outline to use and had written one body paragraph. In class, I asked her to build on the sentence I pulled out and write a thesis statement. She wrote her topic sentences and her opening sentence as well, and I commented one each one as she finished. I suggested some revisions but for the most part, she expressed the ideas I was hoping she would. For the last part of class, we talked again about the importance of meeting deadlines to get credit for the course. We agreed on the following adjusted deadlines to make up for the time lost this week and to get started on the research paper:
Sunday, April 7th at 10pm: first draft of The Street paper and proposed topic for research paper
Sunday, April 14th at 10pm: final draft and research paper bibliography.
I also had her plan out the hours in her calendar that she would devote to finishing the first draft this week. She told me she understands the extra work that she’ll need to do in the next two weeks and the importance of meeting deadlines for the rest of the semester.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.