Journal 5/4

A note on final assignments –

I adapted the “Writer’s Manual” Assignment for both Ashley and Qi.  I eliminated the sections on personal voice (I haven’t talked about this much with either student), commas and punctuation (these are not major problems for them and could be covered in the grammar section) and unsupported statements (I think there’s some overlap with the sections on analysis and logical sentence sequence).  I added a section about the outlining process to each assignment.  For Qi, I also added a section on word choice and deleted the analytic passage section because her writing (about economics) leans mostly on the analysis of others.  For Ashley, I added a section on flowery language.

We reviewed Qi’s first draft in class on Monday.  It was very good overall, but she hadn’t seemed to have proofread very carefully, so I corrected small grammar errors once and asked that she find the others.  She had sent me some emails throughout the week about integrating her thesis statement into her introduction (something she’s had trouble with in the past) and I thought she was successful in the draft.  We spent some time on specific questions about my comments and some word choices.  I had her make a reverse outline, and then compare her intentions for each paragraph with what she wrote in her topic sentences.  I wanted her to focus on the last section of her paper, about Germany’s current role in the crisis, because it seemed somewhat arbitrarily divided into paragraphs, and she agreed that it could be better organized.  I gave her our final assignment and asked that she bring any questions about it to our last meeting on Monday, and she’s already turned in her final research paper draft early.

Ashley wasn’t feeling well at the beginning of the week so I agreed that we could postpone our meeting until Thursday.  She wrote a good first draft of her research paper, and had handwritten a very detailed outline to organize her outside resources.  She was concerned that the bulk of her paper was biography, overwhelming her analysis of the sculptures she outlined.  I had made a similar note in my comments, but also assured her that it was a research paper on Savage’s life as a whole and made suggestions to create a better balance.  I suggested that she might eliminate the biographical summary in her introduction that she explains in more depth later, and that she could add a paragraph specifically comparing the two sculptures.  We talked about reorganization and she brought up some points that she hadn’t written about but would work well in a comparison.  I highlighted some sentences that could be condensed or were repetitive but asked her to look for some places to condense on her own as well.  I gave her the final assignment and asked her to look it over for next class as well.  Her final research paper draft is due on Monday night.