Byerly Journal 5/4/13

Maud, 5/4/13:

Maud wrote the first draft of her third paper for this week’s meeting. She had changed her thesis slightly after realizing that she did not have enough evidence to support the original thesis. The new thesis was well supported. The paper was clear and well organized, but she continues to struggle with topic sentences, specificity and clarity, and referring back to the thesis. I commented on the paper extensively and we spent the majority of the meeting discussing my comments. She understood my points and seems to know what to do to fix these problems in the future. I think that she was primarily working on the clarity of her argument in the first draft and was simply not as focused on the more ‘surface’ problems. We briefly discussed her final assignment. She is comfortable with the assignment, but had a few questions about the cover letter. She has not yet decided which paper to revise, but will decide after she has worked on paper three a bit more. Finally, I brought some examples of transition and topic sentences from my own papers because Maud struggled with transitions in this draft. We discussed how they did or did not work and I think that she found the exercise helpful. Maud will turn in the final draft of her third paper for next week’s meeting.

Haley, 5/4/13:

Haley wrote the second draft of her third paper for this week’s meeting. I commented upon it very lightly because I had made extensive comments on a weekend draft. I have been scaling back my comments on Haley’s later drafts because I want her to become more confident doing her own final edits and to become more trusting of her own reactions to her writing. She stated that she thought it was fine but that she was worried there were problems with it that she could not see (She was surprised by some of Lynne’s comments on a draft of an earlier paper.). I emphasized that I thought that it was a very solid paper, that she had improved in many areas, and that it could be a final draft. She will let it rest for a few days and turn in the final draft on Monday. We briefly discussed the final assignment; she feels comfortable with it and plans to finish it earlier than the due date. Because she felt comfortable with her third paper, we spent the rest of the meeting discussing a writing assignment for another class and a paper I had written for WRIT 125. The prompt for the writing assignment for the other class was written rather poorly; we spent some time discussing the prompt and ways it could be written more clearly. Haley read my WRIT 125 paper and suggested changes and revisions. Looking at another person’s writing helped her practice final-draft editing without emotional attachment or anxiety. It was also helpful for her to see that I made some of the same mistakes she makes and to see how they can confuse a reader (long, convoluted sentences; confusing thesis; too many transitional phrases and colons). Next week is our last meeting. I plan on discussing the progress she has made and possibly bringing some final, more “fun” writing activities. We may also briefly discuss the final assignment, as she will have started it by then and may have some questions.