Collaboration

This course helped me learn many new techniques of working together and editing other peer’s essays. We learned a variety of styles to edit papers. For example, we learned to break down each paragraph into the argument, support, evidence, and analysis for another person’s essay so they could evaluate whether or not their voice was in the essay; this was a particularly useful activity for me. We tried other types of editing as well such as discussion, taking notes on the essay, and craft critiques.
This was my first time doing a craft critique and also providing reviews for an essay in this way. The first part of the activity, which lead up to the craft critique, we were to read an essay and discuss what we thought about it as a group to the author of the essay. I believe that I participated a lot and had accurate observations as my group members also agreed with me on what needed to be fixed. I believe that I was able to provide helpful feedback on essays and other writing we did. When I reviewed an essay, I focused mainly on the ideas and whether or not they were well supported. I liked to ask “how do you know this?” and “so what?” to their statements so that they were able to add to the essay more not only in word count but strength and context. I was also able to refer my peers to websites or sources that I knew about that I felt would enhance their essay.
In terms of the craft critique, I believe that I was able to provide a more in depth review of my partner’s essay. In my opinion, it was less necessary to write about the good aspects of the essay, other than encouragement. I do not think we needed to have a whole section on it, but rather just say that a certain technique worked well. I focused mainly on the critique section and talked about elements to improve in the essay such as a better way to open the introduction.
Craft Critique
Journal 8/1