Classical Argument Structure

5

Providing feedback on classmates' rough drafts

You have begun (or are beginning) your work on your rough draft of your argument paper on whether or not college students should be required to take general education courses. What you will post for this assignment is the current status of your rough draft of your paper. The "rough" part is really important. The closer a paper is to a polished, finished copy, the less likely we are to make sweeping changes to it. Also, we're more likely to feel defensive when someone makes suggestions for revision when we feel like we've presented our best effort.

This means: No MLA formatting required at this point. Spelling and grammar errors are okay. You can leave big blocks of empty space with a note that says, "need to add more here" if you haven't gotten to it yet. You can use strikeouts, ask questions in the middle of your paper, use bold and highlighting so you know where you have concerns... there are no rules to what a rough draft can or can't look like! (Except that a rough draft should be in paragraph form, not a bulleted list/outline, and it should have the basic intro-body-conclusion organization we expect for an academic paper.)

Remember how I mentioned that your efforts in writing should be commensurate with the point values in the grading criteria? Here's the grading criteria for the final draft of this argument paper, again, for reference:

Introduction, including background and thesis statement – 20 points

Evidence – 40 points

Integration of assigned texts – 20 points

Acknowledgement and address of opposing views – 10 points

Academic voice/proper MLA formatting - 10 points

You need to decide which criterion (of the five listed above) you would like your classmates to help you improve for your paper. I recommend you do NOT pick MLA formatting - we haven't covered that directly yet, so your classmates might not be able to provide substantial feedback from that perspective. If you want to focus on the academic voice part of that criterion, that's fine. You will select one criterion for your classmates to focus on. You will post your rough draft (either copied and pasted in or as an attachment), you will identify which criterion you want feedback on, and you will ask one specific question of your classmates to give them a sense of the kind of feedback you're looking for.

Here are some sample questions related to the grading criteria (feel free to use one of these, or create your own):

Introduction:

Is my thesis statement in the best place in my introduction? Is there somewhere else I should move it so it will be more effective?

Is my position on the assigned prompt clear? How can I improve my language to better share my position?

Did I clearly share how the body of my paper will be organized? How can I make that clearer to my reader?

Evidence:

Do I provide sufficient rationale for my reasons (support) of my claim?

Can you tell what kind of evidence I used to support my position? How can I make that clearer?

Do I have enough evidence to support my position (on the page I shared)? What might improve my evidence?

Did I properly introduce my evidence? How can I improve upon that?

Integration of assigned texts:

Have I properly attributed outside sources?

Have I clearly marked where I've included others' ideas, either with attribution or quotation marks (as appropriate)?

Did I provide enough commentary connecting the outside sources to my position? What might I add or take out?

Opposition:

Have I properly acknowledged, accommodated, and refuted an opposing view?

How might I better integrate my address of the opposing view?

Do you have suggestions of other opposing views I might include?

Academic voice:

Have I avoided first (I) and second person (you)?

Have I avoided unnecessary contractions and colloquial language?

Is my voice powerful enough to be convincing? How might I improve that?