Comments to the Student for “Pot Legal” Essay

You have a good start and a very strong voice, but I am wondering who you are writing this essay to and why? Are you writing to Jim Gray or are you writing about Jim Gray? Why are you writing about Jim Gray? Are you trying to persuade an audience to vote for him? To not vote for him? Something else?

You essay can be more effective if you spend time thinking about the issues surrounding Jim Gray that are important to you and that you want to address in your essay. For example, you can make two columns on a sheet of paper and at the top of the first column write the word “positive”. Write the word “negative” for the second column. In the positive column, write down any aspects about Jim Gray that are positive. What has he done for the community and why is he a good person? Next in the negative column, write anything that is negative about Jim Gray. What has he done that you disagree with? You should be able to generate a short list for each aspect about Jim Gray and from this, you can develop two paragraphs. One paragraph would cover what he has done that is good for the city or people. The other paragraph covers what he has not done for the city or people. Then you can write a third paragraph that gives your audience a final summation about the strengths and weaknesses of Jim Gray.

My Rationale

Since the author has a lot of issues about this Jim Gray person but doesn’t clearly define the purpose for his missive, I think asking the student to take a moment and step back is a good choice. I am asking the  student to focus on 1) audience — who is the audience for this essay? 2) positive/negative aspects of the character — he may not have many positive and a lot of negative, but getting the student to see both sides of an issue is key to writing an effective persuasive argument, which it seems like he is trying to do; 3) my hope is that he will find some focus and stick to the main details about the character, stripping away the seemingly random and anecdotal elements. His argument will be stronger if he does this.

Comments to the student for “Weird Friday” Essay

It sounds like you had quite an interesting day but I am wondering what was weird for you about this day? Was it the sequence of events that was weird or was it an unusual day in some way? Was this day different from your usual routine? Perhaps if you compared a regular Friday with this particular Friday that you are writing about, you would help your audience to understand why the day was so memorable for you. It is also important to know who your audience is. Is your audience the instructor? The class? The world? What about your day would be of interest to these people?

You write in a very conversational style. It is OK to write some parts of your essay in this style, so that we can see you are talking to someone — like when you mom asks you if you want to go to the mall. However, most of the essay should be more descriptive and less like dialog or a conversation.

My Rationale

The student is telling a story in a very conversational way about an event that happened to him, but he is not having an impact on his audience. We cannot see why the day is weird for him because he hasn’t really told us anything. I am asking him to consider his audience as well as consider the day he is writing about. If the day was so weird, what can he tell us about this day that will help us to understand his point of view?