Natasha Snapper

Purple Block

Jan. 21st 2013

Term Two Extra Credit

          One of the formative assessments I completed this term was the Imperialism essay. During the process of writing this essay I revised multiple drafts. There was a total of about 6 drafts in this process. The first draft was an outline and a body paragraph. The second draft, was peer edited by my classmates. The third draft was edited by Ms Shapero. The fourth draft was one that I self edited, then revised. The fifth draft was edited by one of my peers and my dad. Then finally, I proof-read and printed my final draft. Later on, after getting back my essay, I did one final draft of a body paragraph.
           The most common types of feedback I received were times where I was redundant, wasn't specific enough, had awkward phrasing, or my analysis did not connect back to the question that I was aiming to answer. I addressed those common mistakes by going to the places where the feedback occurred and made sure I understood what I could improve on. Then, I went and revised the places where my essay needed revision and kept those recurring mistakes in mind, striving not to make them again. In my future writing I will keep in mind the common mistakes I usually make, and then go over my draft and make sure there are not places where I made those mistakes. I will re-read my essay out loud seeing if there is any awkward phrasing I can re-word. Also, I will go through each of my analyses and remind myself of the question I am aiming to answer, then making sure I am successfully answering it. Also, I will make sure there are no redundant words, phrases or sentences I could get rid of. Lastly, I will read my essay multiple times and make sure there aren't any places I could be more specific. In my drafts of my writing there were a lot of times I was not being specific on who I was talking about. There were multiple times I would be vague and say “Europeans” which confused many of the people who edited my writing. The first part where I made my writing more specific was when I changed “ although the Europeans changed many things..” to “ although the British changed tradition..”. This allowed the reader to understand exactly who I was talking about and what they specifically changed. Overall I thought the process of formative assessments results in improvements throughout my writing.