Term 2 Extra Credit

Eunice Lee

Tan

Term 2 Extra Credit

  During our Imperialism Essay Assignment, I completed 6 drafts. The sources of my feedback was from social study lab teachers, especially Ms. Bel. One of the common types of feedback that I received was that my topic sentences has confusing analysis. Another common feedback that I received was that I do have a an idea/argument, but the syntax and dictions are incomprehensible. Based on the feedbacks and suggestions, I eliminated words that were unnecessary and switched the syntax to make it coherent. After revision, I checked the social studies lab schedule for Ms. Bel, and visited when she was there to ask for another feedback on the weaknesses that she mentioned before. 

In order to prevent similar mistakes in my future writing, first, after I write a essay outline, I will try to ask myself if my topic sentences are argumentative and not factual,  even before writing down evidences and analysis. Secondly, I will read out loud to myself and if it sounds weird, I will edit it so that I can fix some parts by myself before asking other peer for feedback.

                 One of the example that I improved an aspect of my writing is from my Imperialism essay thesis. For the first draft of the thesis, although I had an idea about my argument, I could not think of the words to express my thought and was not sure how I should put it into a thesis that others can understand my point. This was my first draft of thesis: “Although European’s were justified to the extent that they altered inhumane tradition of the colonies in order to establish equality and justice, their contradictory assimilation was injustice without understanding of native’s culture, which destroyed their heritage and lives of the natives”. So, for this first draft,  I got a feedback that “contradictory assimilation” is confusing and unclear. Additionally, my thesis did not fully captured the arguments that I made in my three body paragraphs. After I told Ms.Bel that I was struggling to find a word that can describe the imperialist’s unjustified action to the natives that was contradictory to what they claimed to “help” the natives, she suggested the word “hypocritical”; and this was exactly the word that I wanted to describe the imperial powers in my argument. From that point, I edited my thesis with the new diction and changed my analysis(in thesis) based on my arguments from body paragraphs. After several visit to Ms.Bel and self-edit, my thesis became more coherent and relevant to my body paragraphs: “Although imperial powers attempted to establish equality and justice in the colonies’ traditions , their  hypocritical assimilation countered their stated goals, making it unjustifiable to the extent that it resulted destruction of culture and livelihood in colonies”. Although I still received a feedback that my thesis is a bit wordy and I still need to work on my sentences concise and coherent, I was pleased by the improvements that I made through my effort to seek for help from teachers and by myself.