Revisions to my Power of Words essay

Ellis Orozco
English 4
December 18, 2008
How did you improve your lead-in to make it more interesting?
According to the feedback I got from my classmates I got the sense that they thought my lead-in was good at grabbing the audience and was interesting. I decided to leave it as is. The only thing I changed was making it a little more condensed.
How did you revise your thesis to make it more focused?
My thesis only needed more facts to support it. I feel that was the main reason that it seemed weak. I looked over it again and again trying to figure out what I could add or take away to make it better. I ended up just leaving it as is, but I added more facts in the body to make it more convincing and strong.
How did you improve the organization of your essay so that it made more sense logically and flowed better?
I had to read and re-read my essay numerous times to try and discover ways to make my essay flow more logically and with ease. I ended up moving one of my body paragraphs to the end because I felt it did a better job at summarizing the essay. As opposed to where I had it, which I felt only confused the reader.
How did you improve your use of transitions to help connect ideas for your reader?
With regards to my transitions I didn’t really pay that much attention, at first, because I try to make my paragraphs link naturally. This however, wasn’t a good system because I found myself just writing one paragraph then another, then I tried to read through it and it didn’t flow very smoothly. So, I took away some of the sentences that I had at the beginning of new paragraphs then tweaked them slightly so that everything was smooth and natural.
How did your improve your use of example? Why did you choose the examples you did? Why is this important to helping your audience understand your points?
In my original essay I had some really good examples, but I didn’t elaborate enough on them for it to be perfect. With this in mind, I went back and did a little more research so that my examples were well researched and detailed. I also added some material from a book I just read(Feed). This allowed me to add some good material that was relevant to the prompt. It is important to add well researched examples because you are trying to talk about a subject that not many people know about so you are their teacher in a sense.
Where in your essay did you expand on your analysis and explanations? How did you keep your audience in mind as you added more explanation? I expanded on practically every body paragraph by adding more examples and concrete details. I beefed up my conclusion by restating my thesis to remind the reader the purpose of writing the essay. To make sure my audience would be able to understand what I was saying I automatically assumed my audience didn’t know anything. I explained everything in detail.
How did you improve your outside sources? Why is it important to smoothly incorporate outside material instead of just dropping it in?
I found out through my many drafts that by simply dropping quotes and facts into an essay it doesn’t make it better just slightly more confusing and unclear. I found that if you have fewer more meaningful quotes it is better than a bunch that aren’t directly correlated. I added sentences that lead up to the quotes so that it sounds a lot more natural coming out.
Where in your essay did you improve on word choice or grammar? Why is this important to creating an effective essay?
I had too many examples to highlight where I changed my grammar and word choice. I read over my essay so many times and with each time I read it I discovered another word misspelled or placed. I had to do some tweaking to the essay in order to make the words fit and sound a lot nicer.