Notes on Sample Papers

Thank you all for  your comments on the sample papers, which I found very insightful. I wanted to write up some of the suggestions we discussed for revision based on the tendencies of the sample papers.

As you can see, Paper Z/A does something quite different from the other two, in part because it’s dealing with three texts instead of two. This example, not from my own class, shows the way that working with multiple texts forces you to move beyond comparison and contrast between others’ arguments and instead makes you place emphasis on using the texts as support for your own independent, original argument. I particularly like the way the example of the yogurt, for instance, doesn’t seem connected to the writer’s topic sentence except in the way that the author interprets its significance. It’s not an obvious connection, in other words, and is all the more interesting because of that.

Hopefully this exercise, along with peer review, has given you some direction for your own paper revisions. I’d also like to offer you a few suggestions based on what I’ve noticed from reading your rough drafts. Judging from your blog posts, it seems that a number of you have noticed a need to cut down on summary—I agree wholeheartedly. In many cases, students were summarizing the arguments of Johnson and Davidson before turning to their own claims, which is unnecessary. As someone pointed out in their comments on the sample papers, the A paper has a “captivating” argument, whereas the B paper’s thesis is somewhat obvious and/or broad. Given the amount of prefatory material that was in some papers, you might find it most effective to take the claims at the end of your paper and make them the starting point for a new, more specific thesis.

Another area that needs work in many of your papers is organization. As you can see from the sample papers, strong papers make connections within the paragraphs organized around a particular topic. Furthermore, Paper Z/A did not follow a formulaic structure, but instead changed the length and organization of paragraphs according to their role in the argument. As you go through your rough drafts, you should be isolating each paragraph and asking yourself, “what is my claim here?” If it’s a claim you develop in another paragraph, consider linking those paragraphs together. You can also try isolating your topic sentences and quotations from each paragraph in a separate document. Then, in a few sentences, explain why you need those quotations to support your topic sentence. Both of these techniques are a version of what’s called the “Post-Draft Outline.” We’ll have time to talk about it more in the future, but feel free to try it on your own for this paper.