A strength of this essay is undeniably the personal connection and perspective brought into it. The author does a good job of making distinct connections between the personal narrative and debate of soylent as it should fit into our lives. The author also clearly integrates relevant quotes into their essay, using them not as substitution for their own ideas but as complimentary.
A weakness of this essay is in its explanations/support for the claims and lack of a clear organization. There are many spots where I would like to see an expansion of an idea. Firstly, in the second paragraph, the author makes the claim “soylent differs from food in the respect that its simply an eat or die mentality, rather than holding meanings and playing an important role in society like food does.” This claim could be strengthened by being more specific, and by following it up with a clear focus on what role food plays in society to show what soylent lacks. Other sections that could use more explanation are in the third paragraph after the author says “its important to understand exactly how much of an impact food and the business around it affects the way we live.” I think this could use more clarification; how does it affect the way we live? The author goes on to explain that in replacing food with soylent we would be losing extremely important values but doesn’t specify which ones, or why this would happen. So in general, the author is making relevant claims, but isn’t sufficiently expanding on them. As for organization, the introduction paragraph should be split up, and the quote should be put into the first paragraph. I think the opening claim about it not playing an important role would best be followed up by the paragraph ending with “it would rather inhibit people from maintaining values and social interactions, a key part of happiness.” I would think about reworking the title as well, does the title capture the essence of the essay in the best way? I would reframe these critiques simply by asking questions to expand the author’s perspective on their own work. What values do they think soylent couldn’t replace in daily life? What do they think would happen if people didn’t have those values, how would it impact society as it functions now?
Right off the bat this essay was pretty good, it covered the topic and got the job done. However putting on the editors cap we always talk about in class there were some few things we could do to the paper to clean it up. One of the first things (weaknesses) I noticed were the overuse of commas. That’s one thing I marked down quite a few times as I wrote up the paper and that’s a simple fix of just going back and reading to see if the comma is really necessary there or if you are just getting excited. Another little comment I have is that some of the sentences could either be reworded or cut out completely. For example the last chunk on the fourth page was something I had underlined and written as a reward. However most of these “errors” are very easy fixes that can be taken care of after reading the essay over a few more times, like most mistakes can be. Strengths of this essay were good use of personal experiences, and for the most part good analysis of quotes and readings throughout the paper. Overall, the format was good and it just seemed to be sentence level or grammatical errors.
I think that the overall message of this essay is very strong. It seems very well thought out and I liked how the student incorporated some personal stories and ideas into the paper. I think the student did a good job explaining the benefits that come from eating real food as well as explaining the benefits of Soylent that make it attractive to consumers. Overall, I think the argument was relayed to readers in a way that was easy to understand. However, I think some of the ideas that are mentioned in the paper could be expanded upon. The idea of Soylent having an economic effect was not entirely clear and I think the idea of people using it as a supplement when they cannot afford other foods could have been expanded more. Additionally, I think there are some areas of the paper that could be edited to make it more clear what the student was trying to say.
A strategy that I think would be helpful for revision would be to try to understand why the student wrote the paragraph or sentence when something is unclear. I think that would be a good way to figure out what the goal of the writing is and then we can work on trying to make it more clear on paper. Another tool I would suggest is to do some brainstorming about some of the ideas that don’t seem as developed. I think this would be beneficial because it would get a bunch of ideas out and then they can try to focus on expanding their thoughts about it and why it’s important to the paper’s message.
3 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 2”
A strength of this essay is undeniably the personal connection and perspective brought into it. The author does a good job of making distinct connections between the personal narrative and debate of soylent as it should fit into our lives. The author also clearly integrates relevant quotes into their essay, using them not as substitution for their own ideas but as complimentary.
A weakness of this essay is in its explanations/support for the claims and lack of a clear organization. There are many spots where I would like to see an expansion of an idea. Firstly, in the second paragraph, the author makes the claim “soylent differs from food in the respect that its simply an eat or die mentality, rather than holding meanings and playing an important role in society like food does.” This claim could be strengthened by being more specific, and by following it up with a clear focus on what role food plays in society to show what soylent lacks. Other sections that could use more explanation are in the third paragraph after the author says “its important to understand exactly how much of an impact food and the business around it affects the way we live.” I think this could use more clarification; how does it affect the way we live? The author goes on to explain that in replacing food with soylent we would be losing extremely important values but doesn’t specify which ones, or why this would happen. So in general, the author is making relevant claims, but isn’t sufficiently expanding on them. As for organization, the introduction paragraph should be split up, and the quote should be put into the first paragraph. I think the opening claim about it not playing an important role would best be followed up by the paragraph ending with “it would rather inhibit people from maintaining values and social interactions, a key part of happiness.” I would think about reworking the title as well, does the title capture the essence of the essay in the best way? I would reframe these critiques simply by asking questions to expand the author’s perspective on their own work. What values do they think soylent couldn’t replace in daily life? What do they think would happen if people didn’t have those values, how would it impact society as it functions now?
Right off the bat this essay was pretty good, it covered the topic and got the job done. However putting on the editors cap we always talk about in class there were some few things we could do to the paper to clean it up. One of the first things (weaknesses) I noticed were the overuse of commas. That’s one thing I marked down quite a few times as I wrote up the paper and that’s a simple fix of just going back and reading to see if the comma is really necessary there or if you are just getting excited. Another little comment I have is that some of the sentences could either be reworded or cut out completely. For example the last chunk on the fourth page was something I had underlined and written as a reward. However most of these “errors” are very easy fixes that can be taken care of after reading the essay over a few more times, like most mistakes can be. Strengths of this essay were good use of personal experiences, and for the most part good analysis of quotes and readings throughout the paper. Overall, the format was good and it just seemed to be sentence level or grammatical errors.
I think that the overall message of this essay is very strong. It seems very well thought out and I liked how the student incorporated some personal stories and ideas into the paper. I think the student did a good job explaining the benefits that come from eating real food as well as explaining the benefits of Soylent that make it attractive to consumers. Overall, I think the argument was relayed to readers in a way that was easy to understand. However, I think some of the ideas that are mentioned in the paper could be expanded upon. The idea of Soylent having an economic effect was not entirely clear and I think the idea of people using it as a supplement when they cannot afford other foods could have been expanded more. Additionally, I think there are some areas of the paper that could be edited to make it more clear what the student was trying to say.
A strategy that I think would be helpful for revision would be to try to understand why the student wrote the paragraph or sentence when something is unclear. I think that would be a good way to figure out what the goal of the writing is and then we can work on trying to make it more clear on paper. Another tool I would suggest is to do some brainstorming about some of the ideas that don’t seem as developed. I think this would be beneficial because it would get a bunch of ideas out and then they can try to focus on expanding their thoughts about it and why it’s important to the paper’s message.