I’ve finally finished reviewing your Essay 1 Phase 2 drafts! I’ll likely finalize and upload the scores to your Gradebook on D2L by tonight, but I wanted to publish the feedback post as soon as possible, so we could talk about it in class tomorrow if need be.

So, to help you habituate the ability to identify and address issues in your own writing in the future, I’ve created this list of patterns I’ve noticed across all my classes. The idea is that you can practice figuring out what applies to you before reaching out to me for any needed clarification. The best way to use this list to revise is to go bullet point by bullet point: that is, read the first bullet point, then read your draft with that bullet point in mind to see if you can catch the issue on your own. If you locate it, address it. Then, repeat this process with the next bullet point, and the next, and the next. Don’t forget, if you need it, I’m here to help you during and after this process in one-on-one meetings. These are fairly common issues in early drafts in a first-year writing classroom, so don’t feel like you’re alone if you find your essay draft contains most of the items below!

For ease of revision, I’ve divided the feedback into 2 categories, higher-order and lower-order concerns:

  • Higher-Order Concerns (HOCs) include the most important material in your essay, the “big picture,” macro-level stuff: e.g., the controlling idea; specific connections to your community and the artifacts (words, phrases, values) you identify as exemplary of your claim; development of your explanation of the claim (i.e., “how do I know what I know?”); your analysis of each piece of evidence (i.e., lexis); and so on.
  • Lower-Order Concerns (LOCs) include the less important (but not unimportant!) stuff in your essay, like grammar and mechanics: e.g., spelling, fragments, run-ons, punctuation, sentence rhythm variation, word choice.

As an overarching comment, always make sure to follow the assignment directions. Our assignment guidelines always divide each essay into two parts: Phase 1, the controlling idea and planning stage; and Phase 2, an extended draft that builds on Phase 1 and brings it as close to completion as possible. This means that if you wrote Essay 2 instead of Essay 1, or if you didn’t include both narrative and analytical elements with an emphasis on the analytical, or if your evidence was tangential or unrelated to your claim, you’re likely to receive a “+” (Needs Work) score.

As a reminder, “+” scores can be changed if you revise your draft to satisfy the parameters of the assignment. You must meet with me to receive feedback and make these arrangements. I recommend completing your revisions within 1-2 weeks of our meeting, especially since resubmitting doesn’t guarantee a ★ (Parameters Met) score.

One final note on revision: You must make substantive changes (not just grammatical, formatting, or cosmetic fixes) to each phase of drafting. It’s unlikely that none of the comments below apply to you, and if they don’t, you can meet with me to determine your next move. Drafts that do not incorporate feedback in a substantive way will receive a Missed score and can’t be revised.

Now, without further ado, here are my observations, listed (sort of) in order of importance:

HOCs

  1. Introduction. Set up the situation you’ll be analyzing in your first 1-2 paragraphs so the reader can follow along: in other words, introduce your community and/or employ a narrative, in which you hone in on the specific aspect of language and culture you plan to address. (It might be a good idea to use the words you plan to analyze in the essay, so the reader can more easily follow along.)
  2. Controlling idea. Be as specific as you can be in the controlling idea paragraph. This includes explaining the exact, unique connection between language and culture on the subreddit, not just saying something like “The language is unique and helps people relate to each other” or “The subreddit uses language that outsiders wouldn’t understand.” One approach is to rewrite it a few times and try to be more specific each time. Make sure that the language you discuss in the body of the paper is set up clearly in your controlling idea paragraph (usually para. 1 or 2). Remember that it takes about ~5 sentences for the claim alone. This earlier post might help jog your memory if you forgot the criteria for a strong controlling idea.
  3. Change any templates you’re using. I provided you with templates for controlling ideas as this is our first essay, but you need to modify the language of those templates to match your voice and to fit with the actual claim you’re making. For instance, if you’re using a template about professionalized jargon but you’re talking about colloquial slang, the template doesn’t make sense–it becomes confusing and distracting for the reader, and does you a disservice by making your claim less clear.
  4. The communal/cultural values, attitudes, and/or beliefs are not the same thing as the subreddit’s topic. It’s self-evident that the community uses a language members understand to talk about their topic, so saying that weakens your claim. Get into the nitty gritty of how that language represents members’ shared values, attitudes, or ways of perceiving themselves in how they communicate about the topic.
  5. Analysis! In analyzing the units of language you select–and it may be best to quote from subreddit posts instead of just describing them, to make sure you’re engaging with the posts. Consider connotations, as words are rarely neutral. They may be gendered (e.g., “bro” or “lovely”), raced (e.g., AAVE appropriations like “chile”), classed (e.g., “y’all” or “that’ll learn ’em”), geographically specific (e.g., “brick”), or have connotations of courage or dedication (e.g., “Helljumper,” “do or die”), etc. They might have seemingly random connotations, like “trash talk” (which references garbage/waste), or have significance as abbreviations, acronyms, typos, or combined words, like “AFK” or “o7” or “OTP” or “Patrochilles,” which can signal efficiency and the prioritization of speed in communication, or the need for a secret code, or the normalization of a typo, or might reference pop culture media. Engage with the specifics of the words you choose: What are the cumulative connotations? What does it mean to abbreviate words as part of the daily language (a cultural premium placed on speed or efficiency)? It might also help to do some quantitative analysis, or counting the data: how many words are, for instance, physical words? How many are action words? Mental health words? Color words? If you’re pointing out patterns in two different sets of words, don’t forget that if the culture has more words in one set, it suggests the culture values that set more.
  6. Transition sentences. At this stage of drafting, it’s important to make sure that each paragraph signals a clear connection back to the controlling idea. Your reader will look for this connection early on in your paragraphs, perhaps in the first 2-3 sentences, so it’s a good idea to use the first 1-2 sentences of each paragraph to indicate how the content of that paragraph explores the subject of your claim. For example, if you’re claiming that abbreviations in a video game subreddit signal the need for speed in communication, something gamers might prioritize and value in certain games and therefore something central to a subset of gaming culture, then a paragraph explaining “AFK” should begin with a link to that claim–like, “AFK, ‘away from my keyboard,’ is a quicker way to signal that you’re briefly inactive in a group chat in a gaming session, so people don’t waste time continuing to talk to the gamer or rely on them for a particular action. An abbreviation like this is important because situations arise quickly both in gaming and in real life, so if a gamer has to attend to something fast they won’t disrupt the flow of gameplay for others as much if they quickly communicate their absence.”
  7. Paragraphing. In order to reach this level of analysis, and as a way to make sure you balance narrative/analysis, allot 1 paragraph at least for each word you analyze. (There’s no formula for this, so you might have to refine the following to match the content of your essay, but these paragraphs might look like this: Sentence 1 = Transition + Introduce Word + Connection to Claim. Sentences 2-3 = How does word demonstrate claim? Sentence 4 = Why was this word formed to replace old words, when old words might have done just as well? Sentence 5 = What value does the word illustrate? Sentence 6 = Transition to next paragraph.)
  8. Specificity. Avoid being too broad and general in your sub-claims and in your transition sentences—your “signposts,” the first and last sentences of each paragraph. If your claim is still too broad, or you don’t know what your claim should be, one approach might be to skim your paper for the most specific transition sentence you have and expand that sentence to be your primary claim. (It’s common for this to be towards the end of the essay, in what you think the “conclusion” is.) Avoid assertions about all of humanity, all of history, all discourse communities, all of your topic of interest, all of Reddit, and so on. Your specific claim must be visible in each paragraph, and the transition sentence is often a good place to do it.
  9. Balance narrative and analysis. Remember your focus is not on telling the entire history (rise and fall) of the community or telling me a 3 page story about something that occurred in the offline community (like a particular sports event or a concert), but on analyzing a particular value or goal determined by or illustrated through a subset of the language we came up with. Prioritize analysis over narrative. Similarly, avoid repeating parts of the narrative–if you’ve told it once, you just need to briefly reference it in a phrase if you talk about it later in the essay.
  10. Reasoning. Provide all the steps in your thinking. Ask yourself often, “How do I know what I know?” Asking it between sentences can sometimes help you figure out what logical steps or connections you haven’t yet provided to the reader. Use signal words, like “similarly,” “regardless,” “however,” “thus,” etc. to let the reader know what to expect.
  11. Organization. Organize paragraphs and sentences within paragraphs from most to least important. Your most exemplary evidence of your claim (i.e., word/value and analysis of it) should appear earlier in the essay. For paragraphs, try beginning with transition sentences (1-2) that indicate the connection between the paragraph and the claim. Either in the first or second sentence, try introducing the specific artifact (in this case, the word/phrase and/or value) you’ll be examining as part of your explanation of how you reached your claim. Then spend the paragraph interpreting the word/value and explaining how this interpretation led you to formulate the claim you made. Sometimes this is a matter of completely inverting the order of the paragraph; sometimes it’s a more delicate surgical rearrangement. In this stage of drafting/revising, avoid stream-of-consciousness writing.
  12. Necessary/Relevant Test. Is all the information you’re offering necessary and relevant to the claim? For the reader, if you’re listing different words or values without explicitly connecting them to the larger claim–e.g., “another word/phrase” or “a different value”–then the information feels unnecessary or irrelevant (at worst, I might ask you to cut pages, when the smaller fix is making sure your wording and transitions link the paragraph to the claim). The items you include should all pertain, always, to the central claim.
  13. Chekhov’s Gun Principle. Chekhov’s gun is a storytelling principle that basically tells us if you introduce a gun in the first act then the gun must go off in the third. Put differently, your reader will cling to every piece of information you introduce as necessary, and will ascribe importance to those details. If your claim is that an LGBTQ+ community uses a lot of water-based words and that the connotations reinforce members’ sense of fluidity, and then later on you say in passing that there’s an identity around colors, I’ll expect a full color-based analysis that ties back to the idea of water.
  14. Whether or not the community is great/you love the topic is irrelevant. You may love the subreddit you’re examining, and the subreddit itself might make you feel happy and enthusiastic about the topics of discussion, but make sure the focus is not on whether or not you love the subreddit’s topic, or if you think the community is great, as these are opinions that can’t be substantiated and don’t further an analysis of language and communal values.
  15. Condense. Condense paragraphs to allow for a 50/50 balance (or privilege the analysis part). If you don’t need sentences, cut them. Aim for minimalism and concision in academic writing. This means teaching yourself to identify the sentences that both sound the best and convey the most meaning, keeping those, and pruning the rest.

LOCs

  1. Word choice. Avoid opinionated or morality-based words like “good” or “bad” and words like “positive” and “negative,” which are difficult to substantiate and don’t specifically tell the reader what the words might connote or how the community views their values. Your reader may not share your moral compass, so stay aware of the fact that your audience consists of more than just you as you revise.
  2. Repetition. Avoid repeating narrative lines: select the best line and delete the other versions of it. Also, avoid repeating information that is unnecessary or irrelevant to your claim: e.g., repeatedly asserting communal identity (“This is a really welcoming community” or “This is the reason this community is so great”) without explaining or analyzing the particulars of that identity and its relationship to language is both repetitive and irrelevant to the claim. In those instances, cut all of it.
  3. Spelling, grammar, punctuation. In the final drafting and revision process, you should proofread for typos, misspelled words, punctuation errors. Semi-colons tend to be a major offender, so make sure that you aren’t using semi-colons where a colon or comma is more accurate. You may want to try reading your draft out loud, slowly, as you’ll naturally stumble when you hit a typo, a fragment, a run-on, or a missing word.
  4. Conclusions. You’ll need a conclusion for your formal draft in the Final Portfolio. It should be specific either to the claim you made–indicating further inquiry or research you could do if you had more space/time–or suggesting what lessons non-Redditors might learn from your analysis, about our languages, discourse communities, etc. Avoid generalizing about the world or even discourse communities as a broad category.