Paper #1 initial review.

1.      What was your main point (thesis)?  “The Moral of the Story”?

The main point of my paper was that with persistence the most unlikely challenges can be overcome. More precisely that I overcame an obstacle in my area of talent and thus it can be done.

2.      Who was your audience?  What did you assume about them?  What “audience needs” did you have to consider in writing the paper?  How did you tailor your writing to them?

My audience was my teacher, and to a lesser extent my fellow students. I assumed that they had no knowledge of my educational experience but that my teacher could appreciate my level of writing and the rest could use a dictionary, my words aren't that complicated. Audience need wise I concerned myself with ensuring an adequate amount of background information was inherent in my paper and so I tailored my paper to my audience by providing details of the scenes and people involved in my story that I otherwise wouldn't bother with.

3.      What feedback or reactions did you get at various times while composing this paper, and how was this helpful?  What other kinds of input or support did you get from classmates, teacher, tutors, others?  Were you able to make use of it?  How, or why not?

My teacher told me that I might need to focus in on parts of my essay to reduce the extraneous word count. I couldn't find anything major that was unimportant so I cut back on some of the extraneous background information. A classmate expressed confusion about my dialogue scene which I was able to clear up with use of italics to represent thoughts. My mother told me that the poem I opened it with as an example was a bit overdone, that I refused to change as I pointed out that it was meant to be over the top as it was an example of how ridiculous my essay writing was.

4.      What did you find interesting about the process you went through in writing this paper, and what did you learn from it?

I found it interesting just how many details I could remember and things I could relate to it. I learned that it can be necessary to cut back on supporting details when you have too many available, that you must pick and choose the most appropriate ones, one of the lines I cut involved my chemistry class.

5.      What questions do you have for me about the paper?  (What part(s) of the paper would you like me to focus on?  What do you see as the paper’s strengths, and what areas are you unsure of?)

I am concerned that my thesis is not as clear as it should be or poorly located. If you could focus on the conclusion I fear it may be inadequate. I am also unsure of whether my paragraphs should have been broken up into smaller paragraphs. I believe that my introduction was strong and that my overall story was well told.