https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BydrCvQbOIepZU45aTFvQmtRTXVUVlJqQ09BXzI5dw
Cover Letter
I am still really iffy on this paper.. i think the word limit freaked me out a little bit. I feel as if i repeated a few of my thoughts too often. The basic gist of the paper however is: that for eternity, writing professionals have talked about how awful procrastination is, and that it is always always always harmful to your writing and your over all assignment. i do not agree with this claim, and that is what the paper is about. i want writing professionals to stop telling students to stop procrastinating, and start telling us how we can find out if we are in the group of people where procrastination would benefit us, and our writing. Like the past 3 papers, i really cannot tell if it is a ''good paper''. I know in my mind that all of my opinions and points in this paper are genuine and sincere, because essentially, the paper is about me and my road to finding my productive procrastinating-ness. And that is what is important to me, using my own experiences to benefit others writing and so my part to move the writing world along. I would like comments on the flow of the paper and if at any point i get off track/off subject at all. Thanks!
Happy week 10
-Katie
Katie,
ReplyDeleteSince I didn't get a chance to comment on your intro before you finished your paper, I wanted to give you a quick response to your draft to go along with your peer's response.
I really like your intro story, approach, and voice. The main problems I see are 1) confusion about how you are defining procrastination which make me think that you might want to first hedge more in the beginning (i.e. wait till later to firmly assert your thesis and instead suggest that perhaps writing instructors need to rethink their attitudes toward procrastination because, as it seems to be for you, it might actually be beneficial for some writers, second, you probably need to spend more time clearly differentiating early on between useful and not useful procrastination (i.e. have a "Now I'm not saying" moment where you clearly explain that your point isn't to validate all procrastination but to establish procrastination as a strategy that some writers can use to enrich their process—which is what I take your overall point to be.
The other main concern I have is the lack of a synthesis/writing studies conversation. Right now you are conversing with a general sense of what teachers teach based on your own experience, which is fine, but for an academic audience, you need to connect this with a conversation within the academic community, which clearly would be process. I think you definitely need to tie your story about procrastination to scholarly discussions of process (most of which, as Muriel Harris notes in her own synthesis, argue that all writers need to do extensive early writing and revise through multiple drafts). Muriel Harris herself provides not only a connection to an academic conversation but a foundation from which to extend your arguments.
You should also get ahold of some more process articles mentioned in Harris's study. Most importantly, I think you need to read and use Stephen Witte's "Pretext" article (not an exact title, but you should be able to find the citation at the end of Harris's article.
Tying your argument to an academic conversation and clarifying your conception of procrastination early on should flesh out the paper so you don't need to worry about the length.
The papers main point to me was that people need to stop putting such a negative name to procrastination because it is possible to use it to your own benefit.
ReplyDeleteI think that you have a very good idea and your thought process is working very well. I like the way the paper is about a personal experience for you that helps to make it very convincing. The paper meets basically all the requirements that were asked. A few things I had suggestions for were grouping different authors together with different views of the issue, and you didn't point out a gap so maybe after your story write a paragraph or two about different groups of research and point out the gap. I just made a few suggestions on how you could reword some sentences and some words that you might consider deleting at the beginnings of sentences. The things in blue I really like and the yellow is the things that I had some suggestions for rewords.All of the corrections are in a word document below. Overall I thought you did a very good job on this paper! Good work!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/84146585/Peer-Edit-Paper-4