Peer review screenshots:

Recursive Process: I have changed the way I revise things a little bit. Although I have not changed how I revise some aspects such as reorganization, adding new paragraphs or local changes, I have changed how I revise my introductions and my use of evidence with their explanations. In regards to my change in revising my introduction, I am now more conscious of stating my claim clearly and giving a brief explanation of the texts I will be using in my piece. In the first draft of my essay on the liberal arts, my introduction was quite short. I did not state my own ideas or claims in a clear manner and I never gave any brief background on the texts. This made my introduction rather useless as it really only stated the main topic of my essay instead of setting me up for the rest of the essay. In revisions I made sure to include some brief background on the texts I used and I made sure that I made my claim about liberal arts was stated clearly and could surely be identified as my personal claim. As for my revisions with evidence, I had to be sure I was using the best quotes for my claims and that I was explaining them well enough. For the most part I feel I chose the strongest quotes and explained them well but I have become more aware of double checking and making sure I didn’t use too much or too little of the quote.

Integrating Ideas: I had never focused too much on integrating others’ ideas into my own writing. I usually just summarized what they said and explained it a bit further. Now, I try to focus on how I can use their ideas to strengthen and develop my own claims. I have always been pretty good at challenging what some authors say, however now I have really honed in that skill. I have also gotten better at explaining what the author is saying and applying it to ideas and claims I have made or other authors have made. I was able to connect the information in UNE CAS student handbook with ideas brought forth by Scheuer and Ungar. Previously, I would not have been able to make such connections between the texts. One of my strongest connections of text was, “In the Core Handbook, under the Core Curriculum Objectives section, it states…Citizenship and creating well informed citizens is an important part of the liberal arts education that UNE is striving to fulfill”. Within this chunk of my essay I made good connections between all of the texts I used in the essay.

Document Work (MLA): I have never been very good at using in-text citations so I have improved greatly on that front. I have also been able to work on using more signal phrases to introduce a quote so as to not just drop them in. It is very important to make sure that the introductions of quotes show either who the quote is from or how it will be used. I think one thing I still need to improve upon is variations in signal phrasing. I tend to use the same safe sentence structures to do everything which makes the essay read more choppy and boring.