My feedback for Terry’s marked first draft consisted mostly of pushing him to elaborate more on interesting ideas that he had brought up in his paper. I have noticed that as I have grown as a writer, I have started to pick up on dangling ideas that were left without a sufficient explanation. This was not always the case when I entered this class back in August and I am thankful that that ability has blossomed. I used to focus mainly on grammar and punctuation but not necessarily the quality of what was being written. Now thanks to Mrs. Emerson, I tend to look for the product itself and not just minor spelling errors. I truly benefited from our lessons with annotations and feel that my personal annotations have greatly improved. If you check out my page on annotations, you will see how they have improved. I now try to create a conversation with the author. For example, if you look at the third page of my annotations, you will find plenty of examples of that. One of them being “I hadn’t thought of it that way. Very thought provoking.” or “For sure! There has to be a balance with everything we do.” These annotations create a dialogue that helps get your mind flowing with ideas for your own writing.
