Essay Guideline

Often students are asked to review their peers essays and term papers. Why? This is a learning process for both the writer and readers in many ways. First, it gives the writer a real audience and a chance to hear what others think about their essay. Readers can say what they like and dislike about the essay. It gives the student a chance to make corrections before the instructor sees the essay. The reader can point out different mistakes and make suggestions about the essay or research paper. It is important for the student to remember that not all suggestions have to be accepted. Good peer review takes time and effort. It is important to begin the essay early so the reviewer has time to review it properly. The purpose of peer reviews is to improve editing skills and have someone point out the strengths and weaknesses of an essay.

Students who review the works of others are benefited by learning how to read essays with a critical mind. Students who critique others learn to critique their own work. This is beneficial as they learn to read and search for mistakes they see in essays by other students.

Often instructors distribute suggestions and questions to search for while reviewing essays of students. Here are some suggested questions for peer reviewing:

- What is the main idea?

- What is the thesis? Is the thesis in the first paragraph? Is the thesis clear?

- Is a hook used in the first paragraph? What type of hook?

- Does the essay support the thesis? What types of evidence is used? Does the evidence have relevance? Does the evidence have credibility?

- Is the essay organized? Why? Why not?

- Look at each paragraph and see if the main idea supports the thesis.

- Is the essay too wordy?

- Is there supporting evidence for each of the main topic sentences?

- Are transitions used between paragraphs?

- What are the main strengths of the essay?

- What are the weaknesses?

- Are any of the words spelled incorrectly?

- Check the grammar and punctuation.

Use specific words to describe the problems in the essay. What needs to be changed? What can be added to make a better essay? When you finish reading the essay do you have questions? Write these down. If you had problems understanding a point jot this down in the margin of the essay. Let the writer know what you like about the essay.

While it is important to note changes that need to be made on the essay, it is also important to be positive. What did you like about the essay? What were the strengths of the essay? Did you like the hook? Think about positive comments to make about the essay even if you think it is the worse essay that you have ever read. It is also important to use negative comments even if it is your best friend who wrote the essay. Remember any comments you make may make a difference in the final essay and the grade the student makes on the essay. Failing to be honest about the essay can hurt the writer. In fact, professional writers usually have a critique group review their articles and they want the truth because editors often “reject” an article for mistakes. While teachers may not reject the article, they may give the student a bad grade. Think of honest comments and be objective.

Peer reviews are important because students doing the peer reviews learn how to be more objective about their essays. Peer reviews help students to get a better grade because they can rewrite their custom essays and term papers. Remember to be honest, objective, and kind.

Tamara Olsa is a professional academic writer and editor at CustomPapers.com.

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Every year ordering custom essays becomes more popular among students. Many potential clients consider using custom writing services because it saves their time, helps them to concentrate on their favorite subjects and offers more opportunities for personal development allowing active involvement in interesting activities besides studies. One of our writers decided to conduct research on different approaches to essay writing. He recorded the story of his friend who shared with him his experience of writing an essay for his English Literature class: During my sophomore year at high school I was assigned to write an argumentative essay on any topic. I showed the first draft of the essay to my teacher. He read it carefully and then said, “This essay is not what I want.” I felt disappointed and angry at the same time. What’s wrong with my essay? Why didn’t he explain?

I came home and decided to read it again. The first thing that I noticed was the introduction that didn’t catch attention of the readers. My essay was about gender inequalities and employment. I started with describing historical events related to gender issues and illustrating some facts which did not explain the topic of my essay. Therefore, I revised the introductory paragraph of the essay providing striking statistics about progression of gender inequalities for certain job positions. The introduction became interesting to read because the facts in the introductory part of my essay were taken from sources which were difficult to access and not actively “advertised”. Because of the uniqueness of the introduction readers were easily involved into the process of reading the essay; their desire was driven by their curiosity in further development of my arguments.

However, my introduction was still not perfect. The next element that I had to revise was my thesis statement. Thesis helps a reader to focus on the main point that a writer is going to prove by his/her essay. It may seem easy because before writing an essay you record your central idea immediately and then collect information and build your writing process in accordance with the main idea. Nevertheless, the thesis statement that you have in your mind may not be persuasive in written form. It is essential to remember that your thesis statement is not a summary of the essay that you were assigned to write. On the contrary, it is your standpoint on the chosen topic. Thus, it should include your own opinion, the opposite point of view and the summary of supportive facts which will be presented further in the essay. The question is how to fit all those elements into one sentence of your thesis statement. It may take quite a long time. However, if you manage to write strong thesis statement you’ll succeed in presenting the complex idea of your essay using simple text. It does not mean using simple vocabulary; it rather means developing more persuasive arguments and making your essay easier to read. The thesis statement in my essay was: “According to sociological research, in multinational companies women have fewer opportunities than men to be hired for managerial positions.”

I thought it was a perfect thesis statement; however, it was absolutely unacceptable. To begin with, the thesis statement of my essay was biased because it did not reflect the point of view of the opposite party. Besides, the main points which support the idea of the essay were not summarized in the thesis statement. Thus, I revised the thesis sentence and wrote the following:

“Even though some researchers believe that the new perception of the role of women in modern society established equal opportunities for men and women, psychological indicators and sociological findings demonstrate that women have fewer opportunities to be hired for managerial positions in multinational companies.”

At last I finished my work on the thesis statement! The writing process went smoothly. I already had the structure of the essay in my head. First, I recorded the first sentences which explained the central idea of each paragraph in the main body of the essay. Later I reorganized my notes which I took while reading useful literature on my topic and supplied each paragraph with the evidence that supported my arguments.

In the conclusion, I summarized the key points and restated the thesis. I showed the second draft to my teacher and his only comment was, “I’m glad that you learnt how to write an essay.”

Probably this story will remind you your personal experience of learning how to write essays. The story is interesting because this student discovered himself those mistakes that he made while writing the first draft of his essay. His knowledge came from practice. He was able to write a good essay but he would spend less time on his improvement if he did research and used online guides on writing essays.

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Today, the internet has become an integral part of our lives. It is easy and at the same time very convenient to use many on-line services and access valuable information that would otherwise be very hard to get without the Internet. There are thousands of on-line businesses that offer unique services. You can get assistance from a certified accountant in the confines of your home and, just as easily, you can find tons of information on Plato, not to mention checking your credit rating on-line. The Internet is here to make our lives easier. Yet, I want to tell you that convenience is not always good for a person.

Let me give you a short example. I choose to type google.com on my keyboard and enter a keyword custom essay in the search string. I instantly get dozens of sites that specialize in custom writing and research. This is a tempting service that is being offered to students nowadays. Imaging you have a large assignment in college, however, you just don’t feel like doing it yourself. No problem at all. If you have a credit card with some money on it and access to the internet, you can consider your project done. I click on one of the sites that pop up on the screen, essaymart.com. What I see is an attractive web page that not only offers access to thousands of prewritten papers but also provides customized papers for a fee. Essaymart.com seems to brag about its writers, Ph. D and Master’s level professionals who can handle any topic. These guys guarantee that their writing is 100% free of plagiarism and is fully authentic. Moreover, your project can be done in as early as 24 hours for as low as $24.95 per page. Not too bad if you are in a rush and need urgent assistance.

I go to urgentpapers.com. Here we are offered a very similar service package: authenticity, free outline, abstract, bibliography, guaranteed deadlines and free e-mail delivery. Moreover, these guys can handle your order in as early as 12 hours. Another site I checked, essaymania.com offers a similar service but charges twice as much for 3 day delivery ($22.95 as opposed to $13.95 per page at essaymart.com or urgentpapers.com).

Everything seems just perfect. Now you really don’t need to spend so much time studying and can order everything on-line. However, you cannot purchase experience or skills that easily. It does not take long for one to realize that anyone soliciting the services of such sites involuntarily engages in cheating. Even though the sites publish a disclaimer, like the essaymart.com’s disclaimer from essaymart.com where they try to take all the associated responsibility off their shoulders and relay it to the one who uses their services, I find that attempt pretty cheap. It is very much like a drug dealer who sells crack to kids and explains that drugs are bad.

I did not personally try the services of the aforementioned sites and, therefore, cannot testify about the quality of writing they do, however, I just think that one does not have to go that far. I just want to convince the audience that the services of such sites are of questionable value. If you order your term paper from, say, essaymart.com you officially acknowledge that the $35,000 you or your family spent on your education was a waste, because having someone else write your paper will not make you any smarter. Yet, you are the one to make a choice.

Nicholas Zimmerman is an associate professor of Theology at Tulane University, New Orleans. His interests include new technologies, the Internet, fishing and hiking.

Prior consent to publish the article was obtained from:
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