Comments about Essay Two

COMPREHENSION: This writer barely makes a connection to MacGregor's article, and when he does, the references don't work to develop an appropriate response to the prompt.

ORGANIZATION: This essay is seriously flawed in organization. Rather than summarize MacGregor's point about air travel, the first two sentences (presented as a full paragraph) jump right into a misguided agreement with MacGregor on a topic on which the reader is uninformed. In fact, the reader appears to have only skimmed MacGregor's article, for the first sentence vaguely relates to the article and its subject. The frequent paragraph breaks reveal that the writer struggles with handling the topic and setting up an argument that presents main points in a logical order.

DEVELOPMENT: With the exception of one paragraph, all of the paragraphs consist of an average of three sentences, leaving little room for specific examples and details to prove the writer's assertions. Paragraph four does attempt some development with specifics, but the rest of the paragraphs remain a string of generalizations. A strong paragraph consists of a main point (a generalization), examples to prove that point, and a summary sentence to connect the examples to the essay's thesis as well as the paragraph's main point. Clearly, this writer's paragraphs don't support his ideas, nor could this support come through in a mere two to three sentences.

EXPRESSION: The essay shows acceptable language skills. The writer spells and punctuates correctly (with only some minor errors popping up) and develops a tone and voice toward the end of the essay. Sentence variety and combining could be improved, but this awkwardness on the sentence level is a result of the writer's struggle with the topic and the essay in general. This is a writer who didn't quite take the time to think about the topic and his approach to it.