Comments about Essay Three

COMPREHENSION: While this writer demonstrates some understanding of MacGregor's article, she only makes limited use of it in developing her response.

ORGANIZATION: This essay's organization is problematic. The writer understands the article/author's main point and presents an argument in relation to that point, but that argument is awkward logically. The thesis divides one idea-we're too self-centered in our expectations-into three aspects to be developed. In essence, the author strives for a standard organizational strategy (the five-paragraph essay), yet doesn't have the points to develop and match that strategy.

DEVELOPMENT: The body paragraphs reveal that the author is struggling to fill the format stated above. The first paragraph lacks coherence in the first two sentences. The reader could work to make the three ideas work together a bit, but that is the job of the writer-not the reader. And the writer does attempt to connect them with some details but struggles. Also, note how those three ideas in the first two sentences of the paragraph echo the three-point thesis; this reveals a writer struggling for something to say and merely rewording the same ideas in his attempt to do so. The third and fourth paragraphs merely repeat rather than develop the writer's ideas.

EXPRESSION: Problems with word usage occur in a number of places: i.e. "to" for "too." A couple of other awkward and more obvious word usage problems are "making it our faults" and "the fault fall directly." As for the sentence structure and combining, the essay does use a variety of sentence types, yet the writer's punctuation of those sentences tends to err. Sentences are separated with commas--comma splices--and other awkward punctuation mistakes are made as well. Overall, "expression" is marginal as is organization and development, hence the score of "3" from both readers.