Do you want me to give my opinion about the sports fanatics, or maybe the woman writing the essay? To me it sounds like she just needed to release a little steam about her husband, get it off her chest, and feel a little better when she pushed the send button. I can relate to the snakes, snails, and puppy dog tails essay though, she did a great job classifying men. Any woman who has spent any amount of time in the so called dating world should be able to relate to that one unless they are stuck in a rut and always pick the same type of man. I especially enjoyed her outro, she was kind to the guys who might be reading her essay and I hope she eventually found her perfect match.
Or should I comment about the structure of their essays, the nit picky stuff. I saw a few words spelled incorrectly, and some grammar issues, but no laws that I am sure I haven't broken myself. I will admit that I do have a small OCD problem when it pertains to spelling. It drives me absolutely insane to see that squiggly red line come up underneath a word that I have just written, and I will indulge in a verbal rambling of outrage if I observe a public sign with a simple spelling error.
Please don't take me wrong, I understand completely that you do no want to explain to us ( your students) what to write about, and I respect that. But, why do you ask for a reaction to other peoples essays before we write our own? Would it not be a better learning tool to ask for a reaction graf about our own writing? Personally, I have found that when I read another students essay about a topic that we are assigned, that my mind always seems to follow their topic, I have to turn my computer off, or start an assignment from another course before I can find my own essay topic.
Okay, Darcy, you've given me a worthy reaction graf--interesting, amusing, and flattering in equal parts, so I will come clean, be candid, and tell you honestly why reaction grafs exist. I will peel away the mask and show you the reality underneath!
ReplyDeleteI assign reaction grafs to the first few types of five-graf essays simply to try to get students to read samples and learn from them. If I just say, 'Read them,' I will get a much lower compliance rate than I will if I say, 'Read them and write a graf that is a small part of your final grade.'
Just a cheesy teacher trick!