(By the way, this is a late assignment for all you peer reviewers after 1/11/2014)
The prompt for the 2008 open question was to pick a piece which used a foil to emphasize aspects of the main character, and analyze how this relationship adds to the meaning of the piece.
Student 3A:
This student choose the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, a book I have heard of but am not familiar with, to analyze. The student's essay takes a considerable amount of paper, four pages total. Combine this with rather sophisticated and basic, straight-forward analysis, and there is little to be left out in this essay. It can be considered the basic model for a successful essay: a thesis and claim backed by plenty of well-written and analyzed evidence. This essay also ties the different pieces of evidence together rather nicely, which is definitely a plus, and concludes the entire essay with a paragraph which does a nice job of wrapping up the entire essay. As the essay grader states, the essay is "insightful and mature" and truly deserves the 8 it received.
Student 3B:
Student 3B, although not necessarily wrong at any point, cannot receive a high grade. Although there was not point in the essay that the writer demonstrated a lack of understanding of the prompt and the question that it had asked, the writer demonstrated a lack of understanding of how to write a suitable answer. The question of the prompt is never actually answered until the last few paragraphs where the writer gives a definitive stance on the foil in The Color Purple: the paragraphs prior where mostly plot summaries or had not true analysis of the selected piece. The grader gave the student a 6, but I believe that the student deserved the lower grade of 5.
Student 3 C:
If volume is any indication, this student did poorly. Very poorly indeed, with only about 1 and a quarter pages. Although a lack of volume should never be criticized (the Gettysburg Address was only about 270 words), the amount of literary analysis needed to properly answer the prompt suggests that the writer did not properly understand the prompt or back any claim made about the prompt. The actual text, once one musters the courage to read it, only serves to confirm such suspicions. Although the writer sets up two characters to contrast, any claim made by the student is worded in the most elementary and basic manner possible, with a complete absence of any sort of analysis or support. The grader gave this student a 4, which I believe is justified. Personally, however, I would give the essay a 3.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteYou give good analysis of the essays. Summary seems to be the common issue with the essays that get low scores.
For the last essay, the writing is not only basic, but the statements the writer makes are not truly supported by the text. Unless you read the book, you would not know that. There is an obvious foil pair in The Kite Runner, and the writer chose two characters that I would be reluctant to even call foils.
Because the essay is based off an idea/thesis that really is not well supported, the entire essay is poorly written. In order to answer the prompt properly, the writer must understand the literature they choose. This was the hard part for me when responding to a prompt in the blog post. I only had Hamlet on my mind, so I had to write about it. I would rather have written about something, like The Kite Runner, that I am very comfortable with.
Do you think an essay can go wrong just by choosing a certain literary piece to write about?
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI think you did a really nice job on this post! I think you were really thorough in your analysis, I usually like to add textual evidence because then it is more clear where and what exactly you are critiquing in the students essay but you did very good work without it as well. I definitely think some of the essays were not very well written and that the theme was most likely the root of the problems from the beginning. For essay two, I like how you said that the author did not have a good understanding of the prompt because that is also what I got from the essay as well. If the student does not even understand the prompt than then the essay is already doomed. Great post Andrew!
Hi Andrew,
ReplyDeleteOk, I know this post was late, but did you miss a post after this one? By now we are supposed to be doing the "Open Prompt Part Two" posts, where we actually respond to the prompts. Make sure you do that for the next one!
That being said, I really like this post! I agree with a lot of what you said in your critiques. I also used this set of essays for a post at one point, and I remember having a lot of issues with student 3B's essay. I'm glad that you thought it deserved a lower score as well -- I was kind of worried that I was being too harsh. I had a really hard time with its organization, especially the way that they spent so much time talking about Shug, who wasn't even a foil in the end. Like you said, the student really didn't understand the prompt.
I'm still confused as to whether this is the right post or not, but I like what you wrote. Nice job!