After going through the peer review process, it was evident that I needed to make some improvements for my final draft. One of which was that I needed to include more of my own personal opinions into my paper. I would introduce the thoughts of Carr, and my classmates, but I would rarely interject with how I agreed or disagreed with those ideas. Additionally, there were instances in my paper where I needed to improve the organization of my ideas. At times my paragraphs were just a bunch of words written on a page that didn’t exactly go together. I needed to make sure that someone reading my essay who hadn’t read Carr or my classmates’ writing would be able to understand my ideas. Moreover, there are writing techniques that we learned in “They Say I Say” that I could incorporate into the paper for the benefit of the reader. One example of where someone reading my pre-peer-review paper may have gotten lost is in my analysis of the quotes. I needed to add more summary of what Carr or my classmates were saying before I got into how that point relates to my thesis and main argument. One example of this that I ended up using often in my final draft is the barclays format. My peers accurately pointed out to me that I had too much repetition in my paragraphs. I would write about the same idea using different words too many times. Instead, I needed to cut some of those examples of repetition out of the paper, and add in some new ideas. Of course, my last step of revision was to go through my essay twice, proofreading it for any grammar or organization errors. Following that, I scanned through the MLA format of writing to make sure that I followed all of the requirements. Seeing these ways that I improved my writing is something that going forward I can incorporate into my essays every time I write. I’m constantly changing and improving as a writer, and the more I do it, with the more tips and suggestions I get, the better I will become.
