Dear Brenna, March 6, 2006
After reading your essay The Lower Ninth Ward: Should It Be Rebuilt?, I feel well informed about the situation in New Orleans and the controversies within this community. I got a sense of the intricacies of this controversy, and I liked that you added your personal experience with the Ninth Ward issue. I also like your writing style; it is clear and concise and reflects the Style lessons. Although you used a clear writing style, some of your essay was confusing and made me do some guess work as a reader. You don’t have topic sentences for most of your paragraphs or transitions between paragraphs, so as I reader I had to play catch up and guess what was coming next. About your thesis, you didn’t state your purpose for writing but you did (and the other essays I read didn’t do this) explicitly state the controversy that you talk about in your essay. Nonetheless, you need to be bold and straight up state the purpose for writing. Your purpose is to provide an in depth examination of the communities and explore the controversies and the intricacies of the controversy. You did a good job of summarizing the key components of the controversy, but you need to add some sentences (or a paragraph) about the central areas of agreement and disagreement. For example: both this part of the community and this different part of the community agree that this should be done and why. Because of your personal experience with this controversy, as a reader I felt that you are credible and understand your controversy. I am glad that you don’t add your opinion; you stay unbiased and just explain that you do have some opinion. The main suggestion I have for your essay is that you really need to crack down on those topic sentences and transitions. I know it’s hard at the beginning stages, but definitely look at each paragraph, think about what you are trying to say, and sum that up in one sentence. Your quotes could use some more support, for example in some instances you leave a quote at the end of a sentence, bad! Your essay is exploratory rather than persuasive, but a little too much assessment rather than inquiry. You need to add some open ended questions. I feel like you’re too set in stone in this essay, and you’re not really looking for a conclusion.
Good job so far on your essay!
Sincerely,
Krista Speicher