General Comments on Student Essays
Posted: March 9, 2011 Filed under: Assignments, Helpful Tips Leave a comment »These comments may or may not apply to each of you, but I wanted to post them here so everyone would be on the same page.
1. Make sure that your paper is uploaded to Blackboard by 9:30am on the due date AND that you bring me a hard copy. This requirement appears on the assignment description. I was a little lenient for this first essay, but for the next assignments, your file must appear in both places to be considered complete.
2. I generally only correct grammar, style, usage, and punctuation on the first few pages. What you need to do is take that advice and apply it to the rest of the paper; this will help you improve your writing since it requires you to locate the problems yourself and figure out how to fix them. I can talk you through some of those issues, or you can take your work to the Writing Center, located on the second floor of the Psychology Building. UNC-Chapel Hill also has some articles that I highly recommend. Becoming a better writer takes practice and hard work, but it will pay off in the end! Don’t be afraid or embarrassed to ask for help, since I guarantee that every student in every major has something to work on in this respect.
3. Citations are NOT optional! Remember that even if you are just paraphrasing you still need to cite the source, even if it is not a direct quote.
4. Just because you are using a citation style that may be unfamiliar does not mean you should throw everything you know out the window. Just like in MLA format, when you use the Chicago style you need to cite every quotation, put quotation marks around any words that are not your own, etc. All of those requirements stay the same no matter what citation style you use; the MLA and Chicago styles have more similarities than differences. If you are still struggling with citations, please come see me and I can provide some advice and guidance.
5. Don’t forget about the “conventions of history” discussion we had earlier this semester, which included such advice as: 1) don’t use the first person, 2) avoid casual language, 3) write in the past tense when describing past events or people, etc. You read about this on pp. 22-30 of the course reader, so if you need to, go back through those few pages and refresh your memory.
