Preparation for Essay 2 - Evaluation of a Peer Critique

Dillon Waugh

Hayes

English 100 – 9:10

2/21/13

Word Count: 609

Peer Outline “Tracing” and Evaluation

Paragraph No.	Section	Content Notes
1	Intro - Overview	Introduces topic to which the three authors are responding, and their claims.
2	Intro - Thesis	Explains choice of preference for Wethal’s case.
3	Body	Centers on weakness of Weiss’s evidence.
4	Body	Explains that Linz detracts from his own argument with his evidence’s presentation.
5	Body	Contrasts Wethal’s evidence to Weiss’s and Linz’s – it is both clearly relevant and needn’t have its credibility overemphasized.
6	Body	Returns to Linz’s case, in which he shares data for but fails to refute the opposite side.
7	Body	Points to Wethal’s successful refutation.
8	Body	Notes that instead of nodding to any counterargument or data to contradict him, Weiss twists data in favor of his argument – he appears to view everything through a heavily tinted lens.
9	Conclusion	Wethal’s case is strong where the others’ are weak.

 

 

 

 

 

COMMENTS

Global:

-          Your critique is strong in its reasoning as it’s presented – of course, I’ve not read the three columns myself, but I suppose that aids objectivity! You likewise come off as objective by your evaluating the three columns with entirely different stances on the exact same merits.

-          Your writing voice in particular, I think, is solid, and it’ll be more clearly so with a bit of cleaning up on the “small picture” level.

Organizational:

-          Your flow suffers from the final paragraph returning to Weiss’s weaknesses – especially as you mention the same criterion that you use to compare Linz and Wethal’s writings immediately before. I would move that second-to-the-last paragraph in front of the one that returns to Linz to mirror the three paragraphs that come before - three paragraphs contrasting Weiss, Linz, and Wethal’s evidence and three paragraphs contrasting Weiss, Linz, and Wethal’s use of refutation. After doing so, I would tweak the beginnings of the Weiss and Linz refutation paragraphs so they don’t come off as redundant when put closer together.

-          Your two introductory paragraphs could be divided a bit differently – instead of ending the first paragraph with your evaluation of the three columnists’ arguments and elaborating on it in the next, that could all go together in the second paragraph, after your short summary of their thoughts on pornography.

Paragraph:

-          Although it would make sense to present perhaps one of your direct quotes from the columns the way that you do, I would think of how to shorten and integrate. For example, in the third paragraph, “…try to make sense of it: Weiss informs us that ‘Two thirds…’”

-          You had mentioned that you tend to have trouble with transitions that you’re really satisfied with – though I do think that your between-paragraph transitions could be smoother, it doesn’t show within paragraphs at all. Your train of thought runs more than smoothly enough.

Sentence Craft:

-          Apart from a few slip-ups in tense and punctuation (a couple spots where semicolons and commas are either not present but might help the paper read more naturally or seem superfluous, and another place where you can use colons), I think everything does its work at this scale, aside from one moment in the seventh paragraph – did you mean to say that Wethal points out that for those who regularly view illegal porn, crime is a part of everyday life?

Word Choice:

-          There are a few redundancies and spots where your wording could be strengthened, particularly when it comes to verbs, but apart from that, again, I wouldn’t say that anything’s urgently wrong!

-          Small two-letter-word mistake I’m certain you’ll catch but that I’ll include in case – in the third paragraph, you’d typed “the arguments on which the claim relies on.”