Gradatorium: How Did You Do?

How Did You Do?

Here’s how we would describe the work that the student has done in this paper:

The writer generates five full pages of organized paragraphs, uses relevant quotations from both essays at strategic places, and answers the assignment question while engaging actively with the texts. The occasional sentence-sense problems notwithstanding (on pages 1 and 3), the essay is very readable, engages complex ideas, and uses quotes fruitfully (as on page 2 with the analysis of “micromotives” and “macrobehavior”). She really hits her stride on pages 4 and 5, when she asserts her own position most clearly by addressing the control differences between the emergent systems in Johnson and memetic systems in Blackmore. This section is the highlight of her paper, and raises it above “C” level. All of these achievements, though some are more developed than others, qualify the paper for a “C+” in Basic Composition.

With more accurate analysis of quotation, and more attention to her own theory of systems and selves, this paper might, within one or two drafts, become a “B” or better. In terms of her quote-use, for example, the writer uses the word “combine” on the bottom of page 1 to describe Johnson’s theory of a “shift” from “the puppeteers behind the technology to the user.” This inexact word, “combine,” doesn’t do justice to Johnson’s emphasis on the shift of control, which is quite different from a combination of control.

Secondly, we’d like to see her central idea more consistently throughout the paper, starting from the beginning of the essay and following through to the end. That consistency is one of the primary markers of a “B” paper or stronger. She could achieve that consistency by introducing her position on centralized vs. decentralized systems within the first two paragraphs. Her section on this issue, beginning at the end of the third paragraph, initiates her strongest contribution to the discussion, with her claim that “society has been through a lot of change moving, through the years, from a centralized system to becoming a decentralized system.” By moving this claim to the introduction, she could give her paper a direction from the outset, a “point of departure,” and then use the body of the paper to demonstrate her clearly articulated position.

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