Having read all the open response pieces for Fever Pitch, generally the second effort seemed to be significantly better than the first, regardless of what the scores might indicate. Overall, many of you are showing great signs of improvement, especially under time-pressured situations. However, there are a few of you who have exposed your lack of close reading and in a few instances lack of any reading.
Nevertheless, a few patterns are emerging related to crafting a thesis and overall development of the body. On the thesis front, there are improvements. Almost everyone is at least half way there. Some of you are getting significantly better at getting all the parts down and establishing a loose point while writing under pressure, which is laudable. In the timed open response format the thesis need not be perfect, but a number of you are pulling together a working version that guides the body of your response. The goal is to get everyone to that level.
Those of you that are faltering a bit still are doing so on two major fronts. One, many are still missing the inclusion of a point and settle for a broad topic sentence like statement, which doesn’t quite cut it as a thesis anymore. Two, when some of you have honed a point and establish a nice angle on the material, there is a lack of any indication of where you are headed in the body of the work. By declaring the elements with which you will be concerned you essentially begin to hint at the why and how of what is to come, also providing the reader with a preview. Usually it is item one or two that is the struggle. There are very few individuals that are missing both, which is definitely progress. We just have further to go. Most often prewriting will assist you in tackling these issues and can be crucial in pulling together a working thesis statement.
On the topic of prewriting, there simply is not enough evidence that people are actually doing it. Despite the limited time, engaging in some prewriting is actually significantly more efficient use of that time. It allows you to spill some beginning ideas down on the page, see them, and can assist you in the selection of your evidence. More importantly, it gets the wheels in your head turning and it not only opens the door to much better thesis development, it can become the foundation of some of your commentary and analysis, which is another area that needs improvement. Finally, it provides you with visual artifacts of your thinking, which helps you organize your thoughts when you begin the actual writing of your response. A number of you are gathering great evidence and making great connections, but the response is all over the place.
On the issue of developing commentary and analysis, almost everyone needs to push for more of it. Aside from sheer volume, it is the depth and detail of commentary and analysis that requires more of you. Almost everyone has mastered the English class gimmick of finding an array of quotes that will help you answer the question, but without real commentary and analysis on your part it remains just that, a formulaic gimmick. The quotes you choose will never make the case for you or completely support your claims. Only you can do it, by providing context and explanation to make sense of your chosen evidence. Don’t be in such a hurry to drop another quote into a paragraph. Examine the first piece of evidence you use fully. Look at all the implications that are suggested by that piece of evidence. Make sure that you are addressing the how and why it is important and relates to the overall point you are trying to support. Draw on your inferences from reading and make connections that demonstrate how deeply you understand the material and how to illuminate it.
Finally, I left more detailed feedback on the first of the two responses that you wrote. The second one is simply scored. The reason being, that while the second set was better, the same issues were generally present. I will review the scoring with you they are returned. Do not lose these pieces once they are returned to you. Also, review the individual comments. The one point you should all understand is that it is highly unlikely that you can achieve a five out of six in topic development, on the rubric, without a strong working thesis. This means that you need to solve the thesis issue to have a chance of getting an “A” on any of these kinds of assessments.