The comments below reflect patterns across at least 90% of the entire class. Whether or not you receive individual comments on your essay draft, it’s likely that one of the tasks below is something you need to look for as you revise.
Focus on these suggestions as you work towards your second draft of the Critical Response Essay (due in the final portfolio). To begin to train yourself to be able to spot these issues on your own once the fall semester begins, I recommend going down the list one by one, first reading one bullet point, then double-checking your essay to see if it applies; then moving to the next bullet point, checking if it applies; and so on until you’re satisfied you’ve revised whatever needs revising from the list.
Bullet points are not necessarily listed in order of importance but claims, specificity, and uniqueness always come first. Always work on HOCs (higher-order concerns) before working on LOCs (lower-order concerns) when revising.
Begin revising with this list, and then work with whatever specific comments you received, if you received any (and remember, it doesn’t mean you’re a “bad writer” if you didn’t, your primary tasks are just listed below).
Finally, I regret that this must be said in today’s day and age, but I want to remind you that I am not critiquing your papers or making suggestions based on my belief system or how I view Young’s essay. My aim is to get you to more clearly and specifically articulate your interpretive stance about his piece, regardless of whether that stance reinforces and builds on his ideas or identifies gaps and offers an evidence-based critique. Regardless of your stance, if you support it solely with opinion or generalizations, or if what you say doesn’t make sense given other information (e.g., if you can engage with Young’s essay or if you accept that literature with dialects can be understood but say “no one will understand Young,” you need to be much more specific with what you mean or it seems like a broad generalization that doesn’t deeply, critically respond to his piece). I’m not here to force my beliefs on anyone; I am here to push you to strengthen your interpretive and explanatory writing skills.
HOCs
- Relate your claim early and keep it focused. Your claim will best serve you in the first or second paragraph, and it must differentiate your ideas from Young’s. If you’re saying exactly what he’s saying, or simply offering a new example that fits what he’s saying, you’re not yet bringing anything new/critical to the table. Make sure to consider how your claim is specific and unique. Ask questions like “what kind? how? why? who?” as much as possible. For instance, if you’re considering intersectionality in your claim, don’t forget that the axis of race encompasses many races; if you’re discussing the Core Curriculum, consider a particular course or type of canonical literature that will help you be more concrete in your paper. Make one thing your primary focus—e.g., race or wealth or LGBTQIA+ slang or cultural appropriation; or if you’re discussing how Young doesn’t offer too many concrete solutions, focus on 1-2 situations that demonstrate how unwieldy his proposition (as stated) might be Make sure your claim isn’t a fact, an unsubstantiated opinion, or a question but the answer to a series of questions.
- Your claim is at least one paragraph. It’s a good idea to signpost the tension or gap you notice in that paragraph by using a contradiction word, like while or however or although: this elevates your claim from a fact you observe (about an experience, about Young’s essay) to a fact you need to interpret in order to resolve a central issue, discrepancy, or problematic aspect. I like to place this contradiction at the end of my claim paragraph, so it’s the last thing in the reader’s mind for them to puzzle over along with me while they read my essay.
- If you summarize Young’s claim before your claim, make sure that your summary is brief. At this point the reader doesn’t know why they’re seeing that summary! Your claim is what will explain to them why you need to summarize it in detail in the first place.
- Your claim dictates the rest of your essay. If you begin with Core Curriculum, every paragraph should go back to that (and how you see Young’s arguments in it) very specifically. If you begin with Critical Race Theory, every paragraph must go back to that. Departing from your claim creates unnecessary tangents for the reader and should be removed to reduce confusion.
- Your essay should not simply summarize Young’s article.
- Your claim should be visible throughout your essay. Your paper explains how you reached your conclusion about the pattern, problem, or tension you noticed, so your claim should be evident in each paragraph.
- Keep Carillo’s models of writing in mind and respond to Young with his purpose in mind. Don’t impose what you would like to read or write onto Young’s purpose for writing. Remember that he’s writing a critical response to Fish, a genre which will necessarily constrain him. Ask yourself, within that genre’s constraints, what are the gaps that could logically, thoroughly be addressed, without straying from Young’s intended purpose in writing?
- Engaging with Young. After the inclusion of the modified summary that introduces Young, all your transition sentences around paragraphs engaging with Young should make very clear what your claim is and how the details from Young’s essay work with or apply to your claim. Otherwise, you’re just summarizing and restating Young’s ideas. Imagine that the first sentence of each paragraph is like an outline of your essay—your reader should be able to tell from those first lines only what your claim is and how your claim is explored and articulated using Young throughout your essay.
- Make sure to use words with appropriate meaning. Sometimes words that veer towards the more colorful or academic—like hegemony, ideology, autonomy, proliferate, multitudinous—-don’t have the connotation needed for the sentence you’re constructing. Double-check with a dictionary for every such word or better still, use plain language for your early drafts and then work on wording.
- Don’t just summarize and close read. Your goal isn’t to summarize different parts of Young’s essay, but to engage very closely with one or two aspects of it. To that end, you should never be saying “Another part of Young’s argument” or “Another example Young has”; instead, you should be doing close reading, engaging closely with the sentences in which Young states the ideas you want to examine/critique/add to. (Put differently, if you haven’t needed to cite specific pages, you haven’t been specific enough.) Any close reading you do is in service to your claim.
- On that note, make sure to do close reading.
- Keep your essay focused. Critical writing asks you to examine one thing very closely, instead of doing a “drive-by” of many different things, which doesn’t allow for a thorough exploration.
- Don’t cite Young’s examples or quote the material he quotes. You may use your own examples (i.e., an exhibit of some kind) but avoid using the same examples Young uses.
- If you use an exhibit, make it a unique one. Consider ways that your exhibit (e.g., the dialect or vernacular or aspect of writing or education you’re examining) is unique, meaning different from Young’s exhibit(s). For example, any exploration of Latinx language/slang must necessarily consider how the slang derives from a non-English language, unlike what Young contends about AAVE (which at its core is an English dialect); any discussion of Amharic or Bengali code-meshing should account for not only linguistic difference but also differences in social connotation (e.g., “the model minority” stereotype). Thus, any non-English slang is automatically different from what Young is suggesting, and non-English code-meshing forms are each distinct. Your job as a thinker and writer is to figure out what’s significant about your case study/dialect/slang, when seen through Young’s lens.
- Don’t begin with only a summary. Beginning with only a summary indicates to the reader that you’re about to launch into a “book report,” where you’re only summarizing and repeating the author’s points. This structure also encourages you to restate instead of articulate your own thoughts. Instead, begin with your claim, or an anecdote that you’re going to examine throughout the essay, if you have one.
- Re: anecdotes. If you include an anecdote, keep it brief and tell it as you might tell a friend: with specific details, specific dialogue (if it applies), specific descriptions. For example, telling me that “a teacher said things about the way I talked” is not as specific as telling me what was said.
- Don’t be prescriptive. As stated in one of the video lectures, avoid telling the reader something “should” change or “needs to” be different, or other kinds of vague gestures at taking material action. It isn’t persuasive without concrete suggestions, and concrete suggestions themselves often take multiple pages to be thoroughly realized. If you make a suggestion without providing well thought-out ways that change could occur, your reader may come away with the impression that your entire argument is hollow or “empty posturing.”
- If you propose something outside of the scope of Young’s original purpose—e.g., suggesting that he should have written a different genre of essay or that his focus should have been different—be prepared to write that essay yourself, since this was not his purpose in writing. In a sense, it’s not your purpose in responding—a critical response should begin by being generous and avoid focusing on “flaws” or “failings.” When you consider gaps or tensions, you should do so in a way that begins with and stays with Young’s claims and how he makes them with linguistic style and evidence, and where in the specific claim he’s delineating something is missing from the claim he’s making and the purpose he’s writing, OR how the argument could be extended by staying with the claims he’s making.
- Practice what we’ve learned. This one might seem self-evident, but when we draft quickly and anxiously, it’s easy to revert to previous habits instead of practicing new skills. A number of essays, for instance, reverted to the 5P model, the 1-sentence thesis, prescriptive “should” claims, claims based on “pure” opinion that can’t be substantiated, or summary of the text without a controlling idea. Consider what we’ve discussed in class, previous blog posts, and this post as you revise.
If you received a personal comment from me regarding your claim, you may need to refocus and/or rewrite your essay. Sometimes it’s easier to start from scratch, rework your claim, and then go paragraph by paragraph, retyping from the old draft, modifying to fit your claim as you retype.
LOCs
- Transitions. Make sure all transitions lead back to your claim, like a kind of roadmap.
- Language. Pare down your language. If jargon isn’t necessary, cut it. If the connotations of a fancy word aren’t accurate, revert to a simpler word. Simple, direct language is often better for an academic essay, whatever you’ve been trained to think about big words and long sentences.
- Shorter sentences. Keep your sentences under 3 lines long. Shorter sentences in a more active voice is easier for readers to understand.
