To: Meera Patel
From: Sydney Dunn
Date: June 10th, 2020
Subject: Review of Definitions Assignment
I have been reading and reviewing your Unit 1:3 assignment for English 301 and have been thoroughly impressed with your work. I think you have done an excellent job of creating a clear definition of the word “Autarky” in all three definition formats and that they cater well to the reader/audience you have proposed. Here I have included some suggestions for revision:
Organization: In the expanded form of your definition you start very strong by explaining the origins of the word. However, the second paragraph and the connected visual feel far more complex compared to the rest of the definition. I think simply switching the position of this second paragraph with the third paragraph would help clarify this confusion. This way the reader has more detail about how an autarky functions before learning about the more complicated equilibrium.
Visuals/Image: I found it challenging to connect what the graph in your expanded definition was describing. Elaborating on your explanation of the equilibrium and giving more context to the image would help to make this more clear. Clarifying this section would also likely help to illustrate why an autarky is so difficult to accomplish successfully and therefore lead well into the provided example of North Korea’s economy.
Punctuation: There were a couple of sentences throughout the document which could use revision for smoother reading. An example would be the first sentence of the last paragraph in your expanded definition which reads “No country is completely autarkic unless, within a perfect economic model – the nearest real-world example remains North Korea.” Here the comma between “unless” and “within” interrupts the main point of the sentence. This could instead be divided into two separate sentences as “No country is completely autarkic unless it is within a perfect economic model” and “The nearest real-world example remains North Korea.”
I hope that you find these suggestions helpful as you revisit your definitions in the future. Overall I think you have successfully written for your selected audience and accomplished the objectives of the assignment. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions about the comments I have made.
(Original assignment: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-98a-2020sa/2020/06/05/assignment-13/)
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