TO: Bara’a Alabbas, Member of team The TechniWriters, English 301 99C course
FROM: Thu Vo, Member of team The TechniWriters, English 301 99C course T.V.
DATE: January 20, 2019
SUBJECT: 301 Peer Review, Assignment 1.3 Definitions for Bara’a Alabbas
I have reviewed the first draft of your Three Definitions Assignment for our English 301 course. Thank you for your good work! As I took a closer look at your work, I would like to offer the following suggestions that hopefully will help you improve upon your writing.
First impressions: Upon reading your work the first time, I got a good understanding of your term “synecdoche”. Your writing language was generally plain and simple, and the bolded title for each section helped me navigate through your writing very easily.
Audience: A major component of this assignment is to define a situation and an audience before clarifying your term, which will determine the level of technicality of your writing language. You have briefly mentioned this in your opening paragraph: “Outside of creative writing, however, most people are unfamiliar with the term”. I assume you wanted to address a non-technical audience with no background in creative writing, however this was quite vague. Does it mean your audience should not have taken any creative writing course? What if your audience has a basic English background and has encountered this term before? In any case, it is not ideal for the peer-reviewer to make their own assumptions while reading. I would suggest you elaborate on the situation and audience with a short paragraph right after your introduction.
As English is my second language and I have never encountered the term “synecdoche” before, I thoroughly enjoyed the simplicity in your writing language throughout this assignment. However, I would appreciate a more in-depth explanation of this term to be comfortable using it. For instance, you can focus more on how “synecdoche” can be use verbally in the Visual section. Another thing I would like to point out is the use of the word “stanza” in your parenthetical definition. Because I do not know this word, it was difficult for me to understand your parenthetical definition, which was supposed to be the least complicated and easiest to understand. I recommend using a more basic word that can give a better context to aid the understanding of your term.
Organization: You have done a great job in clarifying the expanded definition using four methods: Examples, Negation, Etymology and Visual. Regarding the order of these methods, I would suggest mentioning Etymology first, then perhaps Examples or Visual before Negation. I think it would be better to give your readers some general ideas such as the word’s origin first before going in depth in explaining the word. In my opinion, Negation should be mentioned last because here is where you introduced another term to your readers. By having it at the end, your readers should have a strong understanding of the original word already and they would be more comfortable with learning about a similar but different term.
Going in depth into each section, I was most impressed with your Negation and Etymology sections. They were very clear and to the point, your topic sentences were strong and your flow within each section was logical. The Examples section was very easy to understand, but without an introduction and conclusion, it was merely a list rather than a concise section of its own. I liked the image you chose for the Visual section and how you mentioned and explained it within the text. However, I felt like having an Examples section and a Visual section with some examples was a little repetitive. It might be a good idea to choose a different image that can expand your term more. Additionally, having a heading for your image would be helpful.
Punctuation: I noticed that there were a few punctuation errors in your writing. For example, in your parenthetical definition, there should not be a space in between “versa” and “)”. There was also an additional empty line between the Negation and Etymology sections. You also forgot some period marks at the end of your sentences in the Examples section. These errors did not affect your content, but I highly recommend you proof reading your work more carefully to spot errors and to make your writing more professional.
I hope my recommendations are helpful as you revise this assignment. You did a great job in explaining the term “synecdoche” to a non-technical reader like me using simple language and clearly defined sections throughout. Some changes in the flow of writing as well as expansion to what you have written would immensely elevate your writing. I cannot wait to see the final result! Please let me know if you have any questions or in need of clarification.
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