UPDATED: I will unfortunately be out again tomorrow (fever, chills, nausea, etc. Good times.). I wanted to give you all a few general notes before tomorrow's (today's?) LEQ writing.
1). READ THE QUESTION AND FIGURE OUT WHAT IT IS ASKING!!!!! On the first LEQ, far, far too many of you made your main points groups of people. The question didn't ask who experienced change, it asked how much and what kind of change. That means your main points AND counterpoint should have been specific categories of change or continuity (like political participation, economic opportunities, personal freedoms, etc.). Within the paragraphs then you would examine various groups of people in relation to those categories (example, personal freedoms would include evidence about the continuation of enslavement, women's roles being confined to the home in service of the family, Native Americans remaining separate nations and facing great loss of life and land, etc.) 2). Fewer of you had this problem, but... when I say you are writing one body paragraph, I don't mean the entire essay is one paragraph long. Imagine you are writing a full essay with an intro paragraph and one body paragraph for each main point, possibly another for counterpoint and conclusion. Instead of putting this entire essay on paper, you are giving me a "sample," one of the body paragraphs you would have written covering one of your main points. 3). Stay on topic and exclude details and historical anecdotes that don't serve to prove or explain your evidence for the main point of the paragraph. too many of you were listing so many facts, you filled your paragraph with details that had nothing to do with the question or the main point. 4). Flesh out and develop your arguments, i.e. write more... MANY of these paragraphs were just bare bones! You need to introduce a historical fact you want to use as evidence (1 sentence), then describe the important details related to that fact which help establish its historical significance (2 or more sentences), then finally explain clearly and explicitly HOW the evidence supports your thesis assertion (2 or more sentences, don't just say that it supports it, explain HOW). Doing this with 2-3 pieces of evidence per body paragraph plus your topic sentence and wrap-up sentence means you've got 12 sentences or so minimum, not the five or six most of you wrote. 5). Thesis statements are an "all or nothing" in the grading rubric. If your main points are not of the correct type to answer the question (see #1 above) or you don't have a specific counterpoint, you will not get the thesis point. This means the thesis is the MOST CRITICAL single sentence in your entire essay. Take the time to double check yourself that you got it right and did everything you need to do there. I hope this guidance will help you tomorrow/today! I'm sorry I can't be there with you! Remember, that writing last week was only 10% of the final grade on this assignment, so don't freak out if you messed up. Just use it as a learning experience to know what you need to do this time! To see your feedback from LEQ1a from last Friday, use the LINK HERE. -H Comments are closed.
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May 2020
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