Suzana Brborovic Ms. Hofmann English 1102 21 April 2014 Dear Ms.

Hofmann, Throughout the semester we were instructed to give feedback to our peers about their writings. One of the many feedback posts I gave was for Stephanie Smith about her inquiry first draft. Here is just a little bit of it: Stephanie, reading you paper was very enjoyable for me. You have such an interesting topic that is something everyone wonders but no one takes the time to research. Throughout your paper you have solid evidence to back up every point that you make. Your introduction is very good and personal and the way you tie it back in the conclusion is very good. I had no idea that baseball season was so long and yet I consider myself a MLB fan. To be honest your paper is very good. I really liked Stephs paper and I was very happy that I was allowed to discuss her paper and give her feedback. Another person I gave feedback to was Samantha Street. Here is a piece of the feedback that I gave her Dear Sam, I thought your paper was very good overall. You had alot of personal aspect to it, which makes it good and personal. I really like that. At some parts I thought maybe you could go more into detail even have more concrete information to back up your opinion. Maybe add more examples or maybe even some student's opinions in there? Some people might actually find the SAT a great predictor. Ask them why they think this and maybe mention that in your paper. You structure is very good I can see your question very clearly throughout your writing. There are alot of places you say "students" and forget the apostrophe just make sure to go through and fix those error I did it for you when I was going through your paper. It seems that you are talking to a general audience, which is good but what if someone who did not know what the SAT was reading your paper? I think you could maybe define the SAT talk about what it stands for. Sams topic was very interesting to me and I thought she was doing a lot of good things with her. Her writing was clear and easy to understand. Finally a third time was when I gave someone feedback on their conclusion revisions. This is what I wrote for Regina: We think that your revised version of the conclusion is better than your original. It is shorter and gets your point across better, in our opinions. Make sure you go through your writing and proof read some parts. I like how you put your personal flare into the conclusion and show the gradual change of beer commercials not showing women as objects. Keep up the good work! I really liked her revision I thought it was a better ending for her paper. Throughout the semester we were also given feedback on our own work from our peers. On my inquiry paper I got comments from Ebone. She said she really liked my paper and told me to keep up the good work. I used her advice and continued to add my personal opinion and I also made sure to make my inquiry question well known. This is some of what Ebone commented: One thing that we like about your paper, is your connection to personal experiences related to your topic. With these personal experiences, you allow your readers to connect to the topic a lot easier. We also agree that you put in facts that also draw in your audience and keeps them engaged. It is a good start for only three pages so far, and as you continue remember to keep in mind that you are trying to answer your question through writing this paper. Another time we received comments when we revised our conclusions. Stephanie Smiths comment stood out to me. She told me that she actually liked my original conclusions because of the visual. It gave me a lot of ideas that I used when I revised my introduction. This is

what Stephanie said: We liked the imagery in the 1st conclusion. We can all relate to the extreme temptation of the pizza line. You also hit it home at the end by getting your purpose across to your readers. Great Job!!! In class we were asked numerous times to write about our progress or where we stood with our research and inquiry essay. Here are three samples that I have written throughout the semester. The first is towards the beginning of our inquiry writing when we were suppose to talk about sample questions that we had come up with to go with our topic. The second writing is when we were supposed to take out inquiry question and write it out in different ways to see what worked better. The third included in class writing is when we were asked to write about Bibliography. 1)My Current Topic: How is health and exercise affecting males and females in college? The best thing about this topic is that I have a real interest in it. I am very fascinated with exercising and the human body, which is why I am a Kinesiology major. The worst thing about this topic is finding a book on it. I searched the library database using all different types of keywords and combinations, but I could not find a single book that I thought would be helpful. I hope my peers can help me by suggesting where else to gather information or what exactly should I include to make this topic more interesting and attention grabbing. 2)-How is exercising and health in college different when it comes to males and females? -How is exercise and health viewed by different genders in college? -What is health like in college students? 3) -I am very satisfied with the time and effort that I have invested in searching for materials for this project. Before my Evaluative Bibliography, I was slacking on my research and did not really want to spend time looking up things. However as I was writing my Bibliography I started to get more and more into my research and found some very interesting sources. -I am very satisfied with my results due to my investment. If I had kept slacking I most likely would not have found all the necessary things I needed for my essay. However I invested my time and effort and I am very happy with the results. -I used citation machine to write my resource citations. I found the website very easy to use and I had no problem making my citations. -I am pretty satisfied with my write-ups for the five sources, but I know that I can do better. I need to go through my sources probably a few more times. My paragraphs are all pretty detailed especially my first paragraph that summarizes the source. -I feel like I am pretty prepared for writing the essay. I think if I start I would probably have trouble stopping because the information will just keep flowing. I would however like to find one more solid source because you can never have enough evidence and research. We were asked to do a lot of work outside of class this semester. I think that I put a significant amount of effort into everything that I do in or out of class. One thing we were asked to due was to construct an Evaluative Bibliography. This was one of my favorite assignments that weve had because I enjoy talking about my sources. I put in effort into but I found it quite easy to complete. I even revised it later and added a sixth source. Another assignment we were asked to complete was the Inquiry first draft. Honestly, in my first draft I did not do as much as I would usually do. It was only three pages long and there was a lot missing from it. Surprisingly, I got a lot of positive feedback and my peers encouraged me to keep writing. Even after my second and third revision I was not happy with my inquiry paper. I had to redo my introduction I few times because I never felt that it was good enough. I wanted something that really grabbed

the readers attention. The third thing that we did outside of class that I would like to discuss is my third revision of my inquiry that I just did today. I worked really hard on all my revisions and my biggest accomplishment was the introduction, which I completely rewrote. I would like to include my introduction: When I was in high school I never really worried about eating healthy or getting any type of exercise. My favorite thing was to go to sonic almost every other day after school and get a chocolate milkshake. Once I graduated I spent the summer in Europe with my family. The longer that I spent in Serbia, the more I realized how different everything was there. People had a different mind set when it came to eat properly. Home cooked meals were the norm there and there was no sonic to go to everyday. The food was prepared differently with more emphasis on vegetables and meat. I was so surprised that I spent the entire summer eating as much or more than I wanted and at the end I lost like 3 pounds. When I stepped onto the scale I was so shocked, but determined to keep this healthy weight loss trend going. Coming into freshman year, I decided that it was either now or never to change my habits. In my first semester of college, after healthy eating and exercise I lost almost ten pounds. This is what has sparked my interest in being healthy. I am curious as to how exercise and health affects other college students in my position. I thought that this final revision is my best work yet. I worked really hard to make it interesting and personal. I also made sure to make my inquiry question evident to the reader. One thing that Ballinger discusses is making sure to have a complementary research strategy. He says to make sure to have varied sources and quality information. He also states to have enough information in order to fully explore a narrow topic. I think these three things are the most important concepts when it comes to doing research and searching for information. Another thing I learned from Ballinger in Chapter 4 was that we should use case studies or interviews. This allows us to put people on the page and allows the reader to relate more to out papers. He also suggests using quotes in order to bring people onto the page. If I were to teach the class I would probably emphasize the same things that were emphasized throughout this semester. I would want everyone to make sure that his or her inquiry paper was very personal. I think the personal aspect of the inquiry is the most important thing. My portfolio is very good this semester. I made it very visually appealing to its viewers. It has all the different assignments that we were asked to include. I used like a tan color as my background because it was solid and allowed for a clear view of my writings. Everyone who has viewed my portfolio has said that it was really good. Everyone has talked about how it is easy to navigate and very clear. In all honesty, I had no problems making this E-portfolio since I learned all about them last semester. I decided to use the same program that I used last semester because I thought it would be easier than trying to learn a new program. The first question that I had was about the length of the inquiry, which I quickly found out was about 5-8 pages long. My second question was about different research methods and if there was one that was the best. I know now that there is no answer to this question because there are so many different research methods and not one is better than another. My last question was: How to keep my research paper from yes or no format. Luckily my inquiry was not at all in yes or no format. The way I wrote it first was very argumentative but after revising I think that it is better now. I think that I have managed to answer all the questions I had pretty well. Sincerely, Suzana Brborovic