Essay Comment Sheet
Use the numbered comments below to make the necessary corrections to your essay.
1. Please check or add a hook. Remember, an essay should open up in a way that grabs your reader’s attention, a hook. An effective hook will be connected to your essay’s thesis. Avoid using questions. Some examples of effective hooks are famous quotes, a fact related to your thesis, a powerful statement related to your thesis, or a quote from the story/novel itself. If you take a quote from somewhere else, be sure to give credit to the source.
2. Title (Titles of novels are underlined only; titles of short stories are placed inside quotation marks only)? Author? Genre? The TAG should not be its own sentence; rather, it should be connected to the summary of the novel or the bridge between the hook and the summary.
3. Include a brief summary of the story or novel. The summary should not summarize the entire story, rather, it should give an overall idea of the story’s plot. For example, The Three Little Pigs tells the story of an evil wolf and the pigs who try to outsmart him.
4. Clarify or strengthen your thesis. A thesis is what you are proving in your essay and should be an opinion that you can support with evidence from the story/novel. The thesis should directly answer the question posed in the prompt.
5. Clarify or add subpoints. The subpoints are categories that support your thesis and act as a map for organizing your essay and help your reader to follow the development of your thesis. You will then dedicate one body paragraph to supporting each of the subpoints in the order they appear in your introduction. All subpoints should match one another in format. For example, if you are using places as subpoints, all subpoints should be places; if you are using characters, all should be characters.
6. Improve or add a topic sentence. A strong topic sentence will re-introduce the subpoint and tie it back to the essay’s thesis. For example, if the thesis of the essay claims that Johnny is an unexpected hero and the first subpoint is that Johnny overcomes his fears, an effective topic sentence may say: Johnny stands out as an unexpected hero because he overcomes his fears.
7. Improve or add a lead-in. An effective lead-in will tell what is happening in the story/poem right where the quote appears, while tying the quote to the subpoint and thesis. All lead-ins should end with a colon and come immediately before the Concrete Detail. Sometimes more than one sentence is necessary for the quote to be properly introduced. For example, Napoleon induces much fear in the animals when he threatens the hens by forcing them to:
8. Be sure to follow appropriate punctuation when including quotations from the book. Here is the appropriate format: “xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx “ (page). Note, there is no period inside the quotation. The period comes after the page number in parenthesis, thus, ending the sentence.
9. If you are including dialogue inside of a quote from a book, the quotation marks inside the dialogue are changed into apostrophes. For example: “’xxxx,’ he said, ‘xxxx’” (page).
10. Make sure your CD (quotation/piece of evidence) truly matches your subpoint and thesis. This one doesn’t. Go back and see if you can find one that better supports your argument. The best CDs will make a strong statement in support of your thesis and will not have an unclear connection to the thesis.
11. You should have at least two sentences of commentary after each quotation mark. Remember: 1CD:2CM. Go back and add at least one more sentence here to explain how the CD displays your thesis.
12. This commentary doesn’t match the quotation and is off-topic. Be sure your commentary truly matches the content of the quotation and links that quotation back to the topic of the paragraph and the essay’s thesis.
13. Please improve this piece of commentary. Keep what you have, but try to push your ideas one or two steps further. Strong commentary will explain the significance of the quotation and always tie it back to the essay’s thesis. Also, remember that commentary does not summarize what the quote says or what’s happening in the story at the time; rather, it explains what the evidence proves--how it proves your thesis. Try thinking questions like: How does this prove the thesis? So what? Why? Because? Answering these will help you to write strong commentary.
14. Be sure to include a transition word here. Examples are:Therefore, for example, in fact, of course, for instance, as a result, moreover, however, consequently, for this reason, at last, eventually, finally, meanwhile, nevertheless, furthermore, more important, to begin with, etc. Choose one that fits the situation. If you’re showing contrast, use however or meanwhile; if you’re showing cause and effect, use consequently, as a result; if you’re simply showing an additional example, use furthermore, in addition, or also.
15. Improve or add a closing sentence. A powerful closing sentence will restate the subpoint and tie it back to the essay’s thesis. A powerful closing sentence will not say something like: This paragraph has proven how Napoleon took advantage of the animals.
16. Improve the conclusion. The conclusion should summarize the main points of the essay in different words and end by leaving the reader with a bigger idea related to the essay’s topic.
17. Avoid using personal pronouns like “I”, “you”, and “we”. Instead, use “one”, “an individual”, or “the reader”.
18. Avoid words like “seems”, “maybe” or “perhaps”. Be confident! These words make it sound like you’re unsure.
19. Watch your verb tense. Your verbs are jumping between past (e.g. walked) and present (e.g. walks). Make sure all verbs are either in past tense or present tense. Present tense is the preferred tense for essays.
20. This is an incomplete sentence. Remember, a sentence expresses a complete thought and has to have a subject that is performing an action.
21. This is a run-on sentence, because it contains more than one sentence that are not joined together or separated properly. How could you divide it into more than one sentence?
22. Leave “This shows that”, “This also shows that”, and “This is because” out of your final draft.
23. Remember, do not say “I think”. Because your name’s on the paper, the thoughts are already yours without you having to claim them as yours.
24. Keep your word choice more formal and don’t write as if you are having a conversation. Avoid using words like “well” and “so”. Your writing is stronger without them.
25. Always indent new paragraphs.
26. Avoid using words like “thing”; it’s too vague. Choose a word that’s more specific.
27. Where’s your second chunk? Remember, in order for a paragraph to be well-developed, you should have at least two chunks (1CD:2CM) in each paragraph.
28. Don’t talk about your essay inside of your essay. For example, don’t say: “This essay will prove” or “This paragraph has proven”. Simply state what it is proving.
29. Please follow MLA format, as shown on the MLA example handout you received in the beginning of the year.
30. Can you think of an original title? Powerful titles will not simply state the assignment, but will be a creative statement about the essay’s topic.
31. Can you choose a stronger word here? This word is either too simple or too vague. Be sure to show off your vocabulary!
32. Write out numbers under 100.
33. Could you combine these two sentences together to make one, more complex sentence? Try choosing the most important information from both and weaving them into a nicely-worded sentence.
34. The wording here is awkward. Try reading the sentence aloud and re-wording until it makes more sense.
35. The order of your body paragraphs does not match the order of your subpoints. The subpoints serve as a map for your essay and indicate the order in which you will present your body paragraphs.
36. This is summary. Please only use summary in lead-ins and in the introduction. The CMs should be interpretation, not summary.
37. Make sure the words in the quotation are exactly as they appear in the book.
38. Please fix the bridge. A bridge rephrases the hook and moves the reader from the essay’s hook to the TAG + summary.
Created by Heather Temple, 2009