Month: November 2025

I am grateful the peer review process has become more extensive in college. In high school, we would exchange papers for about 15 minutes. The reader would leave a few minimal comments on spelling and grammar and the occasional “good job.” This never really helped me as I could spot most of the grammatical errors and correct them myself after proof reading. College has taken this process to the next level, where global revision is focused on and I’m not afraid to give a peer more detailed feedback. I also get more constructive criticism that informs me on what the reader needs more of.  I don’t feel rushed nor stressed because I have a full class to sit with my peer’s work and give them thoughtful feedback.

My question here gives the writer an idea on how to connect themselves into the paragraph and make it a more engaging and effective Barclay paragraph. As the reader, I can feel that there is some disconnect between the sources and the writer’s own voice. Hopefully, my comment gave them insight on ways to expand their thinking. 

Comment on Peer’s Barclay Paragraph

End Comment on Peer’s Joy Essay

Above is my end comment on another peer’s work commends the specificity of some of their personal examples that really captured my attention. I leave insightful feedback on improving and adding source integration. As I read through my peers’ drafts, I find new strategies on how others incorporate ideas and support their theses. I also remember all the things I need to include in my essay which I may have forgotten, like naysayers and integrating more sources. I really enjoy this in depth peer review process we have used in WRT 110 because it’s helped me revise my essays to become as strong as possible. 

Receiving constructive criticism from a peer always brings my attention to where my essay needs the most work. These two comments below made me realize that I spent too much time summarizing a story and hardly related it back to its bigger purpose in my essay. 

Peer Review Feedback on Interview Body Paragraph

I was able to take this feedback into my revision process where I cut down on summary and brought more of my own voice in. I really appreciated receiving these insightful comments because they helped even my “They Say,” “I Say” proportions and gave meaning to the special stories my grandfather shared when I interviewed him. This paragraph transformation is shown in my revision learning outcome tab!

When revisiting my first reading response to “The Hawk,” I immediately saw places where I could’ve dove deeper to strengthen my connections. The question asked which themes and ideas resonated most with you from the story. I gave a lengthy response but the highlighted lines signal where I would now critique and add more specific “I say.” 

First Reading Response Paragraph to “The Hawk”

When I talked about my respect for the Hawk taking time for himself by camping out at the football field, I could’ve added how I’ve been through my own mental health struggles. Taking the time to step back and ground myself, whether that be through hockey or hiking, has been extremely beneficial for me and I can value and understand the Hawk’s reasoning behind returning to the football field. That is his home and place of comfort, as the ice rink and White Mountains can be for myself. As I was reviewing this first reading response, I noticed these highlighted places where I could’ve gone deeper and given a better explanation of why these themes resonated with me. This shows my improvement in incorporating the I say component and I’ve been much more confident in doing so lately. Making these text to text connections has become a more natural part of my annotating and writing in my recent reading responses. 

Strong annotations, including text to text connections, helped me respond to reading questions that further helped me craft my final essays. When annotating in high school, I mostly only made understanding marks to define a word, jotted down questions, made shallow connections, or highlighted important phrases. Over the semester, I have been able to challenge the author or extend on their ideas while observing their rhetorical choices through these new annotation strategies. Many notes fill the margins of my class handouts in a somewhat organized way, thanks to the symbols we’ve used. The attached image shows my continuation of leaving notes to help my understanding when flipping back through Bloom’s essay, “Is Empathy Overrated?” while I also make a deep text to self connection. When my brother passed away, people sent hundreds and hundreds of flowers to us as an act of empathy, but like the town of Newton, the money spent could’ve been put towards those who actually needed it. I also acknowledge Bloom’s effectiveness with the Newton massacre example, where he builds up his argument on empathy’s dangers through this paragraph and the two previous ones.  

Understanding, Exploring Relationships, & Rhetorical Annotations from “Is Empathy Overrated?”

The text to text connection I made in Bloom’s essay carried into my reading response, which then arguably became my most valuable personal example in my empathy essay. 
My ability to challenge an author through annotations is shown in this image where I push back on Bloom’s claim that empathy impacts us in the same way that prejudice does. This sharply contrasts with my own beliefs, which I noted. I also observed Bloom’s clever rhetorical move to welcome his audience with a gentler first paragraph before dropping this controversial view. 

Challenging & Rhetorical Annotations from “Is Empathy Overrated?”

These annotation strategies have helped me gain a deeper understanding of the source material while encouraging myself to think more critically and push back on an author’s ideas. In the end, many of my annotations and reading response topics are expanded on throughout my essays. 

Over the course of the semester, I have become more confident when integrating sources and voice into my essays. I have learned to use the Barclay paragraph style to create a flow between two outside sources and a response with my own ideas and interpretation. The paragraph below comes from the rough draft of my empathy essay. I do a nice job with the first part of the quote sandwich where I acknowledge Maria Konnikova and her credibility. However, the highlighted section is where a reader got confused with the relevance of Konnikova. There was a disconnect between her quote and my bigger argument, which is focusing on unbiased kindness over empathy. 

Body Paragraph from Rough Draft Empathy Essay

As seen in my revised paragraph below, the increased amount of my own voice draws the connection between Konnikova, Bloom, and my thesis. In its final draft, the triangle of voices in this paragraph brings purpose to my essay in an effective way, thanks to the well crafted Barclay paragraph. I start off by giving the reader more context when I define pathetic empathy in my second sentence. Then, I delve into Konnikova’s point that communication through social media lacks the synchronicity of a shared experience. However, I don’t hit and run with this quote because I analyze it and draw the bigger connections for the reader by explaining it as highlighted. This leads into the bold section where the sentences naturally connect to my next source, Paul Bloom. His insight aligns with my thesis that there are better alternatives to empathy which is falsely occurring online.

Over the semester, I have improved my ability to effectively introduce sources, quote them, and then explain their purpose through implementing Barclay paragraphs.  

My revision process has seen tremendous improvement since high school. The major focus of feedback was on the grammatical errors and punctuation in my earlier education. However, Writing 110 has helped me shift from this local revision to the more important global revision. When revising on the global level, my writing becomes more organized, cohesive, and my thesis is supported throughout the piece. Below, I have inserted a paragraph from my rough draft joy essay. 

Body Paragraph from Joy Essay Rough Draft

The paragraph has far too much summary and fails to answer the reader’s demanding question, “so what, why does this matter?” This class has taught me that I can always edit my ideas and evaluate their effectiveness. Once something is on the paper, it doesn’t have to stay. As seen in the following image, I eliminate some of my rambling summary of my grandfather’s stories. I address the readers’ needs by bringing more of my voice into the paragraph, which further ties the insightful stories back to my thesis of feeling joy through our senses and embracing the small moments. Though this paragraph may not be at its final version, it has progressed towards a more balanced amount of “they say” or my grandfather’s voice, and my own “I say,” as I’ve highlighted. Diving deeper into my own analysis has given my paragraph more purpose and nicely acknowledged the importance of my grandpa’s valuable stories.  

Improved Body Paragraph w/ My Voice from Joy Essay

Writing 110 has helped me use peer review comments and my own expanded knowledge to hone in on critiquing my essay’s organization, cohesion between thesis and provided evidence, and the balancing of voices. Then, I can go back to my high school focus of nitpicking the grammar, word choice, spelling, and punctuation to put the bow on top of my essay before gifting it to my audience. I address these local revisions in my revised paragraph as well as the larger scale issues I prioritized during the global revision step, which has advanced my revision process to the next level.