Essay #2 - Peer Evaluation

Jasmine Ho

Mr. Hayes

English 1A17

3^rd February 2013

Word Count: 650

Peer Evaluation for Essay 2

essay I evaluate : Nanor Wong's essay #2

1. Reverse Outline

Paragraph	Notes on Form or Organization	Brief Notes on Content
1	Intro – Overview + Thesis	a. Briefly and directly introduces social networking, and states that there are pros and cons b. Your thesis
2	Body ¶ – Topic sentence 1	a. Social networking sites are vulnerable to crime
3 – 5	Body ¶ – Supporting evidences	a. A combination of quotes from Gordon M. Snow and personal experiences to support her topic sentence b. The reason why she agrees or disagrees with Snow
6	Body ¶ – Topic sentence 2	a. Youtube is a good social networking platform
7	Body ¶ – Supporting evidences	a. Combining O’Leary’s idea and her personal opinion to support her topic sentence
8	Body ¶ – Topic sentence 3 + relevant elaboration	a. Do sites take users complain concerning privacy or content issues seriously or not? b. Example of Youtube to prove that some sites do have clear guidelines to regulate the content
9	Conclusion	a. Social media has its benefits and detriments to the society

2. Comments

a. Global:

I enjoy reading the paper, since the topic is related to a brand new type of “platform” that people nowadays always use or even could not live without it.  The thesis of your essay is clearly established, arguable and predictive.  You stated that social networking has pros and cons, if people choose to use these platforms, they have to sacrifice their privacy to a certain extent.  Both benefits and detriments of social networking sites are distinctly listed, and backed up with relevant evidence and quotes.  Critical reading of the columns drives the main points of the passage.  You did use all three columns in your essay, however, the effectiveness of the columns are not evaluated in-depth.  The arguments you discussed in the essay are well explained.  The word count of the paper has not met the minimum requirement.  The paper is appropriate for people who know the topic but not the columns.  The three pieces are quoted as evidence to support your arguments, however, they are not quite compared and contrasted.  Overall, you made mature reasoning throughout the essay.

b. Organization:

Overall, the essay is well structured, which readers will be able to follow your flow. I can easily distinguish the different “parts” (introduction, body paragraph, conclusion etc.) for the reverse outline after reading the entire essay.  In most of the paragraphs, T.E.A style is applied.  For instance, in the 7^th paragraph, the writer quoted the O’Leary’s ideas on supporting Youtube as supporting evidence to back up her argument on the pros of social networking sites. 

Several quotations can be found in the essay, all of them are relevant, and further elaborated by the writer. However, not all of the quotes are integrated quotes. An example could be found in the 5^th paragraph - “…But real change cannot just be aspirational.  It requires concrete action.” Stated by Pamela Jones Harbour, a member of the Federal Trade Commission. 

Each paragraph does relate to the thesis.  The writer states that social networking sites has both advantages and disadvantages.  In the body paragraphs, she elaborated the “pros” and “cons” respectively, supported by ideas mentioned in the three columns.  In addition, the writer integrate her own experience as extra evidence, for instance, in the 4^th paragraph, she wrote that “after much experience with such malicious e-mails and years of using my personal computer, I learned to tell what a scam looks like.” I think that none of the paragraphs is out tracked or unrelated to the thesis, which has to be taken out. 

Furthermore, the length of each paragraph is not too short or long, the content is also organized with topic sentence, evidences, and analysis, which keeps the readers to follow the flow of the writer, but not being bored at the same time.  However, I think that the writer could expand the paragraph discussing the sites’ effort on regulating or controlling the illicit content on these platforms.  Comparing to the other two arguments, this argument has a relatively short elaboration, which when compared to other analysis paragraphs, this seems to be too short, and thus not persuasive enough.

c. Sentence Craft

Overall, the sentence craft of the essay is not bad.  Sentences are not redundant that making the readers having difficulty in reading the entire passage. However, I think that the writer should be aware of the use of punctuation inside parenthesis. There are several of them appeared in separate paragraphs seem to be put in inappropriate places.

d. Word Choice

Most of the vocabularies use in the essay is appropriate.  However, I think that the phrase “so, …” is used to often in the essay.  This phrase is used in several sentences, which gives an negative impression to the readers.  In my opinion, this phrase is not an appropriate phrase to be used in an academic essay, since the tone of it is too casual.