College Essay Revisions and Formal Writing Expectations

On block day of this week, we revisited our college essay and discussed how we can use it as a baseline for the rest of the formal writings we will do this year. We began with reflecting on what we expect from teachers who read and grade our writing. Most classes gave answers regarding feedback, constructive criticism, and suggestions for improvement.

Ultimately, we expect our teachers to take time, care, and consideration when grading, not just slapping a number on it and calling it a day.



Then, we researched into what teachers and college professors expect of the writing their students submit. We did this using this article.

From here, we compiled a list of general advice we could give to someone regarding what to do when writing a formal paper.



Compiling all of this advice together, the most important point is this.

If you expect the professor to grade your work fairly and carefully, you should put the same amount of effort and care into preparing your essay!

With that in mind, we began compiling our "non-negotiables" for formal writing for the year. These are things that we all know make good formal writing and we should all be expected to do it.



With this in mind, we moved on to editing our college essays. You can access my specific feedback by viewing your document on Turnitin.com and then editing the document via Google Drive or the computer you saved the essay to. You should complete the reflection sheet below first and then move on to making specific revisions.



Then, you will email or Google share your revised essay with me using my school email address.