Wednesday, October 1, 2014

9/30 - In Class Lab - Reviewing Sample Research Paper

Reinstating Compulsory Conscription
Carol Rivers
Word Count: 4455
Overall Grade:  B

I feel the writer accomplishes her thesis of "compulsory conscription needs reinstating" pretty well. She using rational appeal through historical events and statistics, and then emotional appeal through personal experience and heartstrings tugging quotes, such as the closing quote by Ronald Reagan.  However in the 4th and 5th paragraphs I think she misses an opportunity to defend her thesis. Paragraph 4 expresses how reinstating the draft will be expensive and thus bad for the economy, while paragraph 5 stats how reinstatement will create jobs and thus be good for the economy. As a reader I become confused which point of view "outweighs" the other, and I begin to doubt her thesis. A simple sentence or two arguing and stating why the benefits of job creation to the economy, due to draft implementation, outweighs the cost would have supported her thesis and kept her point of view clear and strong.
 
In the fifth to last paragraph of the document, the author is writing in first person, and giving her own personal opinion about the information. The paper is fairly grammatically correct and the author has a good understanding about tenses. The author does, however has slightly stunted transition

The author clearly shows where she found her point and also uses clear signal phrases so you can tell the paper is not plagiarized. The sources are sufficient and it is clear that the author researched her paper.
The author of the paper has well over the minimum amount of citations with 19 works cited. Though well cited, many of the sources do not qualify as scholarly.

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