Also maybe instead of “…whose first husband had died one and a half years before.”, you could say, “ who was a widow of one and a half years.” In another sentence you wrote, “So from that day on she was my “mom”.” maybe if you take the “so” out then that might make it read more smooth. The only other things that I noticed was that in the first paragraph there should be an apostrophe “s” on mom’s and that your last name and page number didn’t show up in the header. In my last paper I made a lot of little mistakes that changed my grade considerably. I wouldn’t want the same thing to happen to you. Well, that’s all. I really appreciate you letting me into your life for a second. Good luck now and in the future.

Sincerely,
Trina

Dear Latrina,
Thank you so much for your help. You gave a lot of great advice and I will definitely use it.

Sincerely,
Michael

Submission / Reflection Letters

Dear Classmates:

Because of my readers' suggestions, I left out cliches and focused on concise wording. I also added more details and cleared up a misconception. The primary strength of my paper is that I proved that Key was generous. There was no question what my thesis was. If I were to start over, I would probably focus on the generosity Key gave to me personally, with his love, rather than through monetary means. I think if the essay was more personal, it also would be more interesting. Like Tera stated, she liked the last example of Key's generosity the best because it was more emotional. The experience of drafting and receiving feedback will be beneficial for future projects because it is gradually making it easier for me to see potential mistakes and is helping me improve my overall writing style for future papers to come.

Sincerely,
Melanie

Dear Classmates,

I realize that this is a very hard paper to write. I realized all of this as soon as I got my paper back from the people who edited it. I did not go into enough detail with my facts. In this paper you needed a lot of facts and a credible source to prove them. I needed to look back at the guidelines for the paper, too. I feel that the strengths of my final paper are that I did my find my credible source and I had a good topic to write on. I think another strength is that I really believed in what I was writing about. ... In the papers to come I will get to the point and get some hard facts in the paper. I will try to get the reader thinking about the topic I am writing about. Thank you Traci and Ms. Reiss for your help!

Sincerely,
Holly

Dear Classmates,

While writing my paper I went through about twenty revisions and drafts. I even sent in two resubmissions to Ms. Reiss because I kept finding things that needed improvement. One of the major changes I made to my paper was the introduction. I didn’t feel that the introduction in the initial draft really captivated the reader’s attention, so I decided to add a sentence to the beginning and I feel the results were very effective. Another change that I made as a result of the input of someone else was to make my sentences more concise, so that I could add more details.

I feel that the primary strengths of my final paper is, it draws the reader in and really touches their emotions. If I had to start over and had more time to revise this paper I think I would have focused on my subject earlier and had more people review it for me. The process of drafting, receiving feedback, and revising is excellent because it allows someone else to give an unbiased opinion of your work, which challenges you to become a better writer.

Sincerely,
Michael

Donna Reiss | Writing Workshop Overview | Active Learning Online

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modified and copyright ©April 24, 2007 by D. Reiss