Sunday, April 15, 2007

DUE TUE 4/17- Helpful Blog Comments

DUE TUE 4/17 - Best Blog Comments

Review the comments that classmates have made on your blog and choose two or three of them that you found particularly helpful. Write a short paragraph for each one explaining why it was helpful. Be specific. What is helpful about it and why?

The most important criteria for a helpful comment is that it is specific. It does not just say that something is “good” or “bad.” It provides an example and an explanation.

Other criteria for a helpful comment (not all comments will fulfill all of these):

  • provides suggestions and/or praise regarding writing mechanics and style
  • provides suggestions and/or praise regarding content
  • provides a different perspective that makes you rethink your ideas
  • provides evidence or logic that affirms what you are saying or questions it

Of course, if something was helpful for you in a way that I don’t list above you can write about that.

To turn this in and get credit: You need to turn in a hardcopy with a heading. Copy/Paste your original post along with the comment and your explanation. Make sure everything is labled so that I know what is what and who it's written by.

You should let your commentators know that you found their comments helpful by posting the paragraph you wrote about them on their blog.

3 comments:

JV (Dumpling) said...

SO for the last part, do we actually have to find the person who put the coment that they said on our blog, and put it on their blog!

Mr. Jana said...

J.V. , yes that is what you should do. Just post your paragraph on their blog.

Michael Murillo said...

Hey Mr. Jana, I think one of your comments helped me (I don't really know why no one else has picked one of you comments to 'reply' to. Also i cant figure out why u removed it from the commenting section)

What u wrote:

Wow! This is quite powerful stuff Michael. You asked me how you could improve it, and I'm not sure how to respond to that. I think you use adjectives to great effect here, as when you write, "I swallow the white wash that the vast wave had left, like the black ashes from a once raging fire." In this sentence I like the contrast in comparing the strength of water to the destructiveness of fire. One thing, I can say, is that it does not have any build up. It starts right away with the character (you) about to get pounded by the wave. That is not a bad thing, but if you wanted to experiment you might want to try to build it up a bit, like how the character would feel seeing this big wave approaching from the distance.

What I replied with:

This helped me realize a few things. The first thing it helped me realize was that using descriptive contrasts between things grabs the readers attention and adds a great affect to your work. It also helped me by saying to add a build up in the beginning. When I read that I though back to other books that I have read and remembered how that did help indulge me in to reading the book further.