Peer Review Draft

I want to start off by saying your writing is really well put together and the story about your journey with breaking is genuinely captivating. This puts you at a very strong start for your narrative essay. There are moments in your writing where you use vivid descriptions such as when you say your shoulders ached and arms burned after practicing for countless hours. If you can implement even more vividness into your story, you’re well on your way to an even more polished narrative. Grammatically, I would say there are very few mistakes. Example: “they brought their some of their best moves” (I would remove the first ‘their’). The trickiest ones to catch are the little ones like commas, and it might take a few slow read throughs to polish the grammatical issues, but definitely be sure to do this at the very end when you’re satisfied with your other edits. You had a great introduction to breaking and rising action of your journey through breaking which led up to the climax of winning the tournament, but it might be nice to elaborate what it was like to win the tournament and elaborate on what you write after. The story ended a bit too abruptly. Your storytelling structure and organization is honestly some of the best I’ve seen compared to other peers I’ve reviewed, so I have no doubt you’ll coordinate the ending of your narrative in the same way as you crafted the beginning. Overall, your writing does appeal to a general audience which is great, but there are some moves about breaking you mention in the story that the average person probably wouldn’t know. It might be a good idea to give a more detailed description of exactly what you’re doing and why you do it. What do you feel when you break and what makes it special? Part of the rubric mentioned the use of artifacts. If you could find an artifact and figure out a way to implement it into the story that would be a bonus. Personally, I really enjoyed your story, but the rubric also says to employ a deeper meaning, so maybe you could find an overarching moral, and really elaborate on that near the conclusion of your narrative.

Anonymous User , Feb 9 at 9:18pm

What was unique with this narrative essay is that given the topic is dancing, there is a lot of motion and detail that you add to the story that makes the reader better imagine the story as if you were seeing the dance in person. Your storytelling skills in the writing are incredible. I am noticing that when you mention power moves, you do not include a space between the two words. It could be common not to include that space. I am just not sure because I am not as informed on the community; I just thought it looked a little off. Speaking of community, I think the way you described and spoke about the dancing community through b-boying or b-girling and the b-boy club. My favorite part of the story begins in the second paragraph because we learn that this interest may have stemmed from an older brother, which I think is important. After all, I think we adopt so many interests and hobbies from those close to our life. I did notice that the word count was higher than the expected word count, which is not bad; it just makes me think that some parts of the story could be more concise.

For this essay, I was very much looking for some of the elements that we covered in class, such as what makes a story memorable, artifacts, and social or cultural context. I was not able to recognize some of those elements within the writing. There are some ideas that I get, like the practice sessions being an artifact representing how that collaboration with others pushed you to do better. Or your older brother possibly being someone who sparked you interest and tie some cultural or societal context to it. The ideas are there; we just need a little refinement in the next draft to make some of those elements stand out a little more clearly. The description and detail in this story is something I will use as an example for my own, very impressive.

Anonymous User , Feb 10 at 12:15pm

Awesome job on the first paper for our class! You also did a wonderful job with peer review as well. Thank you for being detailed and giving critical feedback that can help your peers grow as writers. Peer review is one of the most important processes of writing, as someone else's perception of your work can really help to refine your writing choices. I will be giving feedback on your final draft which you will then review for our final assignment in this class "The Portfolio." Let me know if you have any questions in the meantime!