werdna's essay-writing initiative - TIMETABLE on pg 1

[werdna]

I've got an idea for the 2011 English class.

The idea: I will be starting a year-round essay-writing initiative that will hopefully benefit all English students on AN. It will involve AN members posting up their essays and thus providing constructive criticism for each other. I will make it compulsory for members to critique at least 2/3 essays BEFORE they post their essay.

I will try and pinpoint how it will run, as succinctly as possible. I will be posting one language analysis article at the start of week one of every month, text response topics at the start of week two of every month, and context prompts at the start of week three of every month. I've thought about what we'd do about the rest of the month - and have come to the conclusion that week four of every month will involve members completing a good copy of one of their essays.

The following timetable will take effect in around June/July 2011 onwards. For the time period January to June 2011, we will start with language analyses and then phase in text responses and context pieces.

WEEK 1: Language Analysis
WEEK 2: Text Response
WEEK 3: Context
WEEK 4: Good copy of your own choice

IMPORTANT: I've also noticed that we cannot follow the timetable above just yet. We will have to wait until roughly June/July until we can follow the timetable above. So, for the time being, weeks 1-4 will consist of language analysis tasks. I will phase in text response topics and context prompts whenever members have covered these areas of study at school.

I will be providing all language analysis articles (sourced from a language analysis taskbook I recently bought, which consists of exam-type articles), context prompts and text response topics. However, I will need you to tell me which texts you are all studying.

Following on from some members' ideas about ranking the essays weekly, there will be essay markers who will make the ranking decisions and provide constructive criticism. Essay markers will be members who have completed, or are completing, VCE English to a high standard. Essay markers will be responsible for ranking the week's essays in order from 1st to 3rd as well as correcting as many essays as they can.HOWEVER, you do not have to be one of these essay markers to give advice!

As for where and when this initiative will occur, I think one thread per area of study is probably sufficient. That is, one thread for your language analyses, one for your text response essays and one for your context pieces. I also think that only 2 posts can be made to one essay, so everyone has a fair share of constructive criticism.

ATAR Notes members can sign up to be a part of this little initiative right now. Each week, I would expect all signed-up members to post their responses onto the respective threads (which I will start soon). In a way, I'll be like your online teacher   making sure you hand in the essays on time. I will not be looking over and correcting everyone's essays on my own though - this, I hope, will be a joint and collective effort.

*** For more information, please see the Essay Submission and Marking subforum***

[Stojad]

Sounds like a good idea. Any community-based English initiative would help out the users who feel stuck if they can't seem to improve their marks in English, or they don't feel comfortable handing in a lot of essays to their teachers. Do you think you can do something similar with context essays and text response essays?

[werdna]

Do you think you can do something similar with context essays and text response essays?

I'll see how this language analysis initiative goes, and it should do well.. because everyone has to do it.

If it does do well, I will consider maybe allocating one context each to 4 other AN members, and we can go from there. Text responses would be a bit tricky.. but we'd need to ask the signed-up members which texts they are studying.

[ech_93]

That's a great idea!

[onur369]

Sounds good, hope it works cause I will need it.

[Stojad]

It definitely wouldn't be difficult to find three other people to post prompts for the other contexts and run a similar system. Also, you could probably do this more frequently than once per fortnight. Once a week is plenty of space between writing essays.

[werdna]

Thanks ech_93!

Just another suggestion - maybe I should post the articles every month, instead of every fortnight.. and then have everyone do a good copy analysis - so taking into account every other member's advice and constructive criticism.

So a better way of thinking about it is; spending one month on one article (and doing 1 rough copy, 1 good copy). I know this sounds like a substantial amount of time.. and whilst it only takes at the most, 1 hour and a bit to write a decent analysis.. language analysis isn't the only thing we'll be doing in year 12.

[werdna]

It definitely wouldn't be difficult to find three other people to post prompts for the other contexts and run a similar system. Also, you could probably do this more frequently than once per fortnight. Once a week is plenty of space between writing essays.

Hmm.. I'll take that into consideration too. Look at my above post. 

Sounds good, hope it works cause I will need it.

Thanks, and good luck! 

[HERculina]

GREAT
IDEA!
i dont get enough practice man xD

[werdna]

[jane1234]

I'm in
I'm not that great at english, so I'll need all the practice I can get... and hopefully this initiative can keep my motivation up!

[shinny]

Sounds like a great idea. There'll be a few people who I'm sure will help with marking them - myself included.

[Romperait]

Somewhat unsure of the workload in year 12 as of yet, so I wouldn't want to make any promises just yet, but this kind of thing would be really beneficial for all users who haven't yet completed vce. I'm very interested. =)

[Ghost!]

Really good idea, karmas for you. It's a great chance to keep up to date with LA throughout the year, so I'll definitely doing it. I think a month if anything is too long, a fortnight is good. Happy to help assess/mark as well.

[Greatness]

This is a very good idea Whenever i write a LA ill be sure to upload it, it will be good to get some feed back from others and to see how we compare. But I dont think i will be able to mark/assess them, im not that pro