Akariss Workshop Draft 2

Overall: The essay is written with passion, and it shows in your writing. You have made it clear that you are for organic farming compared to factory farming. I did however notice that you did not use any in-text citations and I was wondering if that was due to time, or if you were not sure how to do them (page 427 in the Hacker handbook can help walk you through them). These are important for many reasons, and not just to avoid plagiarism. I wasn’t sure how old the information you listed was, and I wasn’t sure which source was used for the pesticide drift section to research it further myself, as I found that part to be quite interesting.

Thesis: You clearly state your position in your thesis; it is bolded, and you use the required format. Although I wasn’t clear on your statement; “…it actually costs the environment less in the long run…” to mean an economical or environmental cost.

Content: You meet the required word limit of 1200 words not including your resource list, and you listed over ten required references with at least 5 of them being from Ebsco host. I found the paper in general to be 7 out of 10 for interest as; I have read most of this before. However, the section on pesticide drifts to be 10 out of 10 as that was new to me. I would have liked to see more data supporting soil erosion. Additionally, concerns about water table contamination can also happen with the methods used buy organic farmers. Unless they use their fertilizers on a smaller scale than the industry, in which they do, however it’s not listed in your paper, and might cause some to dismiss your claim. Ultimately, your paragraphs did relate, and help support your thesis statement.

Style: I didn’t feel that you used many transition statements that would have helped me follow you from one topic to the next. For instance, after talking about pesticides and switching to fossil fuels a sentence similar to: In addition to pesticides causing harm to the environment, their use requires more fossil fuels to be used, compounding the environmental problem would have made the topic change smoother. The opening statement is not bad, but I wouldn’t call it an attention grabber either. I would try to find a strong quote that captures how you feel about the issue, or a statistic that relates to it. Although your conclusion seemed somewhat short, I felt you did a good job reviewing the topics you discussed, and this is where more of your passion about the topic was evident. However, you did present you information out of order, which did not match the order listed in your thesis statement. Additionally, you used the word “lastly “to introduce topic two and it would be better if it was saved for the last topic.

Research: Your draft does contain more than the minimum number of required sources, including 5 peer-reviewed. However, I cannot tell if you relied heavily on one source or not as you didn’t use any in text citations. Nor can I tell if any of your sources were not used in your paper, as they were not cited, though I imagine you did get your information from them. You did not use any quotations, so I cannot answer any questions relating to them for this draft.

Other: I like your topic, and look forward to reading your final draft. I would recommend working on using your in-text citations as soon as possible, as I found it the most difficult part of drafting my essay.

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