There are a few major issues that cropped up in the compulsory voting essays. Pay particular attention to these as you revise.
- General proofreading needs to be dramatically improved. Check your paper for spelling, grammar, and usage errors before hitting submit. A number of these errors dramatically reduces your ethos.
- Parallelism, especially in the thesis statements, needs to be more consistent.
- Given that the essay considers a possible potential future, you should write in the present tense. Rather than saying what compulsory voting does, focus on what it would do.
- Concessions need to be genuine. A number of you only offered half-hearted concessions before attacking the other side.
- Use naysayers to avoid repetition and to add sophistication to your arguments. They were a specific requirement for this prompt–and many of you didn’t include a single one in your response.
- Topic sentences are always arguments.
- Development, development, development: make sure that you’ve provided enough analysis and evidence to support your claims.
- Slippery slopes are logical fallacies, not fun summer games.
Revision Due Dates
- Period 3 (Sunday at 11 p.m.)
- Period 5/6 (Sunday at 1 p.m.)
