Improving each other’s academic essays

In English class today, Mr. Paterson went over the few important details about our introduction and the body paragraphs, then we got the rest of class to work on commenting on our teammates’ e-portfolio documents. First, our teacher taught us that our introduction should have mentioned the two or three points we’re going to talk about in our essays. We later went over the two ways of formatting the body paragraphs. The first one is to have one paragraph dedicated to the claims the opponent might make, then arguing against them with your two claims. The other, is to have three arguments, one for each body paragraph, and mention the other side’s views at the beginning of each paragraph. Mine is the latter, as I found that it suits my topic better. Mr. Paterson showed us a helpful example arguing why apple products are the best. Afterwards, he gave us time to go on our computers and work on the peer revisions. During this period, I was able to give a couple comments that might help my teammates improve their writing, and look through the comments I received on my document. I mostly found positive feedback, however, I noticed that I sometimes had unnecessary words/phrases here and there. As I continue to write my academic argumentative essay, I’d like to keep in mind the comments I got, by simplifying my sentences. In addition, a teammate said that it seems like I use the word phone in my essay too often, which resulted in me using an online tool to find out if it’s true. It wasn’t as repetitive as I had expected, however, because of the helpful feedback I got, I was able to make my writing better.