Improvising Academic Essays as a Class

In English class today, we took some documents and went through them as we corrected their mistakes. First off, he reminded us that all students must have shared their e-portfolio with Mr.Paterson so that he can comment and edit it. Not giving him or group members editing rights, could be misunderstood that we don't need their help. In addition, he said that an essay without resources is not an academic essay. It would become like a blog post, which is writing straight off of your head. As we looked through more academic essays, we came across the mistake of using personal pronouns in our paragraphs. Saying "I think" makes your statement weaker, because the point of this writing is to argue what your research shows, not your opinions. We should avoid words like 'you' as well, and we can eliminate them by replacing it with phrases like "people". When we looked at my e-portfolio, he commented that I had contractions in my academic essay. Instead of using words like 'shouldn't' or 'can't', we must use should not and cannot because it's more formal and academic essay-appropriate. On top of that, since the quote I used in my body paragraph was too long, Mr.Paterson showed us a way to make it easier to see in the essay. He did so by indenting the entire paragraph, and by making the font size as well as the line spacing smaller. Another way he improved my writing is by splitting my body paragraph into two. By doing this, you can unify your writing, and he said that it's important than having exactly five paragraphs. Finally, in another person's e-portfolio, they didn't have a thesis statement in the introduction paragraph. Since this is vital in an academic essay, Mr.Paterson reminded us to check the last sentence of the introduction paragraph and make sure that it is a strong thesis statement.