GK+-+Letter+2

====** Part 2: ** While you are writing the essay, finish your letter by including the information below. Don’t forget to revise your letters.====

f) Describe your writing process. How did you narrow the chosen topic? g) What kind of planning did you do? h) What steps did you go through, what changes did you make along the way, what decisions did you face, and how did you make the decisions? i) How did comments from your peers help you? j) How did any class activities help you? k) Sign the letter. l) For reflection: Does the essay really say what the letter promises?

**Despite the freedom to interfere, comments from our peers were very helpful and always taken into account, especially because it would help us to think together and link our ideas, as well as turn our essay into one solid whole. Being in class with our peers doing certain activities was also very important because we could organize ourselves, see each other’s progress in a clearer way and discuss what was yet to be done and the best way of developing our ideas. **
 * When professor Vivian assigned us this task (writing an argumentative essay), we decided that we would talk about the stream of consciousness technique because it was an interesting topic that called our attention in our Literature classes. Each member of the group did research on the chosen topic and we selected the best sources. **
 * However, after writing what would be our first thesis, she advised us that we were writing a more descriptive essay. We wanted to talk about the technique, but there was nothing new to say about it. So we realized that we had to choose a story and focus on the use of the technique on it. We chose Virginia Woolf's The New Dress because we all had already read it and we had an idea of what we could write. Vivan gave us some suggestions in relation to the topic, and they were useful to help us narrow it. Choosing only one story was the best decision we made, since we could be more specific and defending our point of view became easier. **
 * After writing our thesis, we read the whole story again, now looking for topic sentences: signs that would help us supporting or emphasiz ing our thesis. Then, each member chose one or two topic sentences to develop in one week. Everything was posted on wiki, so everybody read each other's paragraphs and we commented on them, making the necessary changes **.
 * We decided that it would be easier if we had the development of the essay first, so that after we had it written, we could work on the transitions among the paragraphs that each one of us had developed. Then, we were able to focus on the introduction and the conclusion. We decided to write the essay following this order because we realized that, first, we had to have a general idea of how we were going to support our thesis. After having a wider perspective of the purpose of our essay, it became clearer for us how we should delelop the introduction (using the resources previously studied) and the conclusion. **
 * Being able to comment on each other's paragraphs was a very interesting experience. We had never gone through this kind of writing activity before, in which we had such 'power' and 'freedom' to change and interfere on other people's pieces of writing. **