Mid-Term Essay: Structure

Here is the Writing-Intensive arrangement and the schedule of dates for the Mid-Term Essay, fifteen hundred words and revisions. The assignment is worth twenty percent of the Course grade.
Eleven-week writing path.

1. September 30th: selection of topics posted on the blog
2. October 7th: peer-editing of essay outline and thesis paragraph.
3. October 21st: draft version due in class.
4. November 4th: draft returned with comments & conditional grade.
5. November 18th: peer-editing of draft revision.
6. November 25th: revision due in class.
7. December 2nd: revision returned with comments & final grade.

• The draft is an opportunity to get your ideas and structure freely down on paper. The marking will identify the types of error which require revision: after studying these you are encouraged to bring the draft to Office Hours for additional and thorough-going help.

Grading structure:

• Intensive copy-editing and analysis, in red ink, will be done on the first two-thirds of the essay. The remaining third is left unmarked, to provide you, once having read and studied my work, with a practical document on which to apply the same degree and type of copy-editing corrections yourself. Upon completion of that exercise, you are welcome to bring that to me in an Office Hour for discussion.
• There is a circled grade beside my concluding comments at the end of your paper.
• This is your conditional grade.
• Upon revision of the draught, the mark can go down to the amount of one full letter grade and can go up as much as one full letter grade: conditional upon the quality of your revision.
• If little revision is done, the conditional grade will stand
• If no or poor revision is done the mark will go down.
• If comprehensive revision is done, the mark will go up. 
• The mark after the revision will be the final grade for the assignment.
• The revision will be graded according to the improvements made from the draft.
• A complete re-write is possible, if the student feels that they wish to improve upon the range available from the conditional grade received. The complete re-write will be judged as a final revision and the grade on that re-write will be the final grade for the assignment.