Doris Yang

Essay Review - Jonathan Williams

English 1111
January 27, 2016
Throughout the review session for this essay, the first things that came to me was
the use of professional writing style of the sentence structures and word choice. The
many terms were rapidly introduced through the progression of the articles which
provided massive amounts of information. It clearly shows how much effort the
author put into the information browsing, gathering and filtering before the analyzing
the article itself. In my opinion, the coherence of the logic is something I can learn
from the author's analysis in order to improve my writing skill.
However, in the case of this writing exercise, in order to exchange author's idea
with the audience thoroughly, I believe the author could add more elaboration and
explanations on the professional terms such as Deflategate, and it would be greatly
helpful to those in position of reviewers that lack certain professional knowledge in
this field. The information in the opening paragraph about the writer and the details
provided seemed a bit redundant, when reading through without seeing necessary
information in order to understand the debate being brought up and analyzed upon.
Also, it was not until 1344 words into the essay which contains 1744 words
altogether, that the analysis shifted from the actual event and the discussion being
recognized to the writing styles and rhetorical importance of these articles being used.
In my opinion, while the author spent that much words on the rhetorical situation, the
balance should more inclined towards the analysis of the structure, writing style and
designs, etc.
The use of quotations, whether in paragraphs or sentences throughout the essay,
shows a suitable understanding and fluent use of the MLA citing format, which is
valuable and beneficial. The general organization of this essay is also very nicely set
up with the forming of ideas via cases and examples accompanied by analyses of
renowned journalists, which takes the tone of the essay deep into the foundation of the
issue being discussed.
I believe that this essay does not follow the traditional paragraph structure in
which every paragraph is predefined by the first and last sentences which, in my
opinion, more or less makes the rest of the content superfluous to read. Jonathans
essay follows a scholarly journal format in which the major topic is brought forth
nearly at the beginning or second paragraph of the essay, and as the discussion is
being further analyzed upon, voices were delivered to expression by those who also
write journals, by the purpose of defining terms, clarifying confusions, and setting up
a stronger point of view in the essay, which I think is a fantastic way to go in
producing a research journal. The writing style is also different from mine because I
tend to hesitate on the basic levels of writing such as grammatical formations, use of
accurate vocabulary etc, and spend considerably long passages simply putting the
meanings in the original document into my discussion, which completes the analysis
but to a relatively lower degree and extent. Jonathans use of words and sentences is
very fluent and polished for the most part, however there are some cases of forgotten
indents in front of paragraphs, the use of words too colloquial for research articles.
But those are rare cases for this essay which generally well organized and written.