Stage 5: Resetting the Canterbury Tales

How did your essay evolve from one draft to the next in response to peer feedback and/or your own consideration of it? How does your final draft use more than alphabetic text to convey your argument? What composition strategies worked well for you in this assignment, and how might they work well in other rhetorical situations?

The final draft of the essay is a complete rewrite of the rough draft. I use my rough drafts as a reference, basically. I have the rough draft open and rewrite each paragraph with much better rhetoric and style, and much more succinctly. The comments left by my peers were also taken into account in the rewrite. For example, Robert suggested adding more about the pilgrim's feelings and experiences in place of the descriptions of the images. While I left most of the image descriptions, I also added more information from the pilgrim's viewpoint, such as

'Leaving everything they have ever known in life, the pilgrims are ready to forge a new life for themselves in this “New World.” '

I also took into account the opinions on how to integrate the essay with the video, and heavily edited the final draft of the last paragraph.

Obviously, in the more-than-just-text department, the video slideshow of images helps portray the journey. The music helps set the mood as well. Also, the style of the descriptions of the pictures moved from very descriptive in the rough draft to a more novel-like approach in the final draft. The final draft reads a little more like a story and less like a description.

My strategy of a very rough draft with extensive revisions for the final draft seems to work quite well for me. I think that if there were a third draft in this process, it would be even better. Overall, I am very pleased with the progress I made in improving the rough draft for the final version.