Overall, I think that this student’s essay is a strong start, despite needing revisions. The student uses relevant information to support his claims, such as anecdotal evidence or statistics from the US Department of Labor. It also seems as though the student is confident in what he wants to say within his essay. Most of his main points are clear, especially at the end where he reiterates his sentiments of believing in a partial switch to a Soylent diet. Overall, it’s a great start. I think sentence and paragraph structure are the biggest weaknesses within the essay. The student, as stated above, knows what he wants to say, yet I think that many of his paragraphs can be combined. The bulk of the essay feels as though he is restating information and his stance. A main example of this can be seen within the fourth and fifth paragraphs. These two paragraphs highlight the consequences of saving time by using Soylent. These points are repeated to the point where the student has one big block of text that can look intimidating to others reading the essay. Editing the sentence structure and combining the ideas within these paragraphs can help to make the essay more clear and concise. There are also moments where I feel that the student is being too “wordy”. One example is the third sentence in his introduction, “For example, some famous inventions of the past, such as electricity, cell phones, and the cotton gin, are an essential part of the world today”. I think a good way to approach changing sentence structure is to ask the student what the purpose of the sentence is. When we’ve identified the main purpose of the sentence, we can think of ways to make it more concise. Instead of saying, “for example”, the student might change it to “There are many essential inventions that we use in our world today, such as x, y, and z”. This way, the student still maintains his point while not losing his voice. Before moving into smaller revisions, I think I would ask about the assignment. Is it meant to be an opinion-based piece, or should he be focusing more on information? I think if it is an opinion-based piece, then I could ask the student to expand more on his personal experiences with food. It seems that this student just needs a little more focus on concision within his essay, and I think that this can be achieved by asking questions about the purpose of sentences and what the overall point is of each paragraph.