My Paper's Strengths and Weaknesses

On the argumentative paper that we just got back, I was overall pleased with my grade. However, it was a little lower than I would have liked. When I was writing this paper I was pleased with how it was turning out and I was very proud of it. One reason that this paper was strong, for me at least, is that I took breaks as I wrote it. Thus, I was able to step away from the paper and get fresh ideas. The prompt that I chose to write about was persuading the English Department to keep “Savage Inequalities” in the HB text.
One of the strengths of my paper was that I had a strong, open thesis. In addition, another strength of my paper was one of my body paragraphs. This paragraph (point) made my argument strong and unique. In this paragraph I tied in a Marianist characteristic as to why they should keep “Savage Inequalities”. The Marianist Characteristic that I chose was the one that states, to Educate for peace, service and justice. Thus, my point was that the English Department needs to keep “Savage Inequalities” so that they can educate their students who can educate others about service, like helping those in East St. Louis, in order to bring them peace and justice. In addition, a third strength of my paper is that I posed questions. I feel that this is a strength because it makes the reader think about the argument and makes them an active participant in one’s argument. In addition, I feel that another strength of my paper is that I put a few words in italics to emphasize points that I wanted to stress to the readers. To me, this is a strength because it allows the reader to see what message(s) you want to get across to them; thus, telling them when they are done reading your paper, these are the points that they need to remember and consider.
With every paper there are weaknesses. One of my weaknesses was while I raised some interesting and strong points in my argument I did not connect all of them to my thesis. Another weakness was that I did not introduce my secondary source. Looking back at my paper now, I realize that these are two weaknesses that are evident in my paper and ones that I will take into consideration for the next paper that I write. This is because when a writer connects all of the points back to the thesis the paper flows better and each point is stronger. In addition, when a writer introduces their secondary sources, it not only gives the writer more credibility but their source more credibility, as well. Without introducing the secondary source, the reader and one’s audience may think that one’s source is someone that lives down the hall from the writer.
Those were the strengths and weaknesses from my paper. I thought that the comments on the paper were fair. I will definitely take them into consideration so that I can improve as a writer. However, there were a few ‘comments’ that I did not understand. There were a couple words that were underlined and had a question mark above them. I was not sure what that meant. Did those words not make sense in the sentence? Were they in the wrong tense? Should they have been omitted?
Those are all of the comments that I have about my paper, after the grading. I am still pleased with my paper.