Smarthinking's E-structor Response Form

(Your marked-up essay is below this form.)

HOW THIS WORKS: Your e-structor has written overview comments about your essay in the
form below. Your e-structor has also embedded comments [in bold and in brackets]
throughout your essay. Thank you for choosing Smarthinking's OWL; best wishes with
revising your paper!
Good day to you, Jesse, and welcome back! I am Imman C. and I will be your writing tutor for this
essay about Concussions, which are considered to be one of the most common types of traumatic
brain injury. Shall we start the review session? J
*Strengths of the essay:
A particular strength I found while browsing through your essay was your inclusion of passages from
your resources in some parts of your discussion. Here is one of them: A study done in Salamons
article compared fifty people who had suffered a concussion to fifty healthy, non-concussed people.
The finding was the patients with the concussions had abnormalities in the frontal cortex of both sides
of the brain four months later, but their symptoms had been reduced by 27% (Salamon).
By including this passage from one of your resources here, you allow your readers to know more
about how people who have suffered concussions compare to people who are healthy and have not
suffered concussions. Well done, Jesse! :)
*Jesse 7318936 has requested that you respond to the Content Development:
First, lets talk about adding explanations to some of the points discussed in your essay, which is one
way to develop your essays content. Explanations clarify some of the points that you are discussing
and can make them easier for your readers to understand. There are some points discussed in your
essay that can be improved by adding explanations. Here is one topic discussed in your essay:
There is also the possibility that even though these symptoms can occur, a concussion is not always
sustained. Sometimes the hit or the shaking is light enough where nothing happened at all to the
brain. This does not suggest to disregard symptoms either. If the symptoms last days or for weeks,
seeing a doctor might become a top priority.
This topic informs your readers of what type of injury is considered as a concussion, as well as of
cases where the shaking of the head is light enough to not affect the brain, but it does not clearly
state why symptoms should still not be disregarded even during these instances, which might leave
unanswered questions to your readers. Why should people still consider symptoms of concussions and
see doctors even if they feel that the shaking of their heads is light enough not to affect their brains?
Why is it important to seek a doctor's advice even during these cases? Answering these questions will
allow you to include explanations to this part of your essay and clarify this point that you are
discussing to your readers.
*Jesse 7318936 has requested that you respond to the Introduction/Conclusion:
Next will be our discussion on creating a hook in your in your introduction so that it convinces your
readers to continue reading your essay. In your introduction, you gave your readers a preview about
how people enjoy watching athletes in physical sports compete and stated your essays thesis
statement. Since the introduction is the first part of an essay that is seen by readers, it should be able
to catch their attention. One way to do this is by adding a hook, which is a quotation, anecdote, or
trivia about the topic being discussed.

What is an important fact about concussions and their occurrences in sports or a personal story
involving an athlete who suffered a concussion do you think can be shared to your readers in this
introduction? By including it in your introduction, you can grab the attention of your readers and
convince them to read the rest of your essay. To help you further, you can try browsing through this
part of the Smarthinking Writers Handbook that talks about Writing Introductions.
Grammar & Mechanics:
And finally, we will be discussing the use of commas as punctuations to separate the dependent
clauses from the main or independent clauses of some sentences in your essay. Commas are used to
separate the different parts of sentences. Here is a sentence from your essay: After being released
from the hospital Ryan spent the next eleven months of his life fully recuperating before he was finally
released to play again.
A dependent clause is a a part of a sentence that cannot stand on its own as a sentence, while the
main clause can stand on its own and contains the main thought of the sentence. To illustrate my
point, consider this similar sentence: Although he was able to get back up, the athlete who suffered a
bad fall was still shaken up over what happened.
This sentence also does not have any comma at first, but once a comma is used to separate its
dependent from its independent clause, the sentence becomes clearer: Although he was able to get
back up, the athlete who suffered a bad fall was still shaken up over what happened.
In the example above, the dependent clause tells readers about the athletes being able to get back
up, while the independent clause states that the athlete was still shaken up from the bad fall he had.
Now, you will need to determine where your dependent clause ends and your main clause begins.
When did your brother Ryan spend the next 11 months recuperating before he was released? Now,
you can now try using this knowledge about commas in the sentences of your essay. To help you
further, you can try looking at this part of the Smarthinking Writers Handbook that talks about
Comma Usage
Summary of Next Steps:
This is overall a good draft, Jesse. But I know that your next draft can still be improved. Here is a
recap of my suggestions for improvement:
Include details such as explanations to some of the important points discussed in your essay for
your readers to better understand them

Develop a hook in your introduction that catches the attention of your readers and convinces them
to continue reading your essay

Use commas as punctuations to separate the different parts of some sentences in your essay
Thanks for trusting us with your essay about Concussions, which are considered to be one of the
most common types of traumatic brain injury. I hope that my suggestions were useful to you. Best of
luck! Imman C. J
Find additional resources in Smarthinking's online library:
You can find more information about writing, grammar, and usage in Smarthinking's
student handbooks. You can visit the Smarthinking Writer's Handbook or the Smarthinking
ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) Writer's Handbook.
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Please look for more comments in your essay below. Thank you for visiting Smarthinking.
We encourage you to submit future essays.
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Jesse Kuczynski

VanderSlik
English 100-15
4 Dec. 2014
Concussions: Injuries Unlike Any Other
Viewers around the country watch in awe on their television screens as the gridiron
gladiators and ice hockey behemoths battle out a game every week or every few days. The
viewers see the collisions between two or more players that when replayed in slow motion looks
like theyve been hit by a truck. It seems more often than not these amazingly gifted athletes are
able to rise up and continue on with no effect on them at all after the hit. Sometimes though,
players are not as lucky. Sometimes, they will take a major hit and stagger to their feet only to
fall down again, if they get up at all. The explanation as to why is is the players have suffered a
concussion. When someone suffers a concussion, their injury is considered a brain injury with
symptoms which warn the injury may have happened, their short term health in terms of
recovery time can vary, and the damage done by the concussion can leave long term health
impacts on the person.
Many injuries people and sports players face involves shoulders, knees and feet. [The
topic sentence of a body paragraph is its first sentence, and gives readers a preview of its
content. This sentence, however, talks about the common injuries in sports suffered by
athletes. How will you improve this paragraph so that it previews the topic about
concussions discussed in this part of your essay?] When a concussion is suffered, it is an
injury to ones brain. Concussions are considered to be mild traumatic brain injuries that change
the way the brain works (Salamon, Sports Concussion Institute). According to Salamon and the
Sports Concussion Institute, most concussions occur after a direct blow to the head or blow to

the body that causes violent head movement, all without losing consciousness. So there is not
one way for anyone to sustain a concussion. It could happen after getting hit in the head with a
textbook, or by falling on ones face on the basketball court.
There are many symptoms associated with concussions. These symptoms can include physical
symptoms, cognitive or mind symptoms, emotional symptoms, and energy symptoms (Sports
Concussion Institute). Physical symptoms may include headache, nausea, balance problems, and
neck pain. Mind symptoms can include feeling foggy, and having trouble with concentration and
memory. Emotional symptoms associated with concussions include grumpiness and sadness.
[What causes a person who suffered a concussion to be grumpy and sad? Adding more
details to these examples here allows your readers to better understand how these
emotional symptoms are linked to concussions.]Energy symptoms include fatigue, drowsiness,
and sleeping troubles. The most commonly reported symptoms are headache and dizziness,
which are reported over 70% of the time (Sports Concussion Institute). If twenty different
athletes received a concussive blow, then fourteen of them would report feeling dizzy or having a
headache after the hit.
If someone is hit in the head by something, or gets their head shaken around, experiencing one or
more of these symptoms could mean a concussion has been sustained. There is also the
possibility that even though these symptoms can occur, a concussion is not always sustained.
Sometimes the hit or the shaking is light enough where nothing happened at all to the brain. This
does not suggest to disregard symptoms either. If the symptoms last days or for weeks, seeing a
doctor might become a top priority.
After a player has received a concussion and has been diagnosed as having one, their next move
is to try to look into how their short term health will be impacted, in terms of recovery time.

They might wonder how long it is going to take before their brains are fully healthy again and
how quickly they can return to playing. Research is suggesting this recovery window may not be
as small as people think. A study done in Salamons article compared fifty people who had
suffered a concussion to fifty healthy, non-concussed people. The finding was the patients with
the concussions had abnormalities in the frontal cortex of both sides of the brain four months
later, but their symptoms had been reduced by 27% (Salamon). The study suggests even after
someone says they feel better, there are signs their brains have not recovered yet. In this case, the
short term recovery period is longer than the four months between being tested. In one or two
weeks, people typically report feeling better (study author Andrew Mayer, Salamon). This
reporting may not be enough time for recovery, depending on the concussion. Anyone who has a
concussion can report feeling better and having no symptoms, but their brains may not actually
be where patients think they are yet. Returning to the prior events before the concussion too early
may lead to new or worsening symptoms, or another blow to the head may result in a more
severe concussion case.
According to another study by Thomas Teasdale and Aase Engberg in Denmark, cognitive
dysfunction is a short term effect of suffering a concussion and also a risk factor for concussions
in the future (Teasdale and Engberg). After someone receives a concussion, their cognitive
abilities are impaired for a time resulting from the concussion. After the concussion has been
recovered from though, the impairment on the patients brain that came from the concussion may
be a risk factor for suffering another one, even if it has been recovered from. In this study, some
cognitive deficits were reported a week after the concussion was sustained, some three or four
weeks later, some had no deficits mere days after the concussion, while others had deficits
months later (Teasdale and Engberg). This showed the amount of time it takes to recover from a

concussion varies. The variance could be from a few days, to a number of weeks, to months or
even years after the injury occurred. Every concussion case and every concussion injury is
different. If this is so, then it is normal to see differing periods of recovery time short term, based
on the severity of the injury and if it has happened before.
In yet a third study, the activity level of the brain after a concussion affected the symptoms and
the recovery from the injury. High levels resulted in lower performance, longer recovery time,
and longer symptom duration, while moderately increasing levels over time resulted in the best
performance, optimal recovery time, and shorter duration of symptoms (Majerske et. al). So if
the patient returned to a heightened activity level after the concussion, then the time it took for
them to recover was the longest and their symptoms lasted the longest amount of time. Because
the moderate activity levels resulted in better recovery time and symptom duration, it suggests
controlling activity may improve the recovery outcome, but in this case, more study is needed
(Majerske et. al). Going with the controlling of activity, if controlling the activity after a
concussion does lead to better results, then it would be beneficial to the concussion patient to
wait to continue high level activity until they can prove they can handle lower and moderate
levels first with no problems and a good recovery.
Aside from wondering how long the estimated recovery time will be, people who suffer
concussions also have their long term health in mind when dealing with a concussion. In his
headline article in TIME Magazine, author Sean Gregory mentions the long term effects of
suffering a concussion are for the most part not known. Even with that, Gregory points out there
are links between traumatic brain injuries and attention, aggression, and decision making
problems, plus dementia and Alzheimers Disease (Gregory). Someone who suffers a
concussion, which is considered a traumatic brain injury, could then be at risk for developing one

or more of these issues later in life, possibly at an earlier age than someone else usually would
develop them. The American Center for Disease Control estimates nearly 2.5 million traumatic
brain injuries are reported every year, but this is only according to numbers from hospital
records. The real number of traumatic brain injuries may actually be near double of what the
CDC reports (Gregory). Considering these numbers, the amount of traumatic brain injuries
suffered among people every year, including high school, college, and professional athletes, it is
exceptionally scary to think that upwards of five million people could be put at risk for
developing diseases like dementia and Alzheimers earlier in their lives than anticipated. The
number of people who may be at risk every year piles up in a hurry.
The National Football League is popularly known around the world for holding one of the
biggest sports games of the year in the Super Bowl. Its millions of fans worldwide follow their
favorite teams to see how their team fares every season, and if theyll achieve a coveted playoff
spot to continue the season. The league is also gaining popularity for the growing number of
former players filing lawsuits saying the league has covered up the dangers of concussions.
The NFL has estimated that nearly one-third of former players will develop dementia,
Alzheimers disease or other debilitating neurological disorders like Parkinsons and ALS. For
years, the NFL had denied a link between blows to a players head on the field and subsequent
brain damage. (Gregory)
So what the NFL is saying is about 33% of its former players and likely 33% of its current
players today are going to develop some kind of neurological problem at some point in their
future lives. Whatever the problem ends up being, it could have a definite impact on the players
health in the long run, sadly even shortening their life expectancy. Over 5,000 former players
have already joined the suit against the NFL that has resulted in a settlement being reached. This

confirmed professional football players have an even greater risk of serious and permanent brain
damage (Gregory). [Here you stated the name of the author of this resource in this in-text
citation. However, you were unable to include an important information here to ensure
that this citation follows the guidelines of the MLA style format of citation. From which
page number of this magazine was this passage used here taken from?] The concussive
blows and hits would be taken at all points throughout the players career and suggests it leaves
the player in a more vulnerable position for lasting damage. As physical and as violent as the
game of football is, playing professionally for ten to fifteen years could have a major long term
health impact.
An example of how violent the game of football and concussions are is through the cover article
of the September 29, 2014 edition of TIME Magazine. The article, written by Sean Gregory, who
has been quoted above, tells the riveting and heart-rending story of Chad Stover, a 16 year old
high school football player whose life came to a tragic end after a playoff game on Halloween
night, 2013. During the game, Chad took two massive blows to the head, albeit at different times.
One hit occurred in the first quarter, and the second in the fourth, just before he collapsed on the
field. After Chad collapsed, he was rushed to the hospital where he spent the next two weeks,
including his birthday, in a coma. There was little progress being made in recovering from the
game. Chad died on November 14, 2013. The official cause of death was blunt-force injury to
the cranium (Gregory). It is more than likely and probably reality the two major hits Chad took
resulted in a concussion, but Chad did not know of the first, and recognised the second seconds
before he fell, but by then it was too late. In terms of short and long term recovery, Chad Stover
experienced neither, because the damage to his brain was so severe it left him in a coma and it
killed him.

As the author of this paper, I also have an experience with concussions and their impact on
recovery and long term health. The concussion though, was not sustained by me, but by my
brother Ryan. His concussion happened during the first week of the 2012-2013 basketball
season. Making a play on the ball, Ryan lost his balance and crashed face first onto the hardwood
floor. He was not aware of any symptoms of a concussion and neither was the rest of the family.
When it caught up to Ryan, he spent the next week in a rehabilitative hospital recovering from
his injury. After being released from the hospital Ryan spent the next eleven months of his life
fully recuperating before he was finally released to play again. Since then, Ryan has had no
problems and is continuing his high school playing career. As for the long term impacts
mentioned previously, he will have to wait and see what, if anything, comes his way.
A concussion is considered a mild traumatic brain injury, but it can have lasting impressions for
a lifetime. Whenever someone sustains a concussion, there are symptoms that can be watched for
by the person and by others to make sure the possible concussed person is safe. Some of the most
common symptoms are headaches and dizziness, along with balance problems and even
problems with memory or focusing. Recovering from these symptoms has a wide window of
ranges. Some recover within days, while others, like Ryan, takes months or years to fully get
over. After recovering from a concussion though, there is more to watch out for. Long term
health issues like Alzheimers and dementia have been seen in connection to suffering a
concussion. Concussions in sports and in all walks of life have been overlooked as minor injuries
in the past, not to be worried about much. This is not the case anymore. [By including a
summary of the important points and topics about concussions and the different aspects of
this type of sports injury in your conclusion, you were able to give a clear and strong sense
of closure to your essay. Keep up the good work, Jesse! :)]

Works Cited
Gregory, Sean. The Tragic Risks of an American Obsession. TIME 29 Sep. 2014: 32-39. Print.
Majerske, Cynthia W,M.D., M.S., et al. "Concussion in Sports: Postconcussive Activity Levels,
Symptoms, and Neurocognitive Performance." Journal of Athletic Training 43.3 (2008): 265-74.
ProQuest. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.
Salamon, Maureen. Concussions Damage to Brain May Linger. WebMD. N.p. 18 Nov. 2013.
Web. 13 Nov. 2014
Sports Concussion Institute. Concussions are a Fact of Life in Todays Sports World.
Concussion Treatment. Sports Concussion Institute, n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2014
Teasdale, Thomas W., and Aase Engberg. "Duration of Cognitive Dysfunction After
Concussion, and Cognitive Dysfunction as a Risk Factor: A Population Study of Young Men."
British medical journal 315.7108 (1997): 569-72. ProQuest. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.