Category: Uncategorized

Outcome 5:  Document their work using appropriate conventions (MLA)

When it comes to writing formatting and citations are one of the most important skills for you to start to get familiar with and understand. Formatting and citations are something you will be using throughout the rest of your college career, and most times Professors will require different formats depending on what you are writing. In this case, in English 110 we mainly used MLA format for our essays throughout the year. I’ve used MLA format the most in my life and have become very familiar with it. Formatting and citations aren’t just for you but they are used to give proper recognition for their words, that aren’t yours. This comes in forms such as quotations marks, in text citations, as well as properly using the authors names in your writing. As we all know, improperly or failing to cite words that aren’t yours come with serious consequences. At the beginning of this class I was a little rusty using MLA citations because in highschool we would just use a citation generator and not write it ourselves, so this set me back a bit when It came to writing them myself. Later on in the semester I began to understand what goes where in the situation and eventually was able to cite an article or paper without looking at guides to help create a citation, I began to know what information to look for when it came to citations. In my first essay, as seen in Figure 1 and 2, my citations were very minimal and just met the requirements but then looking at my third essay, as seen in Figure 3and 4, I started to use more citation sources and incorporate them better into my writing.

Outcome 4: Be able to critique their own and others’ work by emphasizing global revision early in the writing process and local revision later in the process.

When It comes to writing and finalizing an essay the last step before final touches is peer reviews, and this can be from fellow classmates and even your Professor. In my opinion peer review is the most helpful part of my writing journey, it allows me to make the corrections that I don’t normally see myself at first as well as allowing my writing to grow. Peer review allows my writing to grow because by reading what my fellow classmates and Professor has written allows me to see new perspectives and what I’ve written and gives me a chance to expand my claims and ideas. What I like most about peer editing is that it’s not just about fixing and correcting others’ work but it also gives you a chance to support and give positive feedback on sections you believe work. We have done a lot of work with peer review in English 110, with multiple classmates, sometimes even two classmates would incorporate their comments.

When I first started to learn how to peer review it was as simple as correcting grammatical errors but then I have learned over time that it’s so much more. It has allowed me to see that peer reviews is a tool not only to help you but use for support, ideas, extensions, and so much more. When I was peer reviewing for our final essay in English 110, I made sure I provided quality feedback on their work to make sure they were able to clearly see what needed to be fixed or what’s good. In this specific essay I gave feedback alot on where there was room for extensions, as well as places where I believed what they provided was good. During the process of peer reviewing their essay I used certain symbols that mean different things allowing it to be clear and organized, these symbols included “?” for parts where I had questions as well as using “+” to places where I could see some xpantion on the ideas. In the end, I believe the most important peer review you can recieve is the evaluation of your thesis, this allows the reader and the author to understand what the whole essay is based on , so in that case helpful advice on how to make a thesis more clear is always good.

Outcome 3: Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.

In my opinion, active reading is one of the most important factors that go into the prewriting stage, Active Reading allows you to fully grasp the text before making any conclusions and claims, this is something I believe I’m really good at after learning what to look for in the text. I struggled with this a bit in highschool for reasons I never knew what I should be looking for , I never retained the information I just read but after learning how to actively read and annotate it has allowed me to learn on a whole different level. After making my annotations, It always allows me to go back into the reading and look at the most important parts and see what exactly I need to know in more of an efficient pattern. We worked a lot with active reading and annotations this year in regards to many different styles of text and one of my favorites that we annotated, and even later wrote an essay on, was the essay “This is Water ” by David Foster. At first this was a very challenging piece to read and understand because I thought there were a lot of underlying meanings throughout the speech, but It was a great speech to be able to annotate and pull out the most important parts Wallace was giving. Some of the really intresting underlying meanings that I was able to annotate is about life purposes such as living life on a deafult setting, on choice and thinking, and even on our awareness and conciousness (as seen in Figures 5-7). When I annotated this I used the annotations tools of understanding, questioning, relating, challenging or extending, and rhetorical tools to understand the text better as seen in Figures 1-4.

The most Important annotations styles I like to use when active reading are the annotations where you extend on an idea or even the ability to ask questions through out the text. Asking questions and extending on what is written helps me form my own opinions as well as the ability to fully grasp the concepts of the piece, it allows my mind to start rolling so when Its time to reflect on the piece. Making annotations while active reading also plays into the process of my writing because it allows me to form claims around my questions and ideas, and turn them into paragraphs, while at the same time analysing and connecting them into my writing. I enjoy using the provided guidelines of annotations so I get a base knowledge of what I need to know , but then I usually like to go off and sometimes add some personal notes such as asking why something happened, or just what ever pops in my head first just to get my thoughts flowing.

Outcome 2: Be able to integrate their ideas with others using summary, paraphrase, quotation, analysis, and synthesis of relevant sources.

When it comes to text engagement I believe that it plays many roles in making your writing stronger. The roles text engagements play in writing can be something as small as bringing up an idea or transition to something as big as taking multiple authors and connecting them. When I first came into this english class I didn’t really know how to write correctly as some might say, my highschool wasn’t very essay based. So when I had to connect two authors and put them into conversation with each other it wasn’t the easiest for me, and as seen in my first essay it wasn’t the best. I then started to learn how to correctly put authors’ ideas and concepts into one claim and connect them both by adding quotes and unpacking them to prove the connection. This process for me usually was finding a claim from both authors that stood out to me that relates to what i’m writing about and then I would brainstorm on how these two quotes play their way into the topic, once I established that I would set them up into a barclay paragraph and explain. Or even if the topics didn’t connect, they complicated each other. I would do the same. In my first  essay I portrayed a good use of the authors ideas and evidence and pushed it further then what the author once said, sort of like complicating it but still making the connection, as seen in Figure 1. I wanted to look into my second essay and see what I gave in there, and I found a good section where I took the authors ideas and evidence and then incorporated myself into that conversation, as seen in FIgure 2.

Throughout this English 110 class we worked a lot with summaries and paraphrases when doing are essays. I tended not to use these techniques in my work before this class, only because I didn’t know much about how to use them. My work was most to quote heavy and didn’t look professional, after learning how to use these techniques correctly it allows my work to have correct citations as well as giving my work more of a professional look. I wanted to provide a section of my essay that shows where I have learned and noticed that I could provide a summary or a paraphrase in the introduction rather then being vague, as seen in Figure 3.

Objective 1: Demonstrate the ability to approach writing as a recursive process that requires substantial revision of drafts for content, organization, and clarity (global revision), as well as editing and proofreading (local revision).

Throughout my freshman year of english class it has allowed me to learn that there isn’t a certain way to do things when It comes to writing. I have learned that writing comes with many steps and one of the most important steps is the revision process. Before coming to college writing to me was just as simple as gathering ideas, writing the essay and occasionally having someone read over my writing once. It’s crazy to me that I thought that was efficient and led my work to be finalized so fast. Now that my eyes have opened to the multiple steps , including reading, outlines, rough drafts, and detailed peer comments form both classmates and my professor. It has allowed me to improve on my writing and given me the chance to be more of an efficient writer.

When writing my first draft I found that I lacked a lot of my own opinions and voice as well as connection between the authors we were provided. So after learning deeper into the writing processes for future essays I worked on adding my own opinions and voice more and more throughout the essay, rather than having the essay be so author and quote heavy. An example from an essay I did this year where I added my own personal voice was in my final essay as seen in Figure 1. Through each essay I wrote for this class I started to utilize more and more tools provided to me to revise my essays because I noticed I became more comfortable applying them. When looking at my first or second essay in comparison to my final essay there are some noticeable differences, and I believe you can see the self confidence grow greater in each essay. Coming from a High School that did not assign much essays and not having much practice with them it stunted my writing abilities greatly, but now I can say after passing in my final essay that I have grown as a writer from doing 1 essay every 6 months to now being able to write an efficient professional essay when given. The part of revision that I focused most on during my final essay was working on strengthening the connection between authors when I put text into conversation with each other, which I even struggled with at the beginning this year. An example where I was able to portray a strong connection between authors was in my final essay as seen in Figures 2 and 3.