Writing is a process I’ve grown to despise. Ever since grade school, I’ve had problems trying to express my ideas on paper. My writing process involves thinking about what’s being asked and trying to reflect my thoughts the best way I can on paper, but my thoughts don’t always come out as clear as I want them to be sometimes leaving a question not fully answered. My writing process isn’t a consistent set in stone process, but since being in ENC 1101 I always follow some of the same parameters such as revising my drafts, grammar usage and considering context and audience. According to Donald M. Murray in The Makers Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts “A piece of writing is never finished”. Before this class, I didn’t really revise my essays …show more content…
There are usually questions given in the rubric that I seek to answer in my essay which according to Murray is the first thing writers should look for in their draft: information. When discussing my path and comparing how it aligns to Murrays path, I tend to not focus as much as I should on meaning, sometimes in past essays and still to this day I have a problem with getting a little off topic or adding something to an essay that has no significance to the topic. Such as in the Rhetorical Analysis essay I started focusing more on my personal opinion instead of examining the rhetorical situation. As previously stated, I always consider the audience when writing essays. In our Establishing a Literacy Assignment I made sure the audience understood what literacy I established and the sponsors who helped me establish the literacy. Without those pieces of information, my paper wouldn’t have told the reader what they needed to know and, therefore, would’ve been …show more content…
My form and structure are not always the best. In one of our more challenging essays, the Rhetorical Analysis Essay my form and structure weren’t as strong as they should be. As stated before, I made the mistake of not staying focused on the rhetorical elements of my topic and venturing my own personal opinion in the essay, which crowded and weakened my form and structure. Continuing with Murray’s path, the development of my essays is based on the rubric. I always seek to include information that the rubric is essentially telling me to include, but sometimes I fall short of developing my thoughts enough. The dimension of my essays also has inconsistencies. I tend to have a problem of expanding into great detail on one point of my essay leaving another point barely expanded upon leaving my essay disproportionate. Finally, the last thing writer’s look for in their essay is their own voice. Thomas Osborne in Late Nights, Last Rites, and the Rain-Slick Road to Self Destruction states “I strive for a good grade, and will work as hard as possible to achieve one, but there is a voice in the back of my head that is effectively scoffing at the ridiculousness of some assignments and expectations that I have had to complete and live up to.” My voice sometimes gets lost in assigned essays when I try to fulfill certain standards that are put upon me. Thomas and I both struggle with writing what we need to write in order to achieve the grade
Murray described how meaning, audience, structure, development, and voice are all crucial when a writer edits their drafts. The revision process helps the writer to create writing pieces which are attentively judged. Everything within a writing piece is structured, balanced and thoroughly explained. Each and every detail must be thought of carefully because everything is devoted to the meaning. Murray describes how writers edit with their knowledge gained from previous experience. He then states how writing helps the authors to better understand the concepts they are writing about. Towards the end of his excerpt Murray talks about “the maker’s eye.” He portrays how the maker’s eye is steadily analyzing what it sees. The enhancement in developing revisions will make the writing piece’s meaning more clear and
Recently, I have been writing quite a few essays and papers throughout my college experience. This entails, but not limited to, English, History, and Economics. My style of writing and methods have generally remained the same throughout the process. In this assignment, I will be discussing how I prepare to start a paper, what my thoughts are through the process, and my strengths and weaknesses of what my final drafts look like.
Anyone who is doing any type of writing piece has a process. They may not know it but it is there and it exists. It is one’s approach to their piece and how they go about accomplishing it. It has to do with how you write it, how many drafts you do, as well as your revision process if you even have one. My writing process however has room for improvement. A summation of my writing process consist of heavy planning, one draft, and little revisions. Anne Lamott, Shirley Rose, and Kathleen Yancey all drew attention to major points through their writing pieces that support and dispute my writing process. Through their pieces they have found a way to inspire, inform, and entertain me all at the same time while passing along great information that
The journey through language and literature has always been an intriguing one for me. It is for this reason that I chose English as my major. It seems that every teacher or professor that I have had, has always been able to pinpoint one specific element in my writing that I need to work on. This has not been a negative thing by any stretch, because with each passing semester there is an element of my literature that will be perfected for the next. This is the wonder that is English, and the reason for my passion in this subject area.
If the student desires to grow in knowledge, they must be willing to adopt a new style of writing as they prepare for higher education. The purpose of a college is not to just feed facts to a student, but rather use the professor to teach the students to develop critical thinking habits so that new knowledge flourishes in the student. These habits are necessary for the new writer if they desire to further improve their writing potential. This requires the writer to focus on writing to communicate ideas that engage and persuade the reader. Clear, precise, and factual writing will assist in this process by teaching the student methods to avoid developing weak or unclear arguments through the elimination of opinions from the essay. It is to be noted that one should be aware not to create excessive claims. These draw away from the culture of the academy and may result in errors that take away from the argument of the
In the beginning of the year I was not a strong writer; the first three essays we wrote I consecutively received a 4,5--, and 3 on the AP scale. The main reason why I scored low on all of these essays is mainly due to the fact that I needed to use a deeper thought process as well as eliminate the use of any absolutes I was using. Rhetorical analysis is the place where I have excelled the most because I
Analysis of Advanced Placement Essay Strengths and Weaknesses The rhetorical strategies prompt, which involves analyzing a passage and constructing an essay on the strategies the author utilizes to convey an idea, is the prompt that the class has been practicing throughout the year. There are many strong components in my rhetorical strategies essays. I open the essay with a clear, definitive thesis, setting the tone for the entire paper. The analysis consistently follows the pattern of addressing the strategy’s function in the sentence, and its function in the author’s thesis.
Transitioning from Honors English II to AP Language and Composition has pushed me to become not only a better writer but a better English student. The advanced course entailed developing a mastery of grammar and analytical skills. In class essays: synthesis, argumentation, rhetorical analysis, and multiple choice prepared us for the AP exam. Over the course of this year, the shifting of focus from reading longer texts, specifically novels, to shorter texts, speeches, ads, and articles, urged me to ameliorate my argumentation and rhetorical analysis skills in both writing and thinking. This progression took quite some time as I noticed my skills got better as I did more practice.
In the chapter, “Internal Revision,” Murray discusses the writing process and how we as teachers should teach it. He states, “And yet rewriting is one of the writing skills least researched, least examined, least understood, and—usually—least taught” (75). I believe that rewriting is a vital step of writing an essay, story, or anything that you are putting together. Growing up in school, I never had a revision time. Once it was due, we had to turn it in and then we get it back with a letter grade. With not knowing why you got the grade and how you can fix it makes you discouraged for the next assignment. It was not until high school that I started to get a little feedback from the teachers on why I got the grade that I did. We still did not
In the beginning of English 101 I was what you call a novice writer a person who only wrote what they felt was required. However, certain techniques that I learned in English 101 made me realize that writing was not about filling requirements; it’s about speaking out, exploring and proving a point. “Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” (Trimble, 17) In John Trimble’s quote he tries to point out that writing is something that you grow with and learn as you go along. I believe this growth was achieved with a technique that was introduced to me by my professor called repetitive revision. What I found out was that revision of your essays helps in recognizing your mistakes and enhances the flow of your essays. By providing me...
I got VERY good at the method I was taught in high school, and I've suffered for it. I am acutely aware of a "lost" feeling when faced with the need or desire to succinctly put my own thoughts down on paper -- in a personal letter, in a letter to the editor of the hometown newspaper, or one to a politician to tell him what a weenie he is -- or to write this paper expressing my ideas about writing. I find I have to concentrate hard to write what I want to say without resorting to cliches, bluffing assertions of alleged facts, and the printed equivalent of mumbling-and-hoping-people-get-it, but at least that means I'm learning what to watch for.
There have been several occasions when I was writing a paper that I believe conveyed my stance or ideas on the topic properly. However, I found that I was incorrect in that belief. My critical analysis assignment, “Tweet Less, Kiss More Analysis” (4), was an example of when I incorrectly conveyed the topic that I was assigned. As it was an analysis paper about the article, “Tweet Less, Kiss More” by Bob Herbert, it was expected that I was to actually analysis the article. I, of course, believed that I had been doing that when it was brought to my attention that instead of analyzing the article, I had given my stance on the topic discussed in the article. It was because of that that I came to the realization that the structure and information put into an essay can completely change the readers’ views of the paper. Instead of the reader forming their own opinion or stance due to the article and my analysis of it, I had unintentionally only given my own stance on the topic that the article discussed. The information and structure of a paper is essential to the quality and clarity of the paper. A good paper cannot have one and not the other and that is something that I learned throughout this
The ability to write well is not a naturally acquired skill; it is usually learned or culturally transmitted as a set of practices in formal instructional settings or other environments. Writing skills must be practiced and learned through experience. Writing also involves composing, which implies the ability either to tell or retell pieces of information in the form of narratives or description, or to transform information into new texts, as in expository or argumentative writing. Perhaps it is best viewed as a continuum of activities that range from the more mechanical or formal aspects of “writing down” on the one end, to the more complex act of composing on the other end (Omaggio Hadley, 1993). It is undoubtedly the act of
I keep an archive of school work from past semesters of college and even high school. So I opened it up and looked through a few essays I had senior year at my high school. It quickly became apparent to me that although my writing style was consistent and slowly got better over those years, I still made some of the same mistakes in paper after paper. I tended to just throw out the idea I had in my head at the time onto the page. Yes I did manage to transcribe my meaning from my head to the text, but more often then not you couldn 't tell because It was buried under mountains of unnecessary text and formatted
Taking a creative writing class was a good way for me to express my thoughts and feelings onto paper, as well as read my other classmates stories. Reading stories created by other people lead me into their mind brain to experience what type of writer they were, it was an overall exquisite class. I believe that every person has a way of expressing who they are through writing stories of their own, fiction is the best way to express your creative imagination. This class that I took for two years helped me become a better writer and helped me understand the types of writers we have.