I chose to revise the first and second paper we worked on early in the semester. Those were my worst grades so it was an easy decision. Looking back at the papers, I realized my writing was nowhere close to where it should be. I would throw ideas all over the place especially in the first paper and it was not organized, so I spent a lot of time fixing those problems. The second paper was similar to the first one, but it was better overall. The commentary still had a lot of problems in it. I chose not to revise my third and fourth paper because those were my best grades and there wouldn’t be much to revise. I ultimately spent the most time on my better papers and my grade reflected that. During the revision process, I applied the information I learned from class and used all of it for my first papers. …show more content…
First, I read my first two essays carefully. Next, I reread them, but this time I started to highlight sections that needed to be fixed. I also looked back at your comments and really focused on those sections. Then, I opened the original documents and started with my introduction and worked down from there. I really wanted to make sure everything made sense and then I would move on to the next paragraph. After I revised the whole paper, I would go back and reread it to make sure it is what I want. Finally, I would save everything and call it a day on that paper. I would only work on one paper at a time or my brain would explode. That process worked for me and I will eventually use it again in the
Use transitions and make connections not only between paragraphs, but among sentences, too. Play with different types of sentence structures (some long, some short, etc.) and more vivid, descriptive word choice to make the essay engaging to the reader.
I believe this semester helped my writing, and I think that is clear from the progression through each paper. When writing my first paper “A Rhetorical Analysis of Juan Enriquez’s Ted Talk” I felt unconfident in my skills as a writer, as they hadn’t been used for around a year. It shows unfortunately in the overall quality of the piece, and I remain unsatisfied with it. I was unsure of the concepts I was trying to argue, and the points I was trying to make, and having to analyze a video proved to be a difficult task for me. As a whole I think the paper shook me at the beginning of the semester and impacted the quality of my notes (Or lack there of), and my course attendance.
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
In the course of this semester of writing, I grew more than I ever had in my ability to write well. I remember on the first day of class several other students were talking about how hard this writing professor is. I was a bit worried and even thought about switching to an easy professor for a guarantee A so I can get a 4.0. Now, I am grateful that I chose to decide to work hard for a 4.0 instead. Even though I may not get it, I am still glad I stayed because for once, I learned and became a better writer. I can see that my knowledge of conventions definitely improved from last semester. I really loved the feedback for my assignments, since it allows me to realize what I need to improve on and what I should keep doing. Unlike the previous semester, the writing professor only told us our grade on the very first assignment after two months. There were no feedback on how I could improve either, so I had no idea if I was having trouble with anything. Prior to this course, I always had trouble writing sentences and organizing them in such a way that flows and delivers my idea well. I also rarely outline or plan out how I will write a paper too, and even when I did, it was very vague. Out of the five learning outcomes, I grew the most in rhetoric knowledge and writing process from the reading responses and 4 assignment.
With theses, I never knew how to properly tie together my entire idea of the essay into a sentence or two. In my first essay titled
Over the course of Intro to College Writing I have written a total of three essays and turned in. These three essays consist of: Narrative, Profile, and Argumentative. My first essay was the Narrative in which I wrote about the night of my mothers arrest. With this essay. I as a writer was trying to convey the emotions I felt during the experience and describe the many atmospheres that occurred throughout the incident. The only memorable thing from this essay was figuring out how to end the essay in a way that wrapped the entire essay back up in a short meaningful, stylistic way. That I felt I did well with my last line being “That was the first time I had said “I love you” in well, I couldn't tell you.” Through writing that last statement I felt I summed up a struggling relationship I held with my mother sparring details that spanned over years into a simple sentence that echoed around the core concept. This was the only breakthrough I met as I wrote this essay recalling the night and describing my feelings flowed easily and I found myself done quickly. I only stopped to find a fancier word or write a sentence in a different way. Either making it longer, shorter or include more details. I had strong feelings that I communicated the entire situation in a comprehensible and touching way. Looking back on the essay there was much too be corrected as I did in my re-write such as: Organization, fragments, Contractions, comma splices.
In the first essay, I had troubles with understanding the prompt itself. It was difficult to understand what literacies we were supposed to use and how to work those into the text. I overcame this by just simply writing the first draft in 15 minutes and working with all the ideas I had developed in those minutes. When I did this I finally understood what the prompt was asking and how to go about the paper all together. I also had difficulties with the second essay that was assigned, I had trouble with the structure of the text.
making a final copy. In order to create a good paper you need organize your
When writing an essay, I begin by understanding the genre or the purpose of the writing assignment and knowing who will read my essay. Brainstorming and organizing all the details, ideas, and adding examples come next. I gather my evidence from my own personal experiences, from the experiences of those who are close to me, and from trusted sources, like books, journals,
The best part of the class was the peer editing assignments, I found that they were the most beneficial and entertaining assignments in the entire class. The most I learned about my writing was when I read what the peer editors had to say about them. Peer editors were also able to catch mistakes that paper rater was couldn’t. I personally enjoyed editing other people's papers, it was entertaining to read their stories. The only peer editing that I did like was the summary, I don’t think that I had enough time to edit the paper as closely as I wanted
After getting all of my thoughts down I would begin to write my rough draft. This was an opportunity to add to my immature ideas. I would not strive to write an A+ paper my first attempt, but I would try to organize my thoughts into a way that would make the most sense. Organization was key for me while writing the rough draft. I believe that organization is one of the most important things when it comes to writing because without it your thoughts will be all over the place and not have a
I was never a person that liked to write essays. This semester I really enjoyed writing those essays and specially because I was learning new things while writing them. Some things I could do to improve my essay writing are not to wait till the last three or four days before I turn my essay in to start doing it. Another thing I will do is if I forget how to do something or about some rule in the common errors I made I will just go back to all the lessons I printed out to have as reference. I think those will help me allot. And one last thing I will do to improve my writing is to try my best not to confuse all those words I got confused. I will do my best to learn each word and its rule of where it goes so I won’t have the same mistakes I had this semester.
As this semester is coming to an end I have written a lot of papers for Mrs. Nance. Some of them were very tough and others were a little bit easier for me whatever they were I got through them all even though some nights I did not think I would. The papers that were hard for me were a lot of the bigger papers and they were not hard just because they were long. On some assignments I could keep writing for days. It was the revising that was hard for me and especially in my Costa Rica memoir. I do not think I have ever worked that hard on a paper before, and in the end it was all worth it because I got a very good grade on it. It was challenging because I had to go back and try to find any spelling mistakes which took a lot of work because I
I still had the typical grammatical errors and sentence fragments, but there were not as many. I could see my writing skills were improving based on me actually taking the instructors corrections and advice into consideration. When I created my revision memo for this essay, I attempted to finally perfect the common mistakes I had made. Making my sentences a little longer
I learned the importance of making several drafts for one paper. Every writer can always make improvements because a paper is never perfect on the first draft. At least three drafts should be made before submitting. Secondly, it is important for ideas to be organized. One idea should smoothly transition into the next for the reader to easily understand the author’s arguments. Thirdly, it is helpful to have others give corrections on the student’s paper. Asking the professor or peers for critiques allows to see possible errors and ways to make the paper