Month: December 2022

At the beginning of the semester, I made frequent grammatical mistakes. Whether it was adding a comma where it’s not needed, using the wrong “there,” or using the wrong punctuation to close out a sentence. I would make common mistakes, stuff that I know, but I wouldn’t take the time to deeply read over my piece to fix those mistakes.

The example below it’s from Essay #1, focusing on the red underlines and how I had sentence-level errors.

As you can tell I misused “there” when it’s supposed to be “their,” and I didn’t have a question mark after “taught.” These are all mistakes that can easily be fixed through proofreading, but I found myself skimming over my piece rather than deeply reading it at the beginning of the semester. This is just a sentence-level error, and it’s easy to miss these in your essay, but I found this occurring less and less in my next two essays.

Here’s an example from Essay #3, where I focus on my punctuation and minimizing grammatical mistakes. Pay attention to how I respond to the question I bring up in the essay.

Here you can tell, I’m trying to engage the reader by asking a question, and then when I answer it, I focus on my use of commas, and punctuation. My proofreading overall in Essay #3 was a lot better than any of my other essays. After re-reading Essay #3 multiple times before turning it in, it made me feel the best as my sentence-level mistakes were definitely minimized.

With such a focus on global revision this semester, we also never lost sight of local revision, because it’s just as important. The reason we focused so much on global revision is that we’re so used to using local revision when revising others and our own pieces, we tend to just focus on grammatical and sentence-level errors. Instead, this semester we began looking at the bigger picture, which was useful and helped improve my own revision process and during peer review. But for me, I also feel like I also improved with local revision, as I think I minimized my grammatical mistakes as the semester progressed and from Essay #1 to Essay #3.

Outcome 5 (Document Work MLA) – Document their work using appropriate conventions (MLA)

This semester, we dove into how to cite your sources in the text appropriately, and at the end of the text, according to the MLA format. At the beginning of the semester, I sometimes struggled to find page numbers for my embedded sources, and it would take more time to go back and find them. As we began to write Essays #2, and #3, I kept this in mind, and I’d always mark the page number of possible quotes I wanted to use for my essay. This would not only keep me organized but would help with efficiency as well.

Here’s an example of an embedded source from Essay #2. Pay specific attention to the punctuation of my in-text citation.

I followed the MLA format of putting the author’s last name in parenthesis, followed by the page number. Then the period comes after the parenthesis close. I’ve always known this, but the process has become more efficient, as I’ve gathered the page numbers before I begin drafting my essay.

Another thing I want to look at is my Works Cited page at the end of my essays. They always come on a new page, following the conclusion of your essay. Coming into the class, I knew how to construct works cited pages, but I haven’t normally done it after an essay. I liked how we were giving credit to the authors we referenced in the writing.

Below is an example of my works cited page from Essay #3

As you can tell it’s a stand-alone work cited page, and indented, and sorted alphabetically. Overall, I’ve reaffirmed what I already know as far as worked cited pages go, but I found an easier and more efficient way to do in-text citations throughout this semester.

Outcome 4 (Peer Review) – 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.

Peer review may be the biggest difference between high school and college, it’s changed dramatically. I’ve learned exactly how to peer review, and exactly how effective it is to revise. If everyone leaves meaningful feedback on their peer’s papers, then everyone will receive meaningful feedback as well. Through my experiences this semester we’ve done three different peer reviews, which have all been extremely beneficial to me. Not only are we receiving our peer’s feedback, but we’d also get comments from Professor Brod. Having different eyes and perspectives on your piece allows your writing to be seen in many different ways which is valuable. 

Another key point with peer review that we’ve focused on is to offer perspective but to not change their point of view. We learned you shouldn’t change what the writer is saying, you should just offer opinions on how they can improve what they’re already saying. Instead of rewriting a paragraph, you may say, “I think this would be a good spot to bring in an additional source.” And then you may name a good source to bring in. 

I’d like to provide examples of both my own review of my peer’s paper, as well as feedback I’ve received from my classmates. 

Pay attention to how the feedback I received is actionable, and something I can put directly into my essay to improve it. 

This was from Essay #3:

Not only did she give me useful advice that I can work with, but she also began with what she liked. Not necessarily for me, but sometimes when you lead with something you like, the person may be more apt to listen to what advice they may have for your writing. In this case, Audrey inspired me to continue my paragraph and go into detail about the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and how we’ve always had to depend on one another.

I now want to look at how my comments have changed from the beginning of the semester to now. I believe every peer review I’ve taken more time to deeply read to give the author the suggestions they deserve.

On the first peer review, I don’t have any physical comments that I’ve kept, but I would normally say something about the clarity of the piece. I’d either say it’s easy to understand, or I’d mention parts that are slightly confusing. I could tell as the semester went on, I began to not just say that, but explain how to make it better.

For example, on Audrey’s rough draft for Essay #3, I left this comment.

This was towards the end of one of her paragraphs, and I felt myself getting a little lost while reading. She was making great points, but instead of just telling her I was getting lost, I gave some advice on how to make this point in her piece clear. I suggested relating back to her thesis just to remind her readers what exactly she’s arguing.

The peer reviews I received were always beneficial, which made me want to put in extra effort to make sure my partner was receiving beneficial suggestions too. I think it’s important to not lose sight of mentioning the things they do well in the piece too, so often people focus on what’s wrong, but I definitely continued leaving compliments on the piece because that always feels good.

I do think my peer reviews have grown throughout the semester into me leaving more meaningful comments for my classmates, critiquing their work with a focus on global revision, and then, later on, looking at the sentence-level structure and local revision.

Outcome 3 (Active Reading) – Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.

When annotating, I’ve always been one to briefly read over the article, and then go back and add annotations. If I couldn’t find enough information to annotate, I would underline random things because I’ve never really been taught how to annotate. It’s more-so something teachers just expect you know how to do. So in this class, when we received the “Brief Guide to Annotations” it was very helpful. I often looked back on it, but once we got to our third and fourth readings I was comfortable with the material on the guide sheet. 

At the beginning of this class, I tried a little bit of everything. I used all the different annotation types, Understanding, Questioning, Exploring Relationships, Extending, Challenging, and Rhetorical. I soon realized that my focus was finding places where all these annotations would fit, but it began to take away from the actual reading. My focus wasn’t on understanding the content of the article, it was trying to find the right spot for the specific annotations. So, as the semester progressed, I realized that I should read to understand the article, and annotations are something I can add as it comes to my head. I began to have favorites, specific annotations started to work for me, such as “challenging” the writer and “understanding” the piece. Those two I found myself focusing more on. 

Here’s an example from The Limits of Friendship by Maria Konnikova (2nd Page, 2nd and 3rd paragraph) 

This shows two of my annotations, one helping me understand the setting and time period of the piece. And the other is challenging/pushing back on the writer. I was challenging the fact that “the number of people the average person could have in her social group was a hundred and fifty.” I thought that was way too big, so I made an annotation to push back. I tend to leave quick annotations, sometimes only ones that I can understand, but jotting down quick ideas helps me as I read.

I also experimented with “Extending” and “Exploring Relationships” In the next example, pay attention to not only those two annotations, but also how I add brief thoughts to help my own understanding.

Here’s an example from the same piece, “The Limits of Friendship.” (2nd page, 3rd paragraph)

As you can tell, I continued to use understanding as an annotation method, but I experimented a bit trying others. I still believe Understanding and Challenging are the two types that work best for me.

Another thing I want to look at is how my reading response answers actually helped me develop a paragraph in one of my essays.

This example is from Paul Bloom’s piece, “Is Empathy Overrated?” The question asked was, In two healthy paragraphs, summarize the piece AND show (with framed quotes and paraphrase from the text) what you believe to be the author’s three main points/arguments.

Writing the response helped me draft a paragraph for Essay #2. Since I had to think about what we’re Bloom’s points and not just that they were controversial, but how they were controversial, helped me create a well-crafted, nuanced paragraph. It helped me push back on Bloom, and establish my own perspective.

This example is from Essay #2, at the beginning of Paragraph #2. I want you to pay attention to how I used the same quote as my reading response “…Here your empathy is silent” and how I built off of it.

Overall, I’ve used my reading responses many times to construct a paragraph in one of my essays, and it’s a good tool to use when you are having a hard time brainstorming ideas. In this case, it helped me push back on Bloom and challenge his perspective.

Outcome 2 (Integrating Ideas) – Be able to integrate their ideas with others using summary, paraphrase, quotation, analysis, and synthesis of relevant sources.

The integration of sources has been the focal point of all my essays this semester. Beginning with what “They Say” and moving into my understanding of the quote by explaining it with what “I Say.” I quickly noticed something that was working for me, which was Barclay paragraphs. It would help me integrate multiple sources while maintaining my own voice. Here’s an example of a paragraph where I integrated sources without a Barclay paragraph, and then I’ll give you an example of when I did use the outline. 

Essay #1 integrating Chen- beginning of 2nd paragraph

Essay #2 integrating Bloom and Wallace- beginning of 2nd paragraph

You can tell in the first example I only had one source, it would’ve been a much better paragraph if I could’ve brought in another point of view. So in the second essay, I focused on instead of just integrating sources, having the sources interact with one another. In the second example, I push back on Bloom and extend with specifics to make it more nuanced. I then compare it to David Foster Wallace and how it relates to Bloom’s controversial thoughts on empathy. 

This was the main focus for me as I went into Essay #2, and Essay #3, which is to have the sources interact with each other to strengthen my point, but also to not lose sight of my own voice. I think my essays improved significantly because of what I learned about integrating Barclay paragraphs and bringing in multiple viewpoints. 

(Recursive Process) – 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). Word Count: 480

At the beginning of the semester, I honestly didn’t think much of the revision process. In high school, We had to do a rough draft, a peer review, and a final draft. When the time came to start revising, I spent minimal time, if any. I took it as extra time to focus on other work, rather than actually sitting down and spending quality time revising my essay. I’m not just saying this, but my mindset now has completely changed. I’m devoting more time to the process, focusing more on revision specifically. A huge thing that helps is how seriously we take peer review in this class. I’m getting valuable feedback that helps me improve my writing, whereas in high school the reviews we left on our peer’s papers were more-so local revisions, focused more on grammatical mistakes, and those can only go so far to help improve a paper. 

As the semester progressed, I devoted more time to the revision process, more than I ever have in any of my past English classes. I put more effort in because I realized the importance of it, and how I could see the improvements in my paper, from rough drafts to final drafts. If you compare my high school rough drafts to final drafts there wouldn’t be much difference, only minimal changes. Now, you’ll see in my writing drastic changes and improvements. 

An example of this is how I re-constructed this sentence from my rough draft in Essay #2 and then improved it upon the final draft. 

Revised version:

Here I focused on simplicity and restructuring. (local revision) I felt like I had some unnecessary words, like “what others may be going through.” So I revised that sentence into something slightly more to the point, and easier to understand. “Idea of increased social awareness is something that…” 

One big thing Professor Brod mentioned to me that has helped me with all three of my essays, is to make sure you have an introduction to the source/transition (global revision), for example, “As DFW puts it…” Instead of just going right into the quote. In the above example, I said “In DFW’s piece…” But I felt like I could make the introduction into the source stronger, so instead, with Professor Brod’s help, in my revised piece, I had “In DFW’s piece, he says reflecting on strangers around him…” 

Small changes like this I believe reflect on the entire essay, because it shows your being specific, which helps the understanding from a reader’s perspective. This is the whole reason my revision strategies have improved because I understand how important it is to focus on specificity. (local revision)