Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Reflecting on your writing process
Now that you’ve completed your first formal assignment for this class, I’d like you to reflect on your writing and revision process. How did your essay evolve from its initial draft to your final submission? What feedback from your peers did you find helpful and respond to? What writing exercises or class discussion helped you think about this assignment differently? As you revised, what specific changes did you make to this piece? Ultimately, what did you learn from this assignment about yourself, writing for a specific audience, or your attitudes about education?
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My essay definitely took a turn for the better from the beginning until now. At first I had no idea what I was going to write about or what direction to take my paper. Now that I have written my final draft I am feeling pretty good about it. The feedback I received from my peers definitely helped me. It wasn’t very specific things that helped me just little notes that they wrote down to help get my ideas flowing. What helped me in class was just talking about the assignment and brainstorming ideas out loud. With my revising I mostly added some points to support my belief that parents cause a lot of high school students stress. I also made sure I cleared up and ideas that someone arguing against my point would make. From this I learned that writing to a specific audience is much easier than just writing in research paper form. By having a specific audience you can directly speak to that group and it is easier to make your point.
ReplyDeleteMy essay evolved straight from my initial draft. My first draft was a perfect lead way into my final essay. I did not get to my main point in my initial draft so it was more of a start. The group exercise we did with our initial drafts really helped me sort our my thoughts and what I wanted to become my main point in my essay. The group discussion made it easier to see my flaws in my paper, and where my paper was weak. They were able to help me see what examples I needed to make my point stronger. As I revised, I made sure I was making my point strong and concrete. Before I was just rambling on in circles, but as I revised I kept my examples straight to the point. During this assignment I learned how to write for a specific audience. I wrote a letter to a friend that placed too much pressure on herself, so my essay was specifically to her.
ReplyDeleteFor this essay, I did multiple drafts. Starting this essay was not my issue this time, but it was putting my thoughts into an organized paper. I had many ideas I wanted to touch on, but struggled grouping them together. I started by typing out my first draft and then printing it. It helps me to be able to physically write down corrections or reword sentences. I would then go back and fix my mistakes and continue writing. My peers helped me think of appropriate articles to quote and use in my paper. The class discussion about picking a certain audience helped me. It allowed me to weight my options and choose what audience my argument would suite best. From this assignment, I learned it helps to focus your argument on a specific audience. This paper also helped me think about myself in high school and why I dealt with so much stress.
ReplyDeleteFrom my initial draft to my final submission, I focused on the use of kairos and really implementing hard evidence to persuade my audience. I found working with Chris to be very helpful and we worked well together in brainstorming new ideas for our papers as well as picking out the solid aspects of what we had already written. The in class debate/discussion regarding the topics was helpful in gathering ideas as well as organizing the ones we had already talked about in the blogs. The blogs were incredibly helpful as well. I was able to use my blogs as they were online in my paper. They transitioned smoothly into my arguments. I didn’t really make any specific changes to my piece. I really only made additions to parts that needed more clarification. From this experience I found it hard to target a specific audience and hone in on kairos. It was challenging in the beginning but after talking with Professor Bateman, I found starting my paper much easier. I enjoyed this topic because it is easy to relate to and comment on because we all have first-hand experience. Also, starting out with the articles and blogs made the assignment much more manageable because we had tremendous support for our arguments.
ReplyDeleteWhen I got the assignment, I spent a few minutes brainstorming. I like to organize my thoughts a little before I begin actually writing the paper. I need a general direction of where to go before I start writing. The feedback that I thought was very useful included the positive and negative feedback. The most helpful of the feedback were the suggestion on what to add to my paper and where to add it. The way that they suggested things without changing the point of what I was trying to say was very helpful and definitely helped me to get to my final product. All of the writing exercises in class were helpful, especially as I used many of my responses online to get to my final writing piece. I pretty much only made clarification changes to my writing. The majority of it was already there and easy to comprehend, but I tried as hard as I could to clear everything up. I learned about myself that I really feel passionate about some things, and I also learned that once I figure out exactly what I need to write about I will do fine. The difficult part for me is getting there in the first place.
ReplyDeleteAfter receiving feedback from my peers, I really started to identify what areas my writing needed work in and it really helped me polish up what was unclear before. I think that my final submission was improved from my first draft because I took the concepts we have learned in class and incorporated them into my paper more. It was helpful to hear what peers thought of my work and they also told me to use more personal experiences which I think made my paper have a lot more depth and not as bland. I think that getting away from the idea of the “five paragraph essay” really helped me in this paper and the whole concept of kairos. I made my paper a lot less repetitive after rereading it again and after seeing what my peers thought about it. I was able to expand on ideas more rather than say one idea in multiple different ways. I have to admit that I wasn’t completely satisfied with the quality of my first paper. I’ve always enjoyed writing for an audience but I often lose track of who I was initially talking to by the end of it. I also wanted to rant so much more than I did about the education system and my experience in both private education and public education and how both affected my motivation to learn now. After writing this paper I learned that the quality of the education system is more important to me than I thought it was and I could definitely expand on it further if necessary.
ReplyDeleteAny changes I made to my writing were all based on the comments I received. I added a bit of personal experience to conclude the writing as apposed to more analytical content and managed to more specifically identify the audience to which I was addressing. Each of these suggestions I have found my self somewhat opposed to in the past due to the training I have had. I have always been told to address an audience not by specifically stating who they were, but more subtly. Also, personal experience has been all but negated in papers I have written in the past. There were few exceptions to this where I was instructed to write something about my own experiences or request specific permission. Most of the time, I would generalize my personal experiences with those of others I know or have heard about. These were changes I made against my natural ideas about writing, but I think it may have made the address a little more convincing. I have become more aware of the way I write in terms of gathering information and discussion of that information. I am paying much more attention to what I am saying and how I am saying it in regards to how well it appeals to my audience.
ReplyDeleteIn class, we went through a list of possible audiences to write to. I did not pick any of them, but it did get me thinking about other possibilities, each of which stemmed from one or two we covered in class.
This paper was a little but difficult for me to write. I don't really know why, but I just had a little but of a tough time getting it on paper. I had alot of thoughts and ideas, but it was hard for me to put it in to sync. I found the feedback from my partners very helpful, it was well thought out and gave me some great new ideas and ways to keep the reader interested and involved. As i revised it, i found several ways to improve the paper overall, I'm just worried it might not have enough substance. I just hope its not boring.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first saw the prompt for our first assignment, I’ll admit that I put it off. Partially because I didn’t want to do the assignment, but also partially because I figured we’d get some help with it in class. I didn’t exactly know where to start. After I started my draft, the first draft of the essay somewhat wrote itself, in a way. My peers had very nice things to say about my draft. I had had an experience where I wrote a paper and my reviewer told me my phrasing was, in short, awkward. I would not get as good a grade if I left the phrasing of the paper how it was. I had asked my peers about this. They considered it a stylistic choice, which helped me realize my voice isn’t “wrong”. The main piece of advice that I took from my peer review is to expand and break up the first paragraph. I also added a section based on Cooper’s article “Homework’s Diminishing Returns”. The most helpful class discussion was the one on stasis. I was somewhat stuck and didn’t know where to go. After the talk on stasis and finding a common ground between myself and my audience, my writer’s block was lifted. One thing that I discovered about myself was my high school career was not very stressful. I didn’t have much homework, and it made for an overall pleasant experience. I think I will always keep in mind stasis, because it helped me very much in my writing process.
ReplyDeleteAfter I the first draft, I evaluated my essay by recheck the assignment and read my essay looking for grammar mistakes. From my peers I know I had lot of grammar mistakes and I need to check out carefully before the final draft. From class, I get the way to develop my essay. Like, how to find the disagreement, and explain why something happened or what caused it. Is it good or bad and also give suggestions. Before write essay, it is necessary to read all through factors and others opinions.
ReplyDeleteBetween my initial draft and my final draft my paper definitely changed a fair amount. I expanded on many of the paragraphs that I already had and added a few more things from a different article to help support my argument. One thing that both my peers told me was that I needed to state why students bring stress upon themselves and I think that this is definitely something that I tried to work on for my final draft. I think the post called What should an education be? really helped me with shaping my argument for this paper. I think that writing for a specific audience can be very tough but it also helps to shape your argument a lot because you can be far more specific then if you were just writing to a general audience.
ReplyDeleteFinally, I finished my first essay of this class. The draft really helped me to build up my ideas. Based on my draft, I add some examples and cited some of the article that I think is related to my work. The feedback for me from my peers were really helped, such as my peers suggest me to write more clear that who is my audience. Also, my peers agree with my some of the ideas, therefore, I felt more confident to write them down. This assignment is really different from the exercises. Firstly, the length of the assignment is much more longer than the exercises. Secondly, the assignment need to narrow down the ideas from the exercises together. I think the exercises really helped me to write my essay. The specific change I did for my essay is I wrote more details about how was my high school experience. The thing that I learned from this assignment is writing is not only for yourself, but also for your audience.
ReplyDeleteAs I began to write my first draft, I wasn’t too clear on what direction my paper was headed or how it was going to develop. I simply had my ideas and I ran with them on what I though a rough draft should sound like. Then, we submitted our papers to our peers and this is when I was able to receive some solid feedback. I knew my first draft wasn’t great, and it was nice to hear what others though of it. So I took into consideration what they had to say and made my paper better. I made a lot of changes, but I found myself making more additions than anything. Not only because my first draft was so short, but also because I needed to add support, and personal opinion. I think in any writing assignment you tend to learn a lot about yourself as a person and as a writer. On this one in particular though I was able to see how I write in the same way on most of my assignments, and even use the same words occasionally.
ReplyDeleteWriting this essay was definitely a different experience. I had never written an essay to a specific audience before. My essay definitely improved from my first draft to my final draft. When I first wrote the piece I was still a little bit unsure about the point that I was proving. However, after the peer edits and re-reading my essay a couple times, I realized the parts that I had to correct and the parts that I had to expand on. I think it really helped to have two of my peers read the essay. They were able to determine the areas that were confusing to the reader and they were able to help me focus on what I was actually trying to prove. I think that class discussions about kairos and taking advantage of timing also helped to put things in perspective. I think this assignment overall was a good way to start the quarter. It was a great way to work on my writing and remind me about the real meaning of education.
ReplyDeleteMy essay changed drastically from my first draft to my final draft. In my first draft it was a standard 5-paragraph essay. I only had 3 main points and an introduction/conclusion. I had great feedback from my peers. They told me to go more in depth and not just use three points but to use a wide variety of ideas and concepts to explain my point. They also helped me realize that I was restating and idea over and over again which helped me get that out of my essay. I think the exercise that helped me for this essay was when we had the 4 articles to read about stress on high school students. I ended up using a couple quotes from an article in my essay. I learned from myself that I really have to go in-depth more and really work hard at what am writing and don’t just do a generic normal essay.
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