Brainstorming is so important, and I def. need to do that more. Even in chapter one the books talks about brainstorming. I usually just start writing and that sometimes just makes things confusing for me. I have to remember to not rush into the paper so fast. I always have all these ideas and I just want to hurry and put my paper together instead of stopping and organizing my thoughts? Does anyone kind of know what I'm talking about. It's like your organizing these thoughts while you are writing. I must say that I think I am critical reader. I usually think about the four parts that have to do with the process. I find that kind of funny because never really noticed that until I read this part in the chapter. Where did it come from? Can you trust the writer? What does it says? How does it work? I dont ask these exact questions but my questions I ask fall under these catorgories.
CHAPTER 5 -7
Genre was something that really sound important reading about becuase I never reaaly thought about the genre while writing before. There are many different genres and they have alot of influence to them, I read how important it is to be ware how they influence us. Even if the subject is the same there are a few pin points that are different. Sentence length, Paragraph length, word choice, and relationship with the reader. Understanding the rhetorical situation is important and caught my eye, becuase it talks about how important it is to have these three elements for writing period. The writer or speaker, the subject, and the audience, who is reading your work. I learned these things are for any type of communication. Its interesting how the ancient Greeks used persuasion. How Aristotle came up with these three elements and used them in the triangle. We use these three elements today in a triangle. Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Reading about this I thought I never really recognized these three things when I wrote persuasive papers before. I did learn about them but kind of forgot so that did refresh my memory.
When I write a barely stop and think about my audience, what kind of audience I am writing too. I think now that I got to this section about Think About Your Audience, I can now change that and start to think about my audience more. I do agree that college readers want a surprise when they read and they want a challenge, I must now remeber that when I am writing now that I am in college. Am I a good writer? Thats what I always ask myself whenever I am writing or turn a paper in. These few things can help me feel more confident. 1. Being ON TASK 2. FOCUSED having a focused paper. 3. ORGANIZED are my major points organized? 4. LINKED 5. STYLISTICALLY FLUENT6. CONCISE 7. CORRECT no errors. 8. WELL DESIGNED These are the important things that are looked at when my paper is being jugded I must remember this!!! I found the components of reflections very important this has really helped me alot. The reflections that are broken down makes it alot more easier for me to understand how to read an reflection. It made me look at the reading alot more different as I was reading along. It really helps you to understand the reading alot better. I defenetly learned to write a reflection better from reading that part in the chapter. This can now keep me more organized and probably make my paper alot more better than they are. Usually when I write I just start writing and dont follow these steps. These steps are really broken down to me in this book its alot of good help.
CHAPTER 8
Observing makes it easier to write. This chapter really shows how important it is to observe when writing. I understand the key observations. In the Living Like Weasels, I saw how the author observed the weawsel and how it lived and everything the weasel did. She shows how she really watched and studied everything that she was observing. I like the idea to take notes on thwe side when reading observations, this advice in chapter 8 will seem to be helpful for me and help me to understand more. When I write I uasually dont sit and observe what I am writing about. This chapter I feel will help me out alot and understand how observe what I am writing. The story in chapter 8 by Powell really shows how he observed his place and got me into the story so that I could imagine everything it was about.
My thoughts on English 101 So Far
I think this is a great class. I love everyone in it, everyone is friendly and we all work together. In this class so far it has been easy to be open and comfortable about my work. I think that it has been a wonderful learning experience so far. I love the way our professor teaches and gets us to share ideas and thoughts. I have learned so much so far with the group work. The one thing that has really helped me a lot is the Fish Bowl. By doing that together really has been teaching me about all the grammar mistakes and teaches me how to improve my writing. I learned things in that activity that I have always been unsure about or never knew about. I think so far this class has been awesome. I truly have complaints on how everything has been going. I think our professor really shows she cares about our work and gives us chances to improve. I see this class really teaching me a lot by the end of it and really getting far along in writing than I have been now!
Our this I believe essay's we had to write were a good experience for me to share soemthing that I believe in and aa story that is so important to me. I know I could've done so much better for my essay as far as grammer and better understanding in sentence structure. The fish bowl like I said earlier really helped me alot in seeing my mistakes. I know now a lot for my next essay I write. I think that my story I told was good because it was so real. I think my biggest problem in my essay was run on sentences. Next time I do a essay or paper I must know to be careful of runons.
My work I have done in this class has been, ok but I think that I am capable of doing way better. I know that I can put alot more effort into my essays. I tend to just start typing and never really stop and brainstorm or think of more things I can fix. I think I get to many thoughts about the assignment. So I do alot of rushing to make sure I hurry and get all the thoughts out on paper. I know that there is alot more I am capable of doing and will do better from here on out. With the help of my classmates and professor I can get all the help to imprve in these areas. My next progress report will be way better than this one because I plan to work ten times harder, not that I am doign horrible but there is always room for improvement, I beleive.
Reflection on my work
During this semester I have learned a lot with different types of writing. All the papers that I have done, I learned something new to improve. I had some common mistakes I made in all of them. Like for example, I had a bad habit with run on sentences. Doing the fish bowl was the most helpful. I feel like I learned so much, not from only my mistakes but from other peoples. Some papers I have done I just wrote from the top of my head. I thought that it was wrong to do that until Dani explained that that was perfectly fine to do. Writing my papers I really did not sit and brain storm I kind of just sat and thought and started taking off with my ideas. That was the best thing that worked for me. For my argument paper I made it more of a persuasive paper more than a argument. I was a little confused on how to make it more an argument vs. a persuasive. My paper was real though, I truly believed on what I wrote about. For my This I Believe Essay I learned a lot about how to make it better. The things I could add to make it more interesting and understandable. This was the essay I did in the fish bowl and I learned a lot from everyone’s input. The essay I did about Literature in My Life, I had some confusion about with make the difference with literacy and literature. In my observation essay I observed my son and that was really interesting because he is a joy to watch. I did have some errors that I worked on in my paper. Reading throughout our writing book really helped me a lot to understand how to do each piece of writing. The examples of other writers work explained a lot. I think I still need to improve my run on sentences and my explaining things better, going more into depth. I could use a visual rhetoric in my essay with the smoking argument or the observation of my son they both work. Well so far there are many things that I have learned and many things I need to still improve.
Chapter 9
In this chapter I found it really helpful the way it explains informative writing. It showed the way to read informative writings. Like asking questions like What is it? Where did it come from? What is the writer;s thesis or the main idea? Who is the intended audience? How is the piece of writing organized? What kinds of sources are cited? How is it composed? I learned it is very important to have research in informative writing. Also it always important to cite all your research. All the writings in this chapter helped me to understand how to write and read informative writing. Informative writing is something that I always needed work on. In this chapter I learned that informative writing is a lot different from other kinds of writings. It is more about the subject, not about the writers reflections, or to change people’s minds about something. Informative writing is used for a lot of things that like newspapers, news, and even instructions for something.
Chapter 10
This chapter talks about analyzing texts. There are different types of analysis. Rhetorical analysis is a kind of analysis that divides a whole into parts to understand how an act of speaking or writing conveys meaning. The second one mentioned is Visual analysis is similar to rhetorical. It is to understand how other human creations make meaning. A third type of analysis is Literacy analysis takes into account of literature like a plot, character, and setting, paying attention to language and metaphor. These analysis focus on text or context, most of the time both. The textual analysis focuses on the feature of a text. The context analysis focuses on the cultural environment that existed when a particular rhetorical event took place. In this chapter I read about the components in writing literacy analysis, visual, and rhetorical. The writing by Gail Bederman was a little confusing. I wasn’t sure if it was a argument paper. I thought that The Collapse of Big Media was a great piece. It was really simple for me to read and understand.
My Portfolio
I had a hard time changing fixing my papers. I felt a little under pressure because it seemed like it had to be perfect. I did not want to make any mistakes on it at all. I know that is impossible. I think I did an good job, but I always can do better I believe. For some reason I was very nervous on trying to get a good grade on it. I liked going back to my work that I did and revising it to make it better I thought that was very interesting. I never had done something like this portfolio before. This was a great experience and hope to do it again in English 102.
My Multi-modal Presentation
I enjoyed bring my son to class for my project. I had a hard time figuring out what to do my project on at first. I thought it would be creative and different to bring him as my visual. That way everyone can see exactly what I was talking about. I know that I could have done a lot better on my power point. I believe I had good examples and research. Just should have had less words on my slides. Just like Dani said this is a great experience to learn how to deal with technology. I am not all that good with making movies on the computer and adding music to power points. This is something that I have learned a lot from. I look forward in using this in the future for more projects to come.
