Learning Outcome #1
When I first started doing my revisions in this class I was not sure what too far was going to be when editing someone’s paper. I was not sure how much of my own opinions I could throw into someone else’s paper. I had it all wrong because I also started off by not knowing how to edit in general besides my high school level of editing. My high school level of editing was to look for surface level fixes like grammar and punctuation. So I was surprised to see what kind of editing I was going to be doing with Elena. One of the biggest improvements I have made through the course of this class is my ability to write a thesis. I am nowhere near perfect because I still need a lot of help with them, but I can definitely see improvements in my thesis between my first draft of my “Unfollow” and “Limits of Friendship” paper through to my last paper on racism. I knew what a thesis was but did not understand how to write a thesis at the start of the semester. As you can see my first thesis does not grab the reader’s attention, say what I am going to talk about or argue, and my voice is not there.
When looking back on this thesis compared to my latest thesis I wrote I have seen some big improvements in actually putting my voice into the thesis with a little more of a clear argument. In this racism paper and thesis I can see the amount that I have grown trying to put little pieces of the writers arguments into my argument to help the person reading it understand a little more.
Learning Outcome #2
Before coming to this class this semester I had integrated quotes into a lot of papers and put a short sentence after them to explain what the quote was or sometimes I would just have a quote in the middle of a paragraph. I looked back at my first essay and found a quote in a body paragraph that just looked like it was lost. I have found my self to do this many times where I add a quote and it just does not fit in the spot I put it in. I also realized I did not introduce this quote at all. In this picture there are three colors (yellow: Introducing the quote, blue: Quote, orange: Description of quote.) that represent each part of a quote sandwich.
The way I introduce the quote is very vague and has very little to no description on what I am talking about and I had no way of introducing the quote. I had just left the quote and put it in with nothing else in the sentence. My description afterwards was not terrible, but still could use a little more in what I am actually saying.
In this essay you can see I introduced the quote much further than I had and I did not make the quote the start and end of a sentence. I also use a little more description in my wording and got my idea out there more clearly and I used my voice to help explain it after. I still have a lot of work to do to improve these skills, but I did move in the right direction.
Learning Outcome #3
Throughout my life I have had to read a decent amount of books and articles so I would expect my notes to be pretty good. Although I just never actually know what to write for my annotations. When I do write annotations though I typically do the same thing and I just write notes on some of the most important things in the plot of the story and what happens leading up to that. In this you picture you see me just have a couple quotes down and the parts of the article I thought were most important. And I also like to add a little bit of how it can compare to my life because it just makes me think about the reading that much more.
I like to use these to help me with my reading responses because I am a forgetful person and it just makes life much easier when I can just go to my notes and read what I have written down. Although throughout the course I realized I could use my voice more so I used my own thoughts and comparisons in the real world to compare to the article I was reading. So I became more focused on comparing the article to either my life or what is happening in recent in the world.
I just need work on expanding myself to be able to do both types of annotations at once because when I get focused on one thing I can not switch my mind off of how I was already thinking.
Learning Outcome #4
The way I had to peer edit someones paper in high school compared to college is much different. In high school I was always given a checklist and I would just go through the paper and check off the boxes if I saw what was needed on the peer review checklist. I never really read there paper and I would give like grammatical fixes and pointers, but never went too far into what they could do to make the paper better. In college it was a tough transition to reading someones paper and just putting my opinions and my own thoughts on how to make it a better paper. In the first paper that I had to peer review I do not think I did too bad because I was trying to tell my partner to use a little more of his own voice in a section of the paper.
I told him just to use his voice a little more and I think there could still be improvement in how I can help guide my partner into a better paper. In this second picture you will see how I made a statement to try and get my partner to think a little more on what they were already explaining.
In this picture you can see that she was on the right track with what she was talking about and that she knew what she was talking about, but I just wanted to push her to thin a little more outside the box and be a little creative with her answer to the statement I had put. When doing these types of feedback to other people it helps me think more and when I make a statement or have a question I try and think on how I would answer it which further helps my understanding of the article which I can use in my own paper.
Learning Outcome #5:
The way I was taught how to format my papers in MLA format in high school and college are a little different. In high school I was told to format my name, class, what the work was, and date at the top of the page and then a title and then start writing. MLA format in college is about the same other than having to add my last name at the top left of every page with the page number at the top right of every age. The first picture is what I did at the start of the semester and the second picture is how I format it now.
The one piece that did not change was how I would cite quotes in the text and at the end and that was one thing I was happy to see. I would always cite my quotations in text with parentheses and the last name of the author or writer followed by a comma and either the year or the page number.
Learning Outcome #6:
In my essays and papers I have always had a tendency to either go off track of what I am actually needing to argue. My biggest problem though is my wording in my papers because my words are too vague and this makes what I am saying not clear to the reader.
This is a problem of mine because I can understand what I am trying to say in the moment of writing my work, but when I go back to it later I forget what my mind set at the time was so sometimes my sentences do not make sense to me.
I made my word choices a little better after not being able to fully figure out what I was trying to say. I have a bad habit of writing so much at once that I just do not always realize how I am writing my papers, but I have improved on my vague wording a little bit.
