WRITING AS AN RECURSIVE PROCESS
My draft did not change as much as some of my essays have. I thought I did a good job being able to get my thoughts down. One place I wish I had changed was a section that was pointed out to me that I was talking about Politics and how politics use issues to gain voter power and I realized that it was not fully related to my topic. I did not really think about how I could use a thesis that was so broad to be able to include politics without feeling like I was rambling so next time I would like to fix my thesis to include all of my points. My thesis was “I believe that people will only accept gay people if we train people that it is not a bad thing.” and that does not carry weight to explain what I said about politics. Some of the things I did change were funking wordings and poor grammar, but on a local-world scale the only real changes I seemed to make were local ones, and next time I should focus more of my effort on the world changes.
https://docs.google.com/a/une.edu/document/d/12J-TPZcZaHXNHRnPbNDRNeQdKDiEpos68IiFNyCdKOs/edit?usp=sharing (Rough with notes)
https://docs.google.com/a/une.edu/document/d/1bBGr594cI17ukhf96iGYN-pz_5wuf_Nwc7erh4dPEHo/edit?usp=sharing (final draft)
INTEGRATING YOUR IDEAS WITH THOSE OF OTHERS
I could have done better using quotes, but the one and only example I had was this line from my essay.
Hallward makes a pretty good point in her TED talk when she says “And there are so many closets, there are thousands of closets, all with different names and shapes” (2:00). I think this is such a huge reason why a lot of communities have not been able to achieve social cohesion in an effect manner
Now I think this was an effect usage of a quote sandwich. I felt since my thesis was about why people do not accept each other I thought about self acceptance and if you do not accept yourself and are not honest with yourself then you will not tell anyone in your community and it will seem like they do not accept you. I thought I conveyed this message pretty well throughout my essay, but this quote sandwich really increased the strength in my argument.
I should have used more quotes in my writing because to be honest, using just one quote seems like it is not that effective. Like I could back almost anything with one quote that makes sense. It does not make that argument right or persuasive.
ACTIVE CRITICAL READING
I feel like I did a decent job at reading closely to the material and being able to make connections from the pieces to the real world. For example, in my blog post about the stigmas of HIV and AIDS I use a quote from the reading to backup my argument about not knowing about something can lead to fear and unacceptance for the real issue, so I thought I was on the same page as the writers and that I seemed to understand what I was doing in relationship to the piece of literature I was analysing. I believe having already have been aware of this issues helped me out alot with reading about certain viewpoints and I felt like I could make a connection to the real word almost right away. The only thing I may have struggled with is one prompt where I guess I did not understand what the prompt was asking for so maybe focusing a little more and rereading could help me in the long run.
CRITIQUING MY WORK AND OTHERS WORK
This is something I have a lot of trouble with. Looking back at some of the feedback I gave to people I felt like I was being way to nice. I do not like to tell people to their face “This is wrong you should fix it” And I felt like I would have forced my interpretation of the sources on them and cancel out their opinion which would not have been fair to them. I stuck to a lot of local changes, I did give them some global suggestions. I did not have the courage to say hey this is wrong. I just did not want to rub anybody the wrong way. My own work, I have trouble critiquing because I when I write it I feel like it makes sense in my head and I can not see anything wrong with it and I know that is wrong because a piece of writing can always be improved on but I just can not see mistakes in my own writing except for local mistakes. I need someone to point out mistakes for me as I can get input and be able to change so my audience can comprehend my essay more. I would like to improve on making stronger arguments and connections and being able to revise them.
USING MLA CITATIONS
MLA formatting always trips me up because I am almost certain that I didn’t do it right in High School. I unfortunately did not do inbody citations for my quote, and that is one of the conditions of MLA formatting. I only had one class that required that and that was English in 10th grade, and I forgot how to do it effectively. I know some of the basic elements but the rules and the whys I do not understand. I know the cited sources are to be alphabetical and you need inbody citations, but that is about all of my knowledge of the topic, and I actually am not sure how relevant it will be to me, I do not see why I have to source in such a formal manner. I am willing to try and learn it though as I know it could come in handy throughout college but I do not see the real world application to me.
MANAGING INDIVIDUAL ERROR PATTERNS
The only error patterns I found were funky wordings in some of my sentences, such as We need to stop avoiding the issue and just bluntly explain what it is, and They quote their sacred passages about it is a sin that a man. I think a way to fix this would to read my writing out loud a couple times after I am finished so I can hear if it makes sense and what not. I have a tendency to just slam words down and have them make absolutely no sense whatsoever. I would not even doubt if I did it in this reflection process. I had the odd case of missing a period somewhere or whatnot, but nothing that was really repetitive, I would just say that funky wording is my weak spot and I shall continue to work on it to better my writing strength.
