Learning Outcome 1
During the second major writing assignment of English 110, I believe I displayed the best example of learning outcome number one, “demonstrating the ability to approach writing as a recursive process, including global and local revision”. I am choosing the second writing assignment because as I wrote and revised it, I was able to use the mistakes made in my first writing assignment to help me. I believe there was a big difference shown in my revision skills between these two papers. In the first paper, I displayed more of an editing process described by Nancy Sommers as a “thesaurus philosophy of writing”. I simply rewrote most of my ideas to make the paper flow smoothly. I didn’t do much to change my paper as a whole, to help get my point and ideas across better. As I wrote my second paper, I took this into consideration. I added ideas, deleted some, and moved things around as I revised the first draft. I read my paper over, deciding what to change, what worked and what didn’t. Doing so made sure my paper was coming together in the best way possible. I also made sure to add more quotes and evidence from outside sources, backing up the claims I made and making them stronger.
Learning Outcome 2
In my second writing assignment, I argued how technology has both negative and positive effects on our developing and growing society. It inevitably causes distractions, but we have no choice but to power through and use it in the most beneficial way possible. Having points from both sides of the argument made it easy for me to find evidence from outside sources to back up my claims. To argue the opposing side, I used some quotes from Henig’s “What is it about 20 somethings?”. I enjoyed working with this essay for my paper because we had already worked with it in our last paper, so I felt familiarized with Henig’s concepts. She easily explains how young adults in their twenties are taking so long to actually grow up, and I was able to combine her points with the distractions of technology. I first wrote “Henig questions,‘Even if some traditional milestones are never reached, one thing is clear: Getting to what we would generally call adulthood is happening later than ever. But why?’ “ I explained her idea, saying that the distraction of technology, which is growing at a higher rate now than ever, could be a solution to her question. I used this concept of explaining a quote and analyzing it to support my ideas throughout my paper, leading it to be a strong paper with an abundance of evidence and good points.
Learning Outcomes 5 and 6
Something I have struggled with since high school is citing properly with MLA format. As I worked on the first two major writing assignments this year, I was able to improve in my knowledge and skills in this category. After the first paper, I was able to see where I went wrong in citing my sources. I used this information to help me correctly cite my second paper. I also made small grammatical errors throughout my paper, such as structuring a sentence incorrectly, and even small typos. After peer editing, I was able to recognize and fix these errors. For example, while mentioning social media sites such as Twitter and Instagram, I failed to capitalize them.
Learning Outcome 4
I believe that peer review is one of the most effective ways to catch errors in a paper. When you read over your own paper, everything, when written in your own words, makes sense in your brain. Even when you have made mistakes, it’s easy to just read over it because your mind understands what you’re trying to say. When I read over a peer’s paper, I instantly spot things that they would most likely not catch themselves. The thing I found myself commenting on the most while peer reviewing was not errors in writing, but failure to elaborate. My peer had many great points backing up her thesis, but she did not go into further explanation with them. There were many opportunities for her to incorporate the ideas from the texts we discussed in class to provide support in her writing. I made sure to comment on these areas where she had a good start, and just needed some extra support to finish. For example, she ended a paragraph saying “While it’s incredibly cool that people have the ability to talk to each other from anywhere in the world, it has had some effect on face-to-face interactions with those that are around us.” I made sure comment on this, saying this could definitely be expanded upon.
