Assignment #15

  Looking back at the goals I had set myself in blogs one and seven, I feel that I achieved my goals. I've set goal to becoming a better writer by actually going back to my essays and revising them. I'm getting more organized with my papers. Now that I am more familiar with college writing, I would add one more thing to my goal list, and that would be to use different words. Words that will make my paper stand out, college level vocabulary.

  I will continue to grow as writer by becoming more organizing when writing my papers. I will start doing outlines and having a writing tutor is very helpful. One of my strengths is that I feel like I can defend a position well. The weakness of that is that I need to clarify and expand some of the claims. I will be more aware of what  I am writing so that my claims are not all over the place. I also want to expand my vocabulary because that will definitely make me a better writer. There are many things I need to work on and I know will overcome those weaknesses and become the best writer that I can be.

Assignment #14

  For my portfolio I chose to revise my argumentation essay. The strengths of my essay were that I had really good ideas and an interesting topic. The weaknesses of the essay were that some of the ideas did not tie in with my thesis and transitioning from paragraph to paragraph was missing.
 
  In order to revise this essay and make it better, I made big changes. For one thing, I am seeing a writing tutor for the first time which is so much helpful. Another way is that I will make my ideas tie in with the thesis. I will make sure that each paragraph flows smoothly and that they relate to my thesis. The last thing I will make is that  I will clarify each claim and make sure that anyone can understand.

  This essay will be much better organized because I am actually doing an outline. Getting every idea down on paper and organizing them is a time saver.

assignment #13

   I analyzed "Should the Obama generation drop out?" In this essay, the writer gave some good arguments, but then he made this comment that made finishing reading the essay kind of hard. His trustworthy tone went out the window and that cost his credibility as a writer. I learned that in order for someone to accept my paper, I will have to be trustworthy and consider every side. All for the skeptical reader. 

assignment #12

• My strongest evidence is that Chicago should fix all the roads and add more bike lanes to make them friendlier to bikers because that would probably eliminate the problems drivers have towards bikers. This is strong evidence because even if my reader isn't a biker this still gives them an idea that the problem isn't that bikers are bad "drivers" but the problem is with these potholes. Adding more bike lanes will stop bikers from swerving into upcoming traffic. 
• My weakest evidence would have to be why the city should waste tax payers money to fix these roads for bikers. If my reader is not a driver and a biker, I will try to address why it's still important that this be done. 

assignment #11

   Looking back at my papers I noticed that one major error is that I don't clarify as much as I should. When giving examples or explaining a specific situation, I think I do a decent job but turns out that I don't clarify what I'm talking about. Another error I noticed is that my papers are very short. Probably because I get straight to the point and I don't go into detail as much I should. These errors make my paper suffer because it makes it seem like it's all over the place. For the future I plan to address these issues by making sure that all my ideas have as much details as possible. I will clarify those ideas as much as I have to. And in turn should fix my paper of being too short.

assisgnment #10

    I think peer review is somewhat effective. Having your peers telling you how they would write is something peer review does great. As a peer reviewer, my strengths would probably have to be that I tell it how it is. I would tell them how I would write it. I think we do have the appropriate amount of time for peer review. A whole week is good enough. It is helpful to do the peer review for earlier stages of the writing process. And to answer the question whether small groups or large groups are better, well we've only done this in small groups, so I don't know how it would it be if we do it in large groups.

Assignment #6

   Both essays are completely different and the way I set about writing them is also different. For my literacy narrative, it was easier for me to write it because it was like telling a personal story about myself. The audience was basically anyone because any random person would probably know what the essay is about. As for the ad analyses, I have to think about who I'm writing to and that can be a challenge. Also for the ad analyses essay I had to go into depth of the ad and describe it in a way where the reader doesn't need to see the ad. Each essay had it's unique challenges.