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.

Assignment #7

    As a writer I feel I made some progress of getting better. I still have a lot of work to do before I can call myself an outstanding writer. Looking back at my first blog post it doesn't look like I made that much of a progress. This will take some time. The one part of the class that has been helpful would probably be discussing the topic we are writing about. It's helpful because it gives us an understanding of what we have to do on our essay. I would like to change the topics of the class. I want topics that are interesting to write about, something that is relevant to the students. Sometimes peer reviews are very helpful. I think it's better if we get paired off with new people each time. My writing process has changed dramatically because now I'm going back to my essays to make revisions. Back in the old days, my rough drafts would end up being my final draft. That is a big change for me and it will improve the way my essays get graded. Overall this class is really helpful, just change a few things like choosing the topics we want to write about.

Assingment #5

Purpose: The purpose of this ad is that it's telling every fat person out there to lose weight and in this case "lose the blubber." And since this is from peta, they call overweight people whales. Which is pretty offensive.

Audience: This ad is targeting overweight and is telling them to lose the blubber. I think it's mainly targeting woman due to the fact that there's a picture of a woman on the billboard.

Genre: I would not compare this ad to any others because this is pretty offensive. PETA is comparing overweight people to whales. That's pretty messed up.

Tone: The reason they chose this ad was because PETA is for the protection against animals, and that's why they used the quote "Save the Whales." And they are fighting to get people to eat vegetarian so that people can stop killing animals.

Assignment #4

   My final draft doesn't look too different than my rough draft. I didn't make any major revisions, I just made some minor ones. I fixed my grammar and added a few more sentences to my introduction because I had only wrote two sentences in my rough draft. I noticed that I tend to write incomplete thoughts, reading them out loud sounded so right but in the end it's a sentence fragment. I think peer review had little impact on the revisions I made. After re-reading my paper I found my mistakes and fixed them. The aspect that is strongest in my essay would have to be my background information. The personal experiences, I think really make it a strong essay. A weak aspect would have to be that it probably isn't the required length.

Assignment#3

    What is the difference between a C paper and an A paper? Obviously the A paper is a lot better. For me, using details is very important. I would rather write a paper that describes a specific situation with every detail so that the reader may have a clear picture of what's going. Another quality would be the thesis and the hook. If the hook and thesis is too short or just doesn't have that excitement in it, the reader will be turned away. Readers want attention grabbers, something that will get them to continue reading the text. The third quality would be the way the sentences run together. Sentences should run smoothly and not be all over the place. Having a nice transition from one sentence can have a big impact on papers.

    One thing I have trouble with, is probably sentence fragments. I tend to write very short sentences, incomplete sentences. It sounds right when I'm reading it out loud, but I'm guessing it's wrong. Another thing is, when I know something seems a little off, I try adding some extra words to make it sound better. In most cases I make it worse. I feel much comfortable if I just write in a way, where the reader feels like they've known me for a long time. I don't use too many fancy words. If I tried, I would have to force myself to think too hard, and that's not what I want.

Assignment #2

    My first topic I will be writing about would be about an essay I wrote last semester. It's about the effects of gangs. I talk about how gangs may start something with an innocent person for no apparent reason. This topic is very important to me because growing I had to deal with these "gang-bangers." It wasn't as bad as some people may think but they were still a problem to me. Now I'm fine, no problems at all. Back then it was. This topic was really easy to write because I can relate with some personal experiences. I feel that narrative essays are much more easier.
 
    The second topic may be about this personal statement I had to do my senior year in high school. I felt that writing a personal statement was hard to write, I don't like writing about myself. It's probably why it took me forever to finish the essay. I struggled at first, but once I started writing, the ideas just kept coming to my head. In the end I felt I had accomplished the mission!