1. Demonstrate the ability to approach writing as a recursive process that requires substantial revision of drafts for content organization and clarity and well as editing and proofreading.

 

I think my biggest challenge in writing is to approach it in the recursive process.  I will have an idea and struggle to put it in the right format on paper.  Once I start writing I get into my ideas and arguments and think that they look good but won’t go back again and again to make sure that they are making sense for the reader.  I know what I want to write and argue and I think that I have got it across.  The comments that were on my paper, I didn’t reflect on as much as I should have.  There were places where you commented that my arguments needed to be been stronger.  I felt that they were and I didn’t critically analyze what I was actually saying verses what I thought I was saying.   My revisions didn’t result in a major change in my work.  I need to reflect on that.  I should be reading and re reading my paper at every revision.  My new strategy will be to look at my paper more critically, each claim and each argument to prove that claim.  Someone once told me that she reads articles from the bottom up.  This allows her to not be led by the author but look at the work more critically.  I might not need to read from bottom up but I think a good strategy for me it to look at every paragraph to see if I am making the claim in the beginning of the paragraph and then proving the claim in the body of the paragraph.  Then seeing if all this relates to the thesis.

 

2. Be able to integrate ideas of others using summary, paraphrase, quotation analysis and synthesis of relevant sources.

 

I think the issue of — am I making a good argument to my claim, comes up again here.  I feel as though I didn’t use quotes or try and sum up the arguments of the authors’ points in my paper in a way that made it move my argument forward.  Instead of making them rhetorical moves to push my argument forward I just paraphrased the authors points in my paper, but lost the ability to make a clear argument.   The truth is that the idea of ‘rhetorical moves’ and its meaning is not a phrase I was familiar with.  Now, instead of just putting in a quote to enhance the document, I get the idea of using a rhetorical move to advance or strengthen my argument and can use it better.  In your comments to me for my first draft (attached picture) you mentioned that I was paraphrasing and summarizing but was not using my own points to move the paper forward.  I understand more clearly now what that comment meant.  In making a claim in my next paper I am being more attentive to making my point and using quotes or summaries or paraphrasing from these other sources to move my point forward.

 

3. Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading and information reading responses for inquiry, learning, and thinking.

 

Active reading is something that I struggle with.  As a kid, I was diagnosed with dyslexia and have tried to find the best way to engage my brain when I read.  One thing that has always been hard for me is to highlight.  Likely because I need to read something fully and not be distracted by highlighting the text, if I did then I would lose the thread of what I was reading.  This is certainly not a help when I am critically reading smaller and shorter texts like the ones we used for the papers.  I need to go back to both the texts and also my papers and read more critically and annotate and highlight as needed.  This may mean reading something once for understanding and then again for clarity and global review. This continues to be a struggle for me, but it is pretty clear that I need to get the distractions out of the way, print the document and read it paragraph by paragraph.  One other way that will help is by seeing if I am being clear in my thesis, and then topic sentences.  Am I being clear?  As someone who struggled with dyslexia it is really very important for me to write so that anyone reading my work will not struggle to comprehend it.

 

 

4. Be able to critique their own and other’s work by emphasizing global revision early in the writing process and local revision later in the process.

 

The idea of global revision verses local revision is something that I need to be more aware of.  In the past, I have been more directed to local revisions when critiquing someone’s work.  I do however, look to see if there is a thesis that makes sense to me and is connected through the work.  In writing about this I realize that I need to review my own work as I would another’s.   Once again it comes back to thesis and main points. One of the values of critiquing is that I like to be able to see other’s ideas and how they approach the work.  It is often hard for me to make good suggestions regarding how a different approach might work if I don’t see enough clarity in the paper I am critiquing.  This is one reason it is actually a big help to me to see how others approach the work. From reviewing others work I can see where I may need to improve.

 

 

5. Document the work using appropriate conventions (MLA)

 

I think that documenting the work with the appropriate conventions can get confusing when it is in the body of the paper.  Citing the work at the end of the paper is easy, that just follows a format.  It is when I have to cite the work within the body of the paper that it gets confusing. You mentioned in your review of my paper that there were formatting errors in parenthetical citations.  I need to look back over the paper and see where these formatting errors were and check the MLA rules again. I also have a specific area that I need to look at for this new paper I am working on.  It has to do with citing the magazine article.   Sam Anderson’s work is part of a magazine article, so when I cite his work do I do so by also including the page.  For example, “quote from the article” (Anderson page 3).  I will have to do some research and figure out how I should cite that work.

 

6. Control sentence-level error (grammar, punctuation, spelling)

Sentence level error isn’t something that I would see as a problem in my writing.  There are a few things that I see as patterns.  One is how to punctuation correctly when using quotations. I know how to use the comma before the quote and also not to start a sentence with a quote, but I get tripped up when ending the quote and continuing the sentence.  You had mentioned in the grading rubric that formatting for parenthetical citations was in error on this last paper.  I need to go back and see what specifically you meant to make sure I don’t make the same mistake twice.   Also, my grammar regarding using past and present tense in the same sentence and paragraph is something that people who have edited my work have identified.   I have seen sentence level error in others but nothing comes across as a pattern.  With all the support from websites like Grammerly and Microsoft word it is hard to have spelling errors.  In order to be clearer and crisper in my essays and papers, I just need to look to MLA protocols and learn the right way to incorporate quotes into sentences.