...I took this class because it’s a college class that transfers to both Dordt and Northwestern, so whichever one I go to I will not have to take it there (assuming I pass the class). I also took it because my sister told me that it’s a good class to take, especially because it is challenging. I was not so sure about that because I do not always like to be challenged in school. I am not the biggest fan of writing. Papers are not exactly my forte. I would much rather take a test over a unit than write a paper. I am open to writing a paper, but I think it takes me a lot more time to write a paper than it really should because I overthink things too easily, which could be both good or bad. I am excited for this course because I have been enjoying The Life of Pi, and I think I have a good idea on what to write for the paper. I am also very nervous for this course because I have heard that the grading is pretty hard. I heard that you have to be pretty perfect in your paper in order to get a good grade....
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...Reflective Self-Analysis My portfolio demonstrates my understanding of persuasive writing. My idea of persuasive writing is that a good essay will affect the reader in some way shape or form. I believe combining effective uses of logos, pathos, and egos along with structure are very important. My persuasive writing reflects the way I think about argumentation in general. I can see how easy it can be to write a paper arguing a point, but not doing it in the correct manner. For example, if a writer just argues his point without giving any strong evidence and offers no counter-argument the paper will not be effective in persuading the reader. While my writing demonstrates strengths in organization and thesis development, I will continue to work to improve proofreading skills and sentence structure. What’s helped my writing this semester is that I feel confident about work. My writing demonstrates my strength in organization. A lot of this strength originates from class activities and notes. The class that had the biggest effect on me was when we learned about rhetorical analysis structure on page one of my handwritten evidence. In my notes I specifically write down the structure along with extra notes under some categories so I fully understand how to attack the assignment. This led to me getting a perfect ten score under the argumentative structure part on the grading rubric on my rhetorical analysis essay, which is titled “Exposing Education.” Since that learning moment...
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...BECOMING A WRITER January of 2011 was the beginning of a special adventure in my life as a student. I took an English class 0890, at Utah Valley University. Now, in the last days of this class, almost four months later, I can look back and see myself with a lot of problems in my writing that needed to be fixed. These four months in this class have helped me solve many writing challenges. I am far from perfect in becoming a good writer but I have learned that hard work and perseverance can produce wonderful results. Even though I learned many things, the three man points that I want to talk about are the following: quote analysis scaffold, grammar, and research online. The first month of the English 0890 class was intense, the students had to do a special analysis writing exercise called “Quote analysis scaffold”. It is the developing of many skills in one exercise. It helps develop reading and vocabulary comprehension. After the quote analysis scaffold is made, it can be used in the essay as a hook or concluding thought. We ended up doing around ten of these exercises. After writing the quote, provided from the teacher, this analysis was made from the following steps: The first thing was to do a research online about the author and make two to three sentences, on average, about who he was and what were his major contributions to society. Second, the students had to look for unknown words and their definition in the dictionary. After this, the third part was for the students...
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...Before watching the introductory video to professional writing class (like ENGL394), I thought that sort of writing skills can be developed in a real workplace situation. Maybe because I am a mathematics major student, I never knew like readable proposals and professional analysis mean that much in a successful project. I am sure this professional writing class will provide a very good platform for applying what we’ve learnt into workplace. As a college-level writer, I’m driven by my purposes when writing. As what I’ve learnt a lot about argument, thesis statement and position paper from ENGL101 last semester, the most important thing for a writer to do is present enough evidence to audience in a logical structure. I didn’t do very well in it because I constantly failed to focus on my main thesis, which made my paper seem less convincing. To solve this problem, I tried my best to write down a structure of my paper and kept that script with me. It helped me to check out how far I got. According to Lamott’s First Shitty Draft, despite that such process may take a very long while, a writer should spend time on rewriting his/her own work. In my experiences of writing every single piece of assignment, only after reading my works over and over again could I be able to debug them. Another thing I learnt from Debunking the Genius Myth is that the essential way to success in writing is by practicing. Through enough practicing, one can automatically respond to a certain problem...
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...Final Summary At the beginning of the year, I expected to hate this class. I have never enjoyed writing whatsoever. But now that I’m looking back, I surprisingly liked this class. My writing skills greatly improved over the year. For example, on our first paper, the Educational History Narrative, Paper Rater gave me a 73. With every paper I wrote I improved point by point. On the last paper we wrote, the Argumentative Research paper, Paper rater gave me a 92. With my scores improving, the difficulty to write my papers decreased. The most challenging paper was the Ad Analysis paper. For my analysis, I chose PAM cooking spray. Looking back on it, this probably wasn’t a great idea. The ad campaign I chose only had two short one minute commercials....
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...My very first college English class at Louisiana State University was most definitely everything that I expected it to be. It was tough, tedious, and time consuming, but I learned a lot through out the semester. I learned how to write different kinds of papers, how to do research on a topic, and how to manage my time to where I can efficiently do my work by the due date. At the beginning of the year we had to write a literary analysis and in that analysis I said that me, and writing never really had a strong relationship and I was not exactly a fan of writing. Months later and I still feel the same way… I may not enjoy it but I know I have grown stronger in the writing department because of this class. My teacher being very involved with our work helped tremendously. It was so helpful to receive our drafts back with comments on how to make our papers better. It most definitely improved my writing. When we would free write in class I felt challenged, because it is hard for me to just think on the spot, but the more we free wrote the better I got it. I also enjoyed when we got to present our issues that our issue analysis was over to the class. It was interesting to hear all the research people did and what they focused their paper on. Getting chocolate cake wasn’t so bad either. I will admit that I was very nervous when it came to me presenting my issue. Being in front of people is one of my flaws that get in the way of assignments like that. The books that were required...
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...discretion. Any and all changes will be communicated to students in writing. Course Description RHET 1302 will prepare you for college-level writing while helping you develop your critical thinking skills. Rhetoric is the study and practice of how people communicate messages, not only in writing and speech, but also through visual and digital mediums. In this class, you will develop skills to analyze the way rhetoric, in its various forms, addresses audiences. By paying attention to the strategies that good writers and speakers use to persuade their particular audiences, you will learn to reason better and to persuade others in your own writing, both through rhetorical appeals and through analysis of audience, purpose, and exigency that is at the heart of the study of rhetoric. For RHET 1302, you will read and reread texts and write multi-draft essays. Practically speaking, you will learn skills that you can use in your future course work regardless of your major. Student Learning Objectives • Students will be able to write in different ways for different audiences. • Students will be able to write effectively using appropriate organization, mechanics, and style. • Students will be able to construct effective written arguments. • Students will be able to gather, incorporate, and interpret source material in their writing. Required Texts Rosenwasser, David and Stephen, Jill. Writing Analytically with Readings. Second edition. Thomson/Wadsworth, 2011...
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...rhetorically and analyze scholarly texts on a variety of subjects. The course emphasizes writing to specific audiences and understanding how information is context dependent and audience specific. Students must engage with a variety of ideas and learn how to synthesize those in college level essays. Core Objectives • Critical Thinking Skills: To include creative thinking, innovation, inquiry, and analysis, evaluation and synthesis of information • Communication Skills: To include effective development and expression of ideas through written, oral, and visual communication • Teamwork: To include the ability to consider different points of view and to work effectively with others to support a shared purpose or goal • Personal Responsibility: To include the ability to connect choices, actions and consequences to ethical decision-making ENGL 1301 Expected Learning Outcomes. By the end of ENGL 1301, you should be able to demonstrate the following: Rhetorical Knowledge • Use knowledge of the rhetorical situation—author, audience, exigence, constraints—to analyze and construct texts • Compose texts in a variety of genres, expanding your repertoire beyond predictable forms • Adjust voice, tone, diction, syntax, level of formality, and structure to meet the demands of different rhetorical situations Critical Reading, Thinking, and Writing • Use writing, reading, and discussion for inquiry,...
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...When reflecting upon the eighth grade year in English class at Julius West, I am able to see many strengths and weaknesses from the many writing assignments we completed in class. There are three main classification of writing which are narrative, argument, and analysis. When completing assignments many factors play into have a good piece, such as conventions, evidence, thesis, organization, analysis, creativity, style, and accuracy. During the year I have excelled at some and have been inadequate at others. To focus on the many strengths and weaknesses I used my argument and analysis writing to create my reflection upon my work. By using this category of work you are able to see the main parts I achieved and areas that need improvements on....
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...Second Semester Final Exam: Portfolio A: Narrative/Descriptive Writing Parasailing (Vignette) Narrative and descriptive writing is the writing style I enjoy the most. The vignette I wrote about is a story that happened to me when I was younger and this kind of writing allows me to relive this memory on paper. I find this kind of writing easier to write and easy to relate to because it’s all about me. It is harder for me to write and relate to a book that we read in class since it isn’t about my personal life. This kind of writing style helps me reflect on the something I learned because I have seen how much I have grown this school year based off of what I wrote about and my writing style. This kind of writing style allows me to describe...
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...I chose to revise was my About Me page. Due to the relatively small length of the piece (two paragraphs), especially in comparison to longer papers like the Familiar Genre Analysis (four pages), doing a momentous amount of revisions is unpractical. However, the changes I did make significantly altered the piece. To start off, I made some corrections to various middle and lower order concerns, like grammar (added “am” before “from” in the first sentence) and transitions (first sentence of second paragraph links the two, creating flow that was previously absent). After that, I focused on these, more important higher order concerns: audience, pathos and genre conventions. Previously, the reference to the audience for my blog was vague and practically missing. By adding the fact that “one of the primary uses of this blog is for my English 1020 class at Wayne State University,” I was able to hone in on my prospective audience: my professor and fellow classmates. Next, I added in more details about myself to help the reader feel better connected to me. By stating where I lived through my life and what country I identity myself as being from, as well as one of my biggest goals in life, I am allowing future readers to know me and my writing, not just the latter. Finally, I attempted to improve my use of genre conventions. About Me pages typically include a reason why the writer started a blog, so I included that. Also, I tried to be more interactive with my readers by asking them...
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...every class time could be your last class. A professor has the right to drop pretty much for any reason, in high school the teacher is stuck with you and they have to deal with it. But from these difference I realized that I was by no means ready for college and what it had in store for me this semester. We as students are expected to know this stuff before class has even started, but the teachers in the past they said they are making us ready for college that is there goal for us as their students, but they are just holding are hand and walking us through high school and across the stage for graduation....
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...This English class required me to focus on four different learning outcomes: writing, reading, researching, and reflecting. The writing learning outcome included creating an effective and flexible writing process to evaluate various rhetorical situations. The reading learning outcome included reading complex sources from a variety of Medias to also evaluate rhetorical situations. The researching learning outcome included searching for print and electronic sources and imply their information to ideas and integrate them into the writing projects. The reflecting learning outcome required me to look back at previous works and decide what changes can be made and how future works will be improved. This English course successfully improved my...
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...Writing is the ability to transfer your thoughts, feelings and oral language on a surface using specific symbols. The ability to convey your thoughts clearly in written form to the audience calls an effective writing skills. In addition to this an effective writer must have an extensive vocabulary to be able express yourself. To be an effective writer means the reader will understand thoroughly everything you are writing on the paper. My personal experience in writing was challenging and valuable at the same time. This semester I took an Academic Writing and Argument course with professor Missy Watson. During this semester, I learned how to analyze arguments, write rhetorical analysis essay, work with researched and visual arguments, effectively...
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...English 1101 9 October 2013 Midterm Reflection I have done a variety of different assignments throughout my English 1101 class this semester. The assignments that have had the most influence on me include select chapters from J.M. Bohannon’s I Hate Writing, Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Drafts”, Stephen King’s On Writing, and my practice with rhetorical analysis. Each of these assignments have significantly impacted me and caused me to view my own writing differently. They have helped me grow as a writer as well as come closer to finding my own writer’s “voice”. I have really enjoyed and learned from the chapters that I have read so far in I Hate Writing. My favorite chapter is chapter seven because Bohannon discusses many different ways to introduce a paper. I found her methods very helpful because I have a tendency to struggle when writing my introductions; I simply have no idea where to begin. Bohannon suggestions in chapter seven include telling a story, using a quotation, defining an unfamiliar term, directly stating an argument, writing in the reader, and being creative. After trying each of the options presented by Bohannon in this particular chapter, I found that using a quotation is my favorite technique. I feel it is the easiest way to start a paper off since I have something to base my paper off of. I also feel it is a good way to draw the reader in since a quote is simple, yet sets the theme and mood of a paper. I also appreciated the advice Bohannon gave in...
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