Learning Outcome 1: “Demonstrate the ability to approach writing as a recursive process that requires substantial revision of drafts for content, organization, and clarity (global revision), as well as editing and proofreading (local revision).”
When I look back on the first essay that I wrote in this class, my structure was the same as it had always been: a beginning, 3 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. That was the only way I had ever learned to write essays and by doing the peer revisions I had realized that there are multiple ways to write essays, sure stories need a beginning, middle, and end but it doesn’t always need to be structured the same. Since we did the first and final draft strategy I was able to improve my essay in order to receive a better grade. Now whenever I write I try and choose a writing style that I believe is best fit for the prompt instead of the same exact one over and over.
Learning Outcome 2: “Be able to integrate their ideas with those of others using summary, paraphrase, quotation, analysis, and synthesis of relevant sources.”
In my second essay about Zephyr I use a lot of the things we had discussed in class in order to make my essay better each time. When reading my first draft it was all over the place and it was basically just a quote, explanation, new paragraph and repeat. In class we went over things that helped move a story along and in my final draft I used many quotation sandwiches, summarizing, and dis/agreement templates.
Learning Outcome 3: “Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.”
My first essay about how I would define english was a full opinion piece where I added a lot of my own personal opinions at first instead of using the articles given on brightspace. Over time comparing my first essay compared to the final draft of just that one essay I used research from the articles provided to back my opinion of English being different for everyone.
Learning Outcome 4: “Be able to critique their own and others’ work by emphasizing global revision early in the writing process and local revision later in the process.”
Sharing my own essays while responding to other peoples helps me revise my work but getting to see what other people are doing to realize if there is something another person did that I think would be beneficial to have in my essay or things that I personally would not do. Peer responses helped me learn more about writing by learning that everybody seems to have a different writing style. For example, when we were going through each other’s drafts for essay 1 (Defining English), a lot of my peers included personal stories in their essays. I personally have never learned to write that way or to include myself in any essay but hearing their drafts helped me understand how in some essays writing about personal situations is okay as long as it is relevant to the essay. When I went to rewrite my essay for draft 2, I made sure that I could elaborate on how english was never my favorite subject because writing was difficult for me and it helped the story flow a little better.
Learning Outcomes 5/6/7: “Be able to find, evaluate, and use material located through the library’s online catalog, through subscription databases, and through internet search. Document their work using appropriate conventions (MLA style). Control sentence-level error (grammar, punctuation, spelling).”
In my later essays, especially the second and third, I began using the library’s online catalog and academic databases more effectively to find reliable sources. For example, in my essay on Zephyr, I used articles from the library database rather than random internet sources, which helped me build more credible arguments. I also improved in proper in-text citations and a Works Cited page. While I’ve gotten better at formatting my papers, I still need to improve at double-checking small MLA formatting details, like how to properly cite a multi-author source. Going forward, I plan to continue using the library database to help with essays so my arguments are more credible.
