Framing Statement
Learning Outcome 1 In the first major project we had this semester, my first draft for this essay was almost the same as my final just shorter. I also noticed that there were more spelling and grammar mistakes in the first draft than in the final draft. This is because early in the semester I didn’t have a grasp on the proper way to revise and edit, I thought that just adding more paragraphs to the end of my first draft would make it my final. I wouldn’t even think about changing the idea I was writing about to have better content in my essays. This all shows that I felt that words already put on the page could not change, other than fixing spelling and grammar. Throughout the semester this changed as we learned about how to revise between drafts, it was hard to break old habits though as I wouldn’t change ideas or sentences as much as I should have. I did start paying more attention to sentence structure errors though. I wasn’t until we started the third writing project that I really got it, for the third project I wasn’t afraid to move sentences around or completely change the structure of a sentence or paragraph. I started to look at how I could change my ideas to get my writing to flow better, and this was a dramatic change to how I started writing in this semester. This class taught me that writing can be changed around even after you think you have your final draft.
My chosen significant writing project: first draft and final draft
Learning Outcome 2 Early in the semester integrating quotes into my writing was not something I had a grasp on, such as in the first major writing project where throughout most of the essay I did not have any quotes. When I did have quotes in my essay they were just thrown in I tried to explain why they backed up my claims. I just ended up just stating the quote then writing my ideas down without bothering to explain what the quote meant and why it was important in my context. Instead of doing that I would just jump right into my explanation of why it backs up my ideas. During the semester I learned that I should be explaining the quotes and integrating them into my writing. This class was valuable for teaching me how one should integrate other’s ideas with your own to strengthen your writing. Discussions in class made me think about this more and I started trying to use quotes the right way. However, it was hard to break the way I had been using quotes in my writing and when I wrote the final draft for project 3 I still didn’t get it quite right. Even though I didn’t integrate quotes into my writing quite right yet, I am on the road to doing it properly.
Learning Outcome 3 Before going through this semester, I thought that annotating was hard and didn’t try to annotate in a meaningful way. Early in the semester I didn’t annotate the readings as much as I should have, often I wouldn’t write down the thoughts I had while reading. After this semester though I have learned how to annotate better. My annotations now consist of underlining information that seems important and writing my thoughts in the margins. In my annotations on page one of David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster, where I wrote down where the lobster facts begin in his article and where he described where the lobster fest took place. I did these annotations when I had to re-read this article for the final project, I wouldn’t have been able to do those annotations early in the semester. Much like what Susan Gilroy sates about writing down thoughts that occur to you while reading. I still have to work on asking myself questions like Gilroy says to do in order to better understand the importance of the text in the context of the course. While reading I often do not think about or write down how readings interact with each other, which Gilroy says you should do. In my annotations I would also often write down what is happening in a specific part of the reading. Like Over this semester I learned that annotating isn’t hard like I originally thought it was. I now understand that to annotate you need to write down your thoughts and mark information that seems important or is interesting.
Learning Outcome 4 Initially in the semester my skills in peer review were not good, I would only point out grammar or spelling mistakes. My peer review skills were not as meaningful to the revision process as commenting on how a thesis could change or how an idea was good but could be tweaked is. Throughout the semester I started to learn how to properly review a peers’ writing and to comment to meaningfully offer up changes to their writing that would benefit the final product. I am now on my way to improve my skills in peer review to somewhere they should be. My revisions on Kayla Lowe’s paper show this, I wrote suggestions on the ideas and structure of sentences or paragraphs rather than just pointing out grammar and spelling issues. Such as on the bottom of the first page in her paper where I said that her point was good and that she could expand upon it.
Learning Outcomes 5 and 6 In project 3 my citing of sources in MLA format is nowhere as good as it should be, at the end of my paper I failed to cite the sources in proper MLA format. This is a skill I will need to continue to develop in the next few months in order to succeed. Within my paper I did properly cite my quotations, which in the beginning of this semester I didn’t do in my writing. This skill I have improved on, even if it wasn’t a big improvement, I believe that I will improve this further in the course of the next few months because now I have the tools to do so. The class discussions on MLA format, as well as comments on my final papers, helped to drive home the point of how important it is to be able to use the MLA format. This class helped me to discover helpful tools to use in improving my skills in writing and using the MLA format.
