Dear Michele, This class has challenged me to be a better writer. I thought we would be working a lot with grammar, but by not heavily focusing on that, it allowed me to hone in on how to make the content better and helped me become more aware of the conventions of my writing. By doing this, I came to understand that good writing doesn’t come from a paper that’s without any grammatical error. Although grammar is important, it should be the last thing that I really need to care about because through revisions the structure of my sentences, words I use, and phrasing will end up being different each time I revise. To create my living picture narrative, I first brainstormed what I was going to write about. I chose to write about music because it had the most impact on who I am today. Then I wrote all that I could think of; I wrote about different events that I thought helped me become literate in music and tried to keep in mind that I was trying to write a story, people that were there through my journey in music that has helped me, and the lessons I’ve learned. By keeping in mind that I was writing a story rather than just a documentary, I tried to write variation in sentences to not make my essay boring. After creating this first draft, I had to revise a lot to connect my ideas and deleted a lot of information because I babbled about different musical experiences I had, which caused me to stray away from my focus. Because I knew what went on during those specific events, I would tend to forget detailing about what happened to let the reader also know what I experienced. Since I did leave out information that would let the reader know what those events helped me with, my revision process included trying to figure out details to add to help the event come alive and feel real for the reader. My revision process after looking through my peer’s feedback was ineffective in that I was not able to revise properly due to how I did it, which was trying to revise my essay in one sitting. I felt overwhelmed by how much I had to go through. The paragraphs started blurring together and caused my eyes to become tired for staring at the computer screen too long. Because I became tired of reading things repeatedly, I started running out of energy to really pay attention to revising. I learned from this that I should revise my essays in sections and take breaks in between, which will help me look at my essay with fresh eyes each time I revise. Stop sign with a sign, “take a break” underneath it signifying that taking a break when revising to look at the paper with fresh eyes is a must. Digital Image. PrepScholar. Accessed 1 June 2017. Unlike the first assignment, the Wikipedia entry, which I did on forward head posture, was based on a lot of research. Because it was a research heavy assignment, it took a while to find and evaluate credible sources. While doing this project, my writing process involved a lot of designing by finding the best way to format the entry to look like an actual published Wikipedia page. Because I had a lot of information I wanted to add, I had to make sure I designed this page in a way that was not overwhelming to read. To do this, I strategically placed spacing in certain places and many pictures. My writing process also involved researching well enough to have a basic understanding of my topic. I first researched some articles that I found to be informational, which gave me a general sense of what my topic would be about. After researching I wanted to find what topics I could write about, so I started looking for specifics, such as the muscles involved with forward head posture, the symptoms and why those symptoms occurred, and the treatments for this condition. With the more specifics, I was able to know what I wanted to have as my sub-topics and narrowed it down, which made making the outline a lot easier. I found the outline to be an important step in writing this entry because of the overload of information I wanted to add. By creating an outline, I was able to focus on the information that I knew I needed instead of adding unnecessary facts that would have caused me to stray away from my focus in each section. Writing an outline is an important step that shouldn’t be ignored, especially for long essays. Digital Image. WikiHow. Accessed 1 June 2017. For my revision process, just as I did for the literacy narrative, I failed in revising my first draft because I procrastinated. I tried to revise my outline right before the first draft was due, which caused me to not be able to add all the information I wanted in my paper. In my first draft, there were sudden, short, and awkward cut offs and I wasn’t able to fix any of this due to my lack in planning time to do it. However, I am thankful it was only my first draft, so I was able to learn from this. I then knew that I would have to give myself more time to revise my future drafts. Because this was a research heavy based assignment, I needed a lot of time to revise my work. I knew that my Wikipedia entry would be harder to understand because there would be scientific terms used to describe what forward head posture is. Keeping this in mind I tried to break down the wordings and revised it to be written as simply as I could without losing the formality of the paper. After receiving comments, I had to revise my entry to include integrated quotations and making sure I added citations wherever I needed it throughout my essay. Because this is a topic that I have become interested in high school and researched it then, I was getting information I knew and information I researched for this entry mixed up. This caused me to miss citing information with sources To revise the organization of my Wikipedia entry, I used the reverse outline. To do this outline, I had to describe each paragraph in a few words that would help me see what I was doing in each. This helped me see that a paragraph that I thought should have been under general information, I actually found it to be better fit under cause. With this outline I was able to see clearly what I was doing in each section. For the podcast project, observing was the hardest part; brainstorming an idea was a lot easier than actually finding the time to sit down for two hours and watch what was going on around me. I sat for a couple of minute wondering what I was seeing answered my research question. But once I started writing whatever I saw, whether it would answer my question or not, it became easier to write all the things that I observed. Another difficult aspect was separating my observations and thoughts. I had to carefully analyze my observations and thoughts and break it down to what I found was useful in answering my research question. However, because my research question was too broad, it caused me to add too much observations into my essay that was unnecessary. When I was able to narrow down my research question in my third draft of this essay, I was finally able to take out the information that didn’t directly answer my research question. To revise, I used the descriptive outline, which helped a little in pointing out the information I didn’t need. Although it only helped me get rid of one paragraph, it did help in cutting back on observations that weren’t focused. The majority of my writing process was made up of breaking down my observations and thoughts and reconstructing it, trying to find the best way to structure my essay that would make it flow. A girl laying down with spirally arrows going outwards from her head representing how I was when trying to organize my thoughts from observations. Digital Image. Note Worthy by Jen. Accessed 1 June 2017. From these three major assignments, I believe that I have improved on the skill of processes because I was able to create a new way that kept me on track and organized, which was the index cards where I kept individual sources on its own index card when writing the Wikipedia entry. I was able to reflect on the strategies I used to make the research and writing processes more efficient. From this learning experience, I will definitely use this method of keeping track of sources and the information by continuing to make these index cards to be organized for future research papers. I have also improved my knowledge of conventions when writing the three assignments. There were different discourse communities I had to tailor my writing to and the genre also affected the way I wrote, helping me practice in understanding how to write according to the prompts of the assignments. This training helped me learn to be more aware of the structure, language, tone, and design of my papers. In my future classes, when writing, I will be able to use this skill of being more mindful of how to write a paper according to the genre and audience. “Apply Now” button representing that I will apply what I have learned in the future. Digital Image. Total Life Changes. Accessed 1 June 2017. Thank you for reading, Sarah Kim
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