Self-Assessment
Learning Outcome 1:
In all my essays throughout English 110, my rough to final drafts definitely had a lot of changes. I was thankful to have the help of Lexi, Maddie, and Olivia in editing my essay. I want to talk about my revision in Essay #1. In my rough draft, my essays biggest concern was the flow of the essay and making sure all my ideas made sense. I wanted to make sure I had a well organized and structured essay. I did have this, and what I needed to work on more was developing a stronger conclusion, and expanding even more on present ideas in the essay. My rough to final draft definitely had lots of changes. I didn’t find myself removing information, I just found myself adding more information and expanding more off of what I already had written. Sometimes I would have to reorganize my paragraphs after getting all my ideas out on a sheet of paper. I also went back and fixed some simple grammatical things in addition to items necessary for writing an MLA formatted paper, such as the header. I liked my writing process and thought I was successful with it. I found my writing process and approach to revision becoming even stronger as the semester went on.
Rough Draft:
Final Draft :
Learning Outcome 2:
English 110 has helped me very much in the concept of integrating quotes properly into my writing. In high school, I always just tossed a quote in there. I barley introduced the concept and I for sure did not explain the quote, because I thought the quote explained itself. Therefore leading up to my first essay and all my additional essays, I felt as though I was extremely successful with the “Quotation Sandwich” aspect of my essay. I really tried to focus on the intro, quote, and then explanation. See my example from Essay #1 below:
This explicitly means that you and your singular story, could be the very thing you have to offer others who need help. There could be only a few, but there could also be many people that could enter your storytelling door. Hallward found a study that was done by Thomas Houston, from the University of Massachusetts who found that “when you listen to a story told by someone like you, who you can really identify with and who is struggling with an issue, your blood pressure goes down and it lasts for months” (5:00). This proves that social and political change starts with communication. Communication is a fundamental requirement for social cohesion, because it creates trusting relationships.
Here you will see that I introduce the idea of how telling personal stories could help others. Then I support that idea with a quote of study results that proved that idea true. I then emphasize more on how this quote justifies the idea, and introduce how communication is a requirement to fulfill this.
Learning Outcome 4:
I feel like critiquing my own and others works is something I do really well. When peer-editing others papers, I really focus on how to enhance the paper as a whole, not just simple things. I take time to read over the cover letter to see where they’re at before I dive into the paper. When I edited Maddies paper, I stressed her success on some global categories. This is illustrated throughout comments 1,2,6, and 8 for (I) ideas. These ideas consisted of complementing her thesis and some of her strong paragraphs. At times I also proposed ideas on how to enhance her paragraph. For (L) local concerns, you’ll see in comment 4, I suggested adding some citations for one of her paragraphs to prove where she got her information. Comment number 3 shows that I evaluated on her (E) evidence, showing emphasis on her text-to-world connections in addition to having her explain even more of her evidence by diving even deeper. I finish off my Peer Review by responding to her one overall concern. Maddie thought that she was too repetitive. However, I reassured her that she was not. After going through the coding exercise, one thing I would like to work on going forward is adding more of the (O) for organizational piece of peer editing. See all my comments in the link below.
Peer Review Essay:
Learning Outcome 5&6:
I feel as far as MLA citations go, I have a pretty strong sense on how to do this. In high school we pretty much only worked with MLA, so I’m very familiar with it. My quotes and paraphrases went well in my first essay, and my work cited was on point. There weren’t any MLA revisions I made from rough draft to final draft other than the part that I got so caught up in my paper, I forgot my headings!
In my first essay I did make one slight error when I paraphrased. See below.
Hallward states, shame is considered a lethal public threat, simply meaning, shame can be deadly. “…suicide is now one of the causes of death, top ten for this country” (4:00), states Hallward.
Instead, I should’ve used the MLA signal phrase. Hallward states, “…suicide is now one of the causes of death, top ten for this country” (4:00).
For the podcast, tts hard for me to really judge my progression on MLA citations. This essay was based around a personal story so I really didn’t include many outside sources. However I did make a connection with Anne Hallward and included a quote from her Ted Talk in my essay, which was properly cited in the MLA format. My work cited again was on point with no errors!I had the same success with Essay number 2.
My weakest grammatically point throughout the essay was definitely comma splices. I didn’t even fully understand or realize what a comma splice is. I now understand that comma splice separate an independent clause from a dependent clause. After bringing this concern up to my writing tutor I learned that after the comma you need to add a word such as, (and, but, so) and if that doesn’t work, then simply end your sentence with a period.
See some examples of how I would fix comma splices from my first essay below.
Example 1.
Adversely, in South Africa, an organization called loveLife geared towards the youth, just focused on education around having safe sex, it rarely talked about HIV and prevention.
I would add, “…around having safe sex, BUT it rarely talked about HIV and prevention”.
My goal for the podcast and essay #2 was to be more consciousness of comma splices. Comma splices have now become my best friend it feels like! I had no comma splices in my podcast and Essay two, compared to about the half dozen I had in Essay one. I finally understand, recognize, and know how to correct comma splices. I catch myself doing that mistake frequently, not just in English Composition writing. However, I acknowledge it, correct it, and everything is good to go. I do believe that presenting a small punctuation lesson on comma splices also helped me better understand and recognize my errors.
