goals

At the beginning of this semester I thought I was somewhat prepared in writing but when the essay came to date I realize I need it more practice in writing. My main goal was to improve as a writer by learning different styles of writing and how to approach my audience. I’m proud because in this semester I learned those skills and one thing that I didn’t address in my goals at first and I had trouble with in my essays was writing my thesis statement.    

Throughout the semester I felt frustrated because I wasn’t getting the grades I wanted and that was mainly because I didn’t have a statement of purpose and that made my whole paper to fail. I didn’t know how to organize my paper and also didn’t know how to connect my ideas to my thesis. I started to focus more on these things after my second paper and I had a big improvement and that was seen in my scores. So, I feel that in the last paper I did a great job and I had a thesis statement and a good organization.

Even though I more prepared to write college level papers I need a lot of practice in order to keep up the good work. Therefore, I will try to write papers even when I don’t have a class and try to give it to people around me to give me advice toward my papers. Also, I will also take English 102 so I can master my skills and be prepared for my college career. 

Revisions #14

            For my portfolio I’m going to revise the argument analysis. My strongest in this essay was that I successfully talked about how the author failed to make his argument and how the tone used was not trustworthy. The weaknesses were my organization and not having a clear thesis statement to tell the purpose of the essay. I will make sure that I address both strengths and weaknesses in order to have a well-written essay.

            In order to make good revision I will focus in organization of my paper and make sure that I have a stated thesis stamen and also having it in the right place. The organization and thesis statement have to go together because organization is how the paper flows and it has to be connected with the statement of purpose. This will help in order to have a good essay and also they are the most important things to make an effective essay, since the thesis is what tells the reader what the essay is going to be about and also the organization is not to lose the reader so they both have to be well connected.

            Also I’m going to make sure that every claim is connected to my main idea and not losing focus.  Other thing I’m going to be careful about is that I have to be careful of not mixing my claims so that my organization is clear and in the right order to make sense to the audience. I have to make sure that my thoughts are clear and that they are understandable for all the audience. 

Reflection #13

When I analyzed the article: don’t presume to know a pigs mind for the first time I thought that all the authors evidence was compelling. After, reading the article several times I realized that the author had weak points in his essay. He fails in his essay by not addressing the problem which is animal cruelty and rights. Ther3efore, I learned that even when you know is hard to address the other side, you have to talk about it in one way or another but you have to give solutions to the reader that why they are reading it.

Another thing that I learned in analyzing text is that you have to know who your audience is to create a common ground and have an idea how to approach them.  Otherwise people will not agree with you and you will lose readers right away. In my third essay I saw that Hurst fails to address the right audience because he is not solving the problem and people will get upset with the author because he wasn’t giving solutions. So, I learned that I have to give some sort of solution to the problem

The other thing you have to see when writing an argument is that you need a trustworthy tone and introduce that tone to your audience so everything you say the audience will believe it if you have the right tone.  In order to do this you will need to identify the rhetorical situation and of course use the right words to make the audience believe what you are saying.

Thnking about evidence #12

           The most compelling evidence in my argument is that all youngsters that are 18 or older should vote and be more enrolled in politics because those decisions affect their lives in one way or another. This evidence is real strong because if youngsters are enrolled in choosing a president, they can ask the candidates to help them more with their education or personal difficulties. By reading these ideas youngsters may realize that is for their own to participate in candidate elections to fight for their own ideals. Since this is one of my strongest points I will think about this claim when creating my thesis to refer back to it throughout the essay.

            My weakest point by making this argument that youngsters of 18 of age or older should vote in order to get what they want from government. The counterargument from them is that teens or young people are not relevant to government and they may say that their vote doesn’t make a difference toward the election. My explanation to this argument would be that youngsters need to be more enrolled in politics in order to have more opportunities and also to be addressed by the candidates. I will talk about why is so important for them to vote, even though their single vote will not count for much the community of teens as a whole does count and will make a difference because they are going to be the future of the country. They will make the change and therefore they should be enrolled in politics since they are 18 and being able to vote.

Error Patterns #11

            I pattern of error that I have notice throughout my writing is that I tend to be repetitive in my ideas and I keep talking about the same thing through all the body paragraphs, which makes my writing boring. In order to improve and get rid of this problem I believe that the best thing to do is to be most focused when writing so I can prevent repetition. I know for sure that if I keep doing it I won’t be able to keep readers entertained because they are going to notice that I’m just talking about the same thing over and over.

            The other error that I commit often while writing is that I tend to get off of topic and then that makes the paper confusing and hard for the reader to understand the point I’m trying to convey. Therefore, in my future papers I’m going to focus in the style paper I’m supposed to do and not change the topic. For example for our first essay for class we were supposed write a Personal narrative and I got out of focus and started talking about other people and not me which you are not suppose to do because it’s a paper talking about your personal experience.

            The last thing I want to mention is the error that I commit in all my papers is that I don’t look for the right words to make it a high level and well written paper. I know that in order to fix this problem you have to do it with learning and enriching your vocabulary. Since, I have only studied English for 4 years, my vocabulary is not good that’s why I’m not able to do a good job in changing the words to make a college level paper. 

Peer Review #10

           In this class I learned that in peer review you obtain more ideas in how to write your papers and also how to organize your ideas. In our peer review we get into small groups in which we all read our paper and our peers would give us feedback. This peer review is effective because we are able to get opinion from other people. I believe that it can be improved by talking more about it with the class as a whole. That way we will have an idea in how to make our papers better.

            My weakness in peer review is that I get shy when reading my own paper and also I feel uncomfortable when I’m in front of others and they are reading my paper. My strength in peer review is that I’m able to give real good ideas to my peers that they can add to their papers to make more complete. I believe that peer review is the best thing to do when writing papers because at that early step you are able to see your weak points and have the chance to change that before the final paper. For me is better to do it in big groups because we are able to get more ideas.

            I think that we should keep the peer reviews as we have been doing in class because it helps everyone to write our papers. Peer review should be done for every paper because nobody writes perfect papers and everyone needs feedback from others in orders to make good papers.

Choice in Topics #9

           Of the three assignments that we have seen so far, in my opinion the hardest one was the Advertisement Analysis. The Advertisement analysis I found it hard because sometimes its tricks you in what the real meaning of the ad is. The easiest to write about was the literacy narrative because you write about personal experiences and the ideas come automatically.

            Anyways, it doesn’t matter how hard or easy they were all of them helped me to write better and that’s why I’m in this class. In this class am learning how to write in different styles and keep the writing on topic. I feel like I’m learning and also learning a lot by reading my peer’s papers. This class is also helping me to enrich my vocabulary and to understand things that I didn’t know. For example I have learned what does logos, pathos and ethos stand for.

            So, for the rest of this semester I am going to try to learn as much as I can in writing other styles. I know that this is going to be possible by putting all the effort possible from me and also by working together with the class and listening to their opinions and of course by listening to Ms.Spencer. This is the best class that I have taken so far in college because everybody gets along with each other and always willing to help. We have a class in which everybody give ideas about the topics we are analyzing that can be very helpful in order to write good papers.