- Every writing assignment that I get, I handwrite before I type. This gives me the opportunity to put a rough draft together before typing anything. When I go to type it, I reread each paragraph, and rarely type what I had originally written down. I often change wording, add quotes where need be, take out some of my rambling, or add some support. After I have everything typed, I look over my paper as a whole, and decide if I should move things around. For example, on my most recent writing piece, I hand wrote everything, and tried to oversaturate my paper with quotes. When I typed it, I realized that the use of quotes was excessive, so I took a lot out. I had two quotes from King that I was going to use in my second claim, that technology was making our society less intelligent, but I took them out when I typed up my second rough draft. Also, I had originally planned to use King throughout my entire argument that technology was causing havoc for our society, but after typing everything, I realized that I wanted to make a global edit and move him more towards the end, so that I could use him to describe the values of technology. Hand-writing first, gives me the opportunity to make global edits as I type my paper for my second rough draft.
- Before I even begin writing, I find quotes that I want to use to support each of my claims. I read through all of my sources beforehand, and underline points that I could potentially use in my argument, and later go back and pick which evidence I want to use. Originally, for my second essay in this class, I was going to use Henig’s What is it About 20 Somethings? But after going through the piece, I decided that King’s TedX Talk would be better to use. Below is my plan for how I was going to use each article in my paper, and you can clearly see where I crossed out “Emerging” which is what I wrote for Henig’s piece. It took a lot of effort for me to go back and find new quotes from another piece, and to integrate them into my essay, but I thought it was much better evidence for my argument. I often go back and change the evidence that I originally chose to use, so that it supports my argument better, even though it takes more work to rewrite support for the new evidence. I am still working on introducing quotes into my writing, but I think that I have gotten much better after using The Little Seagull, and other tricks from class.
- I think that I have always been a critical and active reader, with things that interest me, and in all honesty do not think I will ever be as active of a reader when the content does not interest me. I often write on texts that I read, jotting down questions that I had, or commenting on things that stood out to me. What the techniques of active reading and critical reading have done for me, from the techniques that we have learned in class, is helped my writing. Because of the active reading techniques, I now consciously try to think about how to get the reader more involved in my own writing. Below is a photo of my responses to questions about Anderson’s text. This text was very interesting to me, got me to think a lot, and I was very engaged with it. For the most part, I engage with any text that interests me, writing all over the text.
- In my own work, I write a rough draft on paper, and type a second rough draft. When I type my second rough draft, I go through and decide where I should make global edits to best support my stance, and to make the paper flow better. Revising other’s work, I read through, and pay attention to the claims and support that they have on my first read through, and give advice about where to put, or how to change, evidence to best support their claims. Then, I scan over and think about my first read to see if the order of paragraphs/organization of their paper is constructed well, or if I think there is a way to improve it. I am hesitant however to implement local edits simply because I am not that confident in my own ability to correct grammar, spelling, etc. I think that the more reading of published texts that I do, the better I will get with local edits.
- My go to for documenting sources is easybib.com. It gives you the ability to type the title of your source in, and creates the bibliography automatically. It also gives you the ability to add more details that it may miss. I feel that this is a very strong tool, and gives you the opportunity to select if it is an academic journal, a book, a website, or whatever type of source it may be. It even tells you if it thinks your sources are credible. For citing my sources at the end of the paper, I am very confident. However, I am not so confident with my ability to apply in-text citations. I am not always sure when they are needed, and when they are not. I plan to use little seagull to help me with this process until I gain enough confidence to do it on my own.
- I honestly have no idea if I have patterns of error in my work regarding grammar, punctuation, or spelling habits. I am unsure how I would be able to find out if I am making mistakes, as I’m sure most people that make grammatical errors do not know they are making the mistakes either. Writing emails makes me nervous due to my lack of confidence in these areas. Emailing professors, potential bosses, or whomever is stressful for this reason. It is the uncertainty of not knowing if everything is perfect. The only way that I can think of to get better is to read more published texts. This will expose me to the proper way to use punctuation, grammar, and help my spelling. As of right now, I do not read enough, and I think that getting into the habit would be very beneficial for myself in these areas. I am only able to notice errors in other’s work if they are things that I am confident about, or if they are obvious mistakes.
