-Learning Outcome One
When I was revising my second prompt I really put a lot of effort in. Unlike my revising of my first prompt’s first draft I felt a lot more comfortable. I really felt like I wasn’t just proofreading for spelling errors anymore, but this time I really understood that revising a paper goes deeper than that. Like in the first learning outcome for ENG110, “a recursive process that requires a substantial revision of drafts for content,”, using the many revision strategies that I learned over the course I was able to achieve the goal of revising my paper with organization and clarity and not just settling after I have only proofread for spelling errors and sentence fragments. While I was revising, I took in my peers comments as advice, using it as an advantage to know what to reorganize my writing so that it flows better. I used comments from my professor to help me make my paper better to understand, afterwards reading out loud not only to me but another person to make sure my paper is understandable and clear. For example you can see in my final draft of my second paper my thesis has completely changed from the way that it is in my free draft. It makes more sense in my paper in the final draft and it helps the reader have a better understanding of what I am trying to argue in my essay. This isn’t just surface errors anymore .Using all of these revision strategies I was able to go above and beyond just skimming my paper for spelling errors and sentence fragments and Nancy Sommers’ idea that “students solve the immediate problem, but blind themselves to problems, on a textual level; although they are using different words, they are sometimes merely restating the same idea with different words.” I did more than just restating sentences, I moved whole paragraphs around and thought of new ideas to make my paper stronger. I took that “philosophy of writing” that Sommers had and punched it out with ENG110’s first learning outcome that I learned. I overcame that philosophy of how a basic student revises their paper. I now know how to strongly and effectively revise a free draft and I couldn’t be more comfortable and proud about it.
-Learning Outcome 2
In my second writing prompt I used many brainstorming strategies that I learned in this semester as well as revision strategies to end up with an essay I was pretty proud of. When I was writing this essay and revising it, not only did I use ENG110 Learning Outcome 1, but also 2 as well. Using the “quote sandwich” techniques that I learned in class really helped me while I was writing my body paragraphs, trying to give proof towards my evidence and explain my quotes that I used. I was also able to carefully choose the best quotes that would best support my arguments in my essay. I used my sources to make my arguments stronger and opinions stronger throughout my essay. For example, in my essay I argued the idea that art can actually be useful in a scientific world because it can assist in understand or learning an idea easier. I used quotes like from John Lehrer in this way “Lehrer explains that in the 1920’s scientist Neil Bohr, “was struggling to reimagine the structure of matter” and “When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.” Lehrer elaborated with saying, “Ordinary words couldn’t capture the data.”” You can see here in this example from my final draft, that I used my quotes as evidence to support my claim of art being able to help understand or learn an idea better. I was able to weave in those quotes so that they support my ideas in a way that is easy to understand. I used quotes throughout my entire paper to prove my argument as much as I could, going beyond just a “five quote minimal five paragraph essay”, and I think this really helped me make this paper turn out so well.
-Learning Outcome 5 and 6
I find that when I was writing my second prompt, I matured from how I went about editing my paper the first time. In class we were given many tools such as The Little Seagull hand book that really went a long way in helping with MLA formatting. At the end of my paper I was able to use this and cite the majority of my work correctly in my writing and at the end of it in my works cited page. For example I was able to go into my Little Seagull handbook and look up how to site and essay that was in a magazine since that’s where we were reading John Lehrer’s essay from. Using other strategies that I learned about revising in class I was able to polish my paper quite well and rid of sentence fragments or grammar errors. For example, when revising this paper one technique to revise that I used was have someone else read my paper and they were able to catch some sentences didn’t sound quite right that I didn’t catch when I read it. For example in my rough draft, I had this sentence “The fact that art is so extremely flexible, no one feels left out, anyone is capable of doing it.”. My peer advised me to try to re-word it, that it sounded odd. In my revision I was able to change it to, “Art is so extremely flexible, anyone is capable of doing it, therefore no one feels left out.” making it sound much smoother. Other small revisions like these and a well done job in source citing also helped in my paper turning out well.
-Learning Outcome 4
During this course I had multiple experiences with peer reviewing. When I first started the course, peer reviewing to me was merely skimming a peer’s paper and looking for spelling errors and sentence fragments. Now at the end of the course, I have a much better understanding of how to give a great peer review. I learned to thoroughly read a paper through looking for errors that have to do more with the writing than just the sentence fragments, or “Local Errors”. I was able to give comments on my peer’s paper that had to do with also editing ideas, evidence, and organization all along with the local errors. For example, you can read my 5th comment pertaining to “ideas” and see that I told my peer about how they put their opinion into the paper smoothly helping them to connect their ideas. You can see in my 7th comment pertaining to “evidence” I told my peer that they are supporting their evidence quite well, making it easier for the reader to understand the main arguments. You can see in my 15th comment pertaining to “organization” I advised my peer to reword their sentence, add more to it to help the reader better understand what they are trying to say. You can see in my 14th comment pertaining to “local feedback”, I just tell my peer that there is a sentence fragment, and the wording doesn’t sound quite right. I really was able to go into depth in this peer review after learning how to really peer review in this course, going above and beyond “local feedback” and really going in depth in helping my peer out in revision. Instead of skimming a peers paper like I had learned in the past, I have learned to read thoroughly with eyes wide open catching detail errors with proper peer review.
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