Last Blog/Final Reflection (#15)

Of the four goals (revise my papers better, use more educational/college vocabulary, not to make common mistakes and to not repeat myself) I had in the beginning of the semester, I believed that I somewhat achieved them. With revising my papers better, I say I have somewhat achieved it because I still don't find mistakes in my papers when I revise that my professor and tutor finds, but I have began looking at things in my papers that needs to be reworded or that doesn't belong in my paper. With the usage of more educational/college vocabulary, I haven't achieved that goal. I still use common vocabulary in my papers to express my ideas. I do look up synonyms for some of my words if I use a particular word many times in my papers, but that's all. I don't use college vocabulary on my own. With not to make common mistakes, I somewhat again achieved it because I do see my mistakes when I revise my papers most of the time, but still, I do sometimes have fragments and/or run-on sentences in my papers. With my last goal, I haven't achieved it because I still do find myself repeating myself a lot in my papers. My professor has commented that some of the items in my papers are repetitive and I do need to change that.

I wouldn't change in anyway my goals because my goals all relate to college level writing. Each of my goals are items that many people who can do college level writing have a good grasp on, while I don't. When I get into higher level classes, I need to make sure that I have a good grasp on these because my professors think that all students know these and if I don't know them, I will not do as well as I should be in those classes. So no, I wouldn't change my goals because my goals relate to me getting better at college level writing and in some form or another, also relate to college level writing as well.

I really don't have an outline on how I am going to continue growing as a writer, but I do know the first step in that outline, which is to take writing II in the fall. I am going to start my journey with Writing II because it is a class that helps you with writing a research paper, which I know in the future I will be ask to write for some of my classes. Also with what I want to do with my life, I know I will need to be able to write a research paper. The strengths I want to continue working on are my organization skill, improving my rhetorical knowledge, and improving my strength in writing argument papers. I want to continue working on my strengths because I know that everyone can use more help even on the things that they are  good in. I want to make sure that my strengths don't become worse and that I will never have to worry about these affecting my papers. The weaknesses I want to work on are sentence structure and grammar. I need to work on these two items because they are my weakest aspects with writing. These two aspects also make me to get lower grades on my papers than I should because my papers are always filled with great ideas, is organize very well and they flow as well, but with my sentence structure and grammar, my paragraphs become confusing to my audience and I also repeat myself, which undermines my organizational skill and ideas.

Revision plans

For my portfolio, I decided to revise my argument analysis paper. The strengths of my argument analysis paper were that I had a lot of good ideas and different views on the argument I was analyzing and my paper was organized in a way that wasn't confusing to my audience. The weaknesses of my argument analysis paper were that I didn't have a strong thesis, which made me be general in some areas of my paper and not connect back to my thesis and I lacked focus in parts of my paper as well, which as a reason, I became repetitive.

To effectively revise my essay, the first thing I am going to do is strengthen my thesis so that it includes everything that I am going to talk about in my essay. With my thesis being stronger, I am going to better focusing my ideas and views around my thesis and make sure that all of my ideas connect back to my thesis. I will also ask myself after working on my thesis if everything that I have in my paper is necessity for it and if not, I would delete it. In addition, I will pay attention to see if the way I have organize my paper is the best way to organize it or if I should change it.

I will also make sure that all of my ideas relate to the analysis of the argument I am doing. I will delete the ideas that don't relate at all as well as deleting the sentences that are repetitive. I will delete the sentences that are repetitive because they make my paper longer than it is needed and why should I repeat stuff when it isn't needed. With that I have a lot of good ideas in my paper, I will also see if there are any more ideas that I come add to my paper which will either support my claim against the argument I am analyzing or ideas that the author didn't think about. Lastly, I will add more quotes and evidence from the article so that what I am trying to say is stated clearer to my audience and it will make my paper be focus more on to my thesis as well.

Analyzing Arguments

• I analyzed the article "Should the Obama Generation Drop out". In the essay, the writer used a different approach at appealing to his audience and connecting with them. The writer called his audience "stupid" and "dumb" and he called himself "stupid" and "dumb" as well. By doing this, the writer thought that he would connect with his audience because he is saying that all of us are too dumb for college. This in the end weakens his argument because his target audience are college students, employers and politicians, people who have already completed college or are going to, so calling them stupid wouldn't help you with your cause. This taught me how I try to connect to my audience and appeal to them can affect how they can look at me and how I can push them away if I don't use the right approach. Because of this, I will be conscious of choosing how I will appeal to and connect with my target audience.
• Another thing I saw from analyzing the article was how the writer used evidence to support his ideas. The writer used few facts to support his ideas and made most of his evidence base on the conclusions he had made about his audience. However, the way the writer used his evidence crushed his argument by making him seem like he didn't really knew what he was talking about and he seemed like he didn't really care about what he was writing about. This taught me how I need a balance of both emotional and plausible evidence to support my ideas and make skeptical readers to agree with me or to change their views on my topic. I will make sure to have personal experience appeal, emotional appeal and plausible evidence to backup my ideas and to let my audience know that I know what I am talking about as well.
• Lastly, the writer of the article that I analyzed used a formal/serious tone in an attempt to build a connection with his readers and to let them know that he is knowledge about the topic he is writing about. The tone he used also gives off that he is serious about what he is writing about and that he wants to change people's minds on how liberal art education show be views as. This tone does help the writer to make his ideas get across his audience, but at the end, it goes against how he appeal to his audience and the few facts he uses in his article. So his tone, appeal and lack of facts goes against each other, which as a result, makes his ideas and argument weak and the writer doesn't seem credible. This taught me that my tone needs to be match the way I want to connect with my audience and my appeal as well. I will make sure that everything I do in my paper connects with each other and that my readers view me as a credible writer and as a person who is knowledge about what he is writing about.

Evidence (Ethos,Pathos, Logos)

Thesis: Most college students should have a job while in college because they become more independent and learn important skills they will need in the future.

• My strongest evidence is the claim of that college students who have a job while taking classes learn important skills like time-management and social skills because once a student has a job and have school, they need to balance their time to make sure they can complete their assignments, have time to study for exams and still be free to work as well. This is strong evidence because everyone knows that most students, especially college students don't have the time management skill they need for school. Most students like to goof off and procrastinate on their schoolwork and once they have a job, they won't have the amount of free time as they did before and they will be force to complete their assignments earlier and not to procrastinate as much. Lastly, once they have a job, students will begin developing social skill like talking to someone, working in a group and listen to directions because they will need to be able to work in a group, listen to their manager and need to be able to talk to a customer. These social skills can be transfer to college life and in school in general because in school, students will be working in group, will need to talk to their professors properly and students will need to be able to follow directions. Because this is my strongest evidence, I will probably mention it in the beginning of my paper and reinforce it through my paper.
  
• My weakest evidence is my rebuttal to that college students who have a job while taking classes will be more focus on making money rather than on their grades and classes. I will argue that it is true that students will feel like they are making a lot of money, but the money they are making now doesn't equal to the amount of money they could be making with a college education. This is my weakest evidence because I feel like it doesn't support my argument as well as I would like it to. Also college students, who are my target audience, love it when they have money because they can buy stuff that they want and they can be independent of asking their parents for money.What I would do to strengthen my rebuttal is that I would mention my own personal experience with having a job while in high school to gain trust with my audience. Also I could find another rebuttal to support my claim and my first rebuttal to make it stronger. Lastly, I would try to show how this counterargument is only successful if you are looking at students in general, but I am not. I am saying that there are some students who wouldn't be able to work and be in school, while they are other that can like myself.

Patterns of Error

1) I need to be more concise: In my writing, I tend to be more wordy than is necessity to complete a writing assignment, in particular,  I tend to repeat some of my ideas throughout my writing, which causes my papers to be longer than needed. By wordy, I mean that I typically use more words and sentences to explain my ideas than is needed and this has an effect on the readers by that they get confuse on what I trying to saying in my paper. Also I tend to repeat myself a lot in my papers, which also confuses the readers and doesn't allow my paper to flow. I know this is very difficult for me to pay attention to and to fix because I do this a lot in my papers, but when I do revisions on my papers, I need to pay closer attention to what I am saying in my papers so as to make sure I am not repeating myself and I am not using more words to explain my ideas than is needed.

2) I need to organize my ideas better: As stated before, my papers sometimes aren't organize as well as I want them to be. This is because I either repeat my ideas several times in my paper or that I didn't put key important ideas in the beginning of my paper and the non-important ideas at the end. By repeating, I mean that I repeat ideas I have stated before in other body paragraphs in paragraphs that don't relate to them, which confuses the readers by that there are multiple ideas in one paragraph. Also, sometimes I don't organize my paper the best way. I state the less important ideas first and the more important last or I don't put the most important idea right in the middle of my paper and the readers wouldn't understand what I am trying to say. To fix this, I need to make sure that the most important ideas are place right in the middle of my paper and my ideas goes from most important to less important. Also I need to pay attention to what I am writing in my paragraphs so that I am not repeating myself.

3) I need to work on basic writing skills: By this, I mean sentence structures, noun-adjective match, fragment or run-on sentence and others. By my final draft, these problems are mostly fixed, but still there are some that I don't see that make it to my final draft. I typically don't have fragments in my paper, but I do sometimes have run-on or comma splices. I also mixes up the noun-adjective relationship. I sometimes use singular adjective for plural nouns or vice versa. The effects of this is that the readers will become confuse because they don't know who I am talking about. They also will think that I am not a good writer because I have fragments, run-on or comma splices in my paper and that I can't do revisions on my paper. The solution to this is again paying more attention to what I am writing. Using Microsoft word, I won't have problems with fragments and noun-adjective relationship because they are flagged. I just need to review basic writing skills in general because I feel that is my biggest problem when I write in general and  if I don't have the basic writing skills down, I will always have problems when I write.

Peer Review

The effectiveness of the peer review we do in class is decent. In these sessions, the reviewers of my papers have given me ways of how to fix my paper, what are the strengths of my paper and its weakness. I have gotten feedback on everything from my papers. These sessions have helped me see the mistakes I don't see when I do my own revision on my paper. Lastly, these sessions have made me see that no matter how good or bad you think your writing or draft is, there is always something that is good and something that needs help. The only way I see that the peer review we do in the class can be improve is by if we could have two reviewers for our people because everyone pay attention to different things.

My strengths as a peer reviewer is that I always can see what the writer of the paper I am looking over is trying to do in their paper. I can see another point of view that the writer can talk about in their paper if they want to. I can see the best way of organizing someone's paper and I can see the small mistakes that someone can make in their own paper that I sometimes can't see in my own paper. Also I can spot run-on and fragment sentences.

My weaknesses as a peer reviewer is sometimes I put too much into something, that I over-think what the writer is trying to show or say in their paper. Also sometimes I am not as tough as I should be when I review someone's paper and lastly, when I am reviewing a paper, I sometimes talk to the writer about random stuff and don't fully pay attention to the person's paper.

My ideal peer review process is that I write my paper first before any one looks over it. After I have written a first draft, I do my only edits and after I finish the errors that I have seen in my paper, then someone can look over it. At this point, I would like at least two people to review my paper because the more people who can look over my paper, the better my paper can be because everyone pays attention to different things. After I fix the mistakes the reviewers have spotted, we should have another peer review session with different people to see how better or worse our papers have become. This is my ideal peer review process.

With the review process we have used so far in our class, I do find it helpful to have a peer review session in the early stages of the writing process because then you have time to make sure the way you are going with the paper is correct and you don't have to worry about wasting more time on the essay by way of redoing the whole thing compare to just changing a few sentences, paragraphs or the way the paper is organized. I find it better to have small groups because then you don't have a lot of people of telling you stuff and you can allow your reviewer more time to look over your paper. Large groups are good when you are first starting the writing process because then you can see how everyone is perceiving the essay prompt. I feel the amount of time we spend on peer review session is decent, but I would like another day or two so that everyone can have another peer review session with another student because I feel the more eyes you have looking over your paper, the better your paper can be.

Communication is Power (#9)

I know many people will write about whatever they want for this blog assignment, but I won't. I am not going to write about something, I am going to write a poem to show my topic. If we have the freedom to write about anything this time, we should also have the freedom to choose the way we write our blog as well.  So here i go.

Who said language equals power?

For the matter of fact,

Who said proper English equals power?

In this world, we all each have our own dilate, our own slang.

We each have our own accent.

Who said we need to speak and write proper English?

I can see how that view became,

But why?

Yes, if we all speak and write in the same language,

We can all communicate with each other,

But we communicate with one another before proper English,

Before any language.

We spoke by using our bodies, our faces, our expressions.

We could have communicated how we are feeling just by how we smile.

So who said proper English equals power?

I do agree that language equals power,

I disagree that we all need to speak and write proper English to have power.

We shouldn’t be afraid to speak, to express ourselves,

By way of any language we have.

So speak,

Tell people what is on your mind,

Show who you really are.

Don’t be afraid of people making fun of you

For how you speak or write.

Don’t go back to your shell,

For it is the people who do speak and write proper English that should be afraid.

They know that if we can communicate,

With our broken English,

With our simple English,

With our ethnic accent,

That we will then have power,

For proper English doesn’t equal power.

Even language doesn’t equal power.

What truly equals power is communication.

And that,

Is true power.

So let’s go out and show the world who really has the power.