My view on Writing 101 (so far)

• In the beginning of this class, we were asked to talk about the reason(s) on why we took writing 101. I had two reasons, one being that this course is a requirement at NEIU and the second is that I need to better my writing skills in the fields of revisions, vocabulary/word choice, common mistakes and not repeating myself. Seven weeks into the semester, I feel that I have made some progress in some of my goals. I believe that I have improve my skill at reediting my paper without another person pointing out mistakes and not doing common mistakes. I feel like that I haven't improve the vocabulary/word choice in my essays and that I don't repeat myself in my papers. I feel this way by that in my first essay, I found many mistakes in my rough draft by myself and these two problems go with each other as well. I feel the way I do about the other two goals because they are dependent on me and me alone. I need to find/use other words to express the same meaning I am looking for and I need to pay attention to what I am writing because I typically repeat items in areas that I don't need to or to help me get on track with my paper but forget to delete it.

• I don't feel like there is any specific aspects of the class that has been particularly helpful for me as a writer. We haven't done a lot of writing in the class other than our essays to see if there is any aspects that is helpful for the students. I can say that when we went over the rules of comma splices, run-on sentences and how to write better sentences, it did help students understand why or how we make the mistakes we do. So if this is an aspect of the class that has been helpful at least for me, then the aspect of reviewing the common mistake has been helpful for me as a writer.

• If there is anything that I would change about the class is that I would like the professor to go over the format of the particular essays that we are going to write about in class. I had trouble writing my rough draft of the ad analysis paper because I didn't know the format of it. I used my textbook to gain ideas on how to write my paper but still, it didn't help me. I am the type of person who needs an outline for when I write a paper. Also I would change the fact that we don't have a lot of homework that can help students better their writing skill. If this class is suppose to help students better their writing skill, this class as of right now, isn't doing that. Those are the two most important things I would change about the class.

• My writing process has changed since the beginning of the semester. Before this class, my process has always started off with me writing an outline of my essay and the specific ideas I would talk about in my essay. Since the beginning of the semester, I have had trouble writing an outline for my essays and now I just write down what comes to mind, so that my mind can focus on the idea of the essay. other than this, my writing process is still the same. I keep on writing until I feel like I am done and then I fix some grammar and spelling mistakes. Next day, I do some major reedits to my paper and then I do a second draft. After the second draft, I would go my writing tutor and see what I can make better in my essay, what are the best aspects of my essay and to see if I did everything my professor wants me to do. After seeing my tutor, I make the edits that my tutor told me to do. By the time the essay is done, I have written at least four drafts of the paper.

• Overall, I do think that my writing has improved. I feel like I do focus on what I am trying to write about and if my audience will understand what I am trying to talk about. I also now pay attention to the word choice I use in my paper and that if I use any vivid description, I need to make sure it isn't cliched or overdramatic. Also, I have reach some of my goals that I have set out for this class and the ones I haven't reach, I just need more help and hopefully by the end of the semester, I will reach all of my goals. Another thing is that I now know that I can write a paper without having an outline of it done beforehand, but I would like to have an outline done beforehand because it helps me keep my though on track and not go off topic. 

Rhetorical Situations

• Purpose: The differences between the purpose of a literacy narrative and an ad analysis paper are that in a literacy narrative paper, you are either sharing a past memory or a learning experience and the significance of the event and how it has affected you. The purpose of an ad analysis is to analyze an ad and to either demonstrate that you understand the ad, to persuade readers that the ad shows a certain point or use the ad as a way to make some other point like how women were viewed in the 1920s and now or how views have changed throughout time. 

The only similarity between the two types of papers is that you have to let the readers of your paper know why you are doing what you are doing for the paper.

• Audience: The differences between the audience of the two papers is that for a literacy narrative paper, you need to know if your audience would have had similar experiences like yours, would the stories be similar, how much explaining of things do you need for your audience, would your audience get the meaning/significance of the memory and how much about your own personal life are you willing to share. For an ad analysis, you need to know if your audience has ever read or seen the ad you are analyzing or know of the ad you are analyzing and how much detail you need to put in your paper like do you need to put the whole ad or a pic of the ad in your paper or just pieces of it. 

The similarity between the two is that you need to decide on the amount of detail you need to put in your paper either on the amount of personal detail from your life to the amount of detail from your ad.

• Tone: The tone of a literacy narrative paper can be affectionate, neutral, critical, sincere, serious, humorously detached, self-critical, self-effacing, anything you want. It is your paper. You can have a serious tone paper but make some funny comments in between. As long as the tone matches what you want the paper to have, that the tone matches the meaning behind the paper, you can have any tone you want. The tone of an ad analysis paper can be critical, serious, self-critical, neutral, etc. The tone for this type of paper in someway has to be critical because you are analyzing a paper in great detail, in such a way that other people don't think of it. 

The similarity between the two is that both papers can have a critical tone but there are critical in different ways. In the narrative paper, you are critical about your memory and its effects on you while in the analysis paper, you are critical on how the ad was made, how it gets people's attention and you have to read between the lines or images in the ad.

• Genre: The genre of literacy narratives includes everything I have said before. It includes the different purposes, the different things a writer can do for his/her audience, and have any tone the writer wants. The genre of literacy narratives have key features. These features are: a well-told story, have vivid detail in it and have some indication of the narrative's significance. 

For the ad analysis genre, the key features are: the paper includes a summary of the text and/or a picture of the text, the papers are attention to the context, there is a clear interpretation or judgement in the paper and there is reasonable support for your conclusions. Also the genre includes everything else that I talked about before with the audience, purpose and tone.

The different rhetorical situation can affect your choices you make when writing your paper by way of how you start your paper, how you end it, how much detail you put into it, even your topic that you are writing about. Everything you do for writing a paper can be changed depending on what you choose for the different rhetorical situations and what you want to do for them as well. Rhetorical situations have a lot of influence on people's papers.

What Makes a Good ad?

Purpose: the purpose of the ad is get more women to use Swiffer Dust & Shine with Febreze. If you use Swiffer Dust & Shine to clean your house, your house will shine and be the envy of your friends and your house will smell nice as well. That if you use Swiffer, you will love to clean your house again because your house will shine and smell good. You can see this by that the woman looks happy with her big white smile, that cleaning her house isn't a challenge now, that she can do two things at one time.

Audience: Just by looking at this ad, you can tell that the audience for this ad is women because it is typically the woman or housewife that cleans the house. There are some men that do clean the house but it is typically the woman in a relationship that cleans the house and if she does this, she is a housewife. So the ad is made for married women who are housewife and who clean up the house. There isn't a lot of text in the ad but with the amount it does have, the company use specify words to grab the attention of their audience.

Genre: This ad is like all of the other house cleaning ad in the world. These ads try to grab the attention of housewives and tell them that Swiffer or Lemon pledge is the produce a woman should use to clean their house. All of these ads show a woman using a product and how that using this product, it makes cleaning the house easier and better. Also these types of ads also try to separate their products from the competition, to make women choose their products because it does two jobs at once, your house will be the envy of your friends, etc. There is typically no difference between house cleaning ads.

Tone: Due to the ad having very little text, the advertisers wanted their product to show why it is the best in the business. They show why their product is good. They don't tell why their product is good with text or stats. That house cleaning might be a chore but if you have the right product, it wouldn't be. It could be fun cleaning your house. The advertisers try to make cleaning one's house fun.

The Effects of Revising a Paper

The specific difference between my rough draft and what will be my final draft is that my final draft flows much better compare to my rough draft. My rough draft did somewhat of its job. It told a story and allow the readers of it to paint a picture through the words I used, but at several points, it didn't flow. At these points, the readers would have to reread the sentences to make sure they got my point correctly. My rough draft was a little bit messy at these points and the sentences didn't paint the correct picture I wanted the readers to have as well. My final draft will flow much better, will hopefully be non-messy and paint the correct pictures for the readers.

Where I made or going to make major revisions in my paper is with the content, focus, sentence structure, organization, and word choice. I made revisions in these areas and not in others because these were the areas where I could have made better decisions before and they needed a little bit more help as well. With organization and sentence structure, I moved sentences around to where they could fit better or I removed sentences that weren't important or needed for my paper. Also I used different lengths for my sentences as well. I added more content/detail to areas where the readers would need more and remove some in areas where the readers didn't as much. With word choice, I replace passive verbs and words with active or descriptive verbs and words. Lastly, I changed the focus of my conclusion and paragraph about the project so they could fit better with my paper and to be less messy.

After revising my paper, I was able to identify my own pattern of errors, but I was also able to identify my errors before writing this paper. As a writer, I know that I use passive verbs when I should have used active verbs. I sometimes don't like using commas in my sentence which then makes those sentences into run-on sentences. Also I make small grammar errors that I can't see until someone else points them out for me. Lastly, I either repeat stuff or add "fluff"to my papers which makes them longer than is need. Also "fluff" is stuff that is either non-important or isn't need in the paper.

What led me to the revisions that I made in my paper was me rereading my own paper and having my development writing professor and TRIO writing tutor look over my paper. My former professor helped me to make the revisions I did because she knows how I write and knows my weakness. She lead me to the changes to the word choice in my paper, the change in content, organization and sentence structure. My TRIO writing tutor helped me to make my revisions by pointing out minimum grammar and sentence structure errors that I didn't see and by telling me areas where I could have made better decisions either by word choice, content or showing the significance of my essay by way of foreshadow. Rereading my paper to myself didn't help me as much as someone else reading my paper but I did see some minimum errors I had in my paper.

The strongest aspect in my paper is that I do tell a story and give vivid description. I start my paper right in action. If someone read my paper, that person can follow the story from beginning to end. Also I give vivid description on the difficulty a poetry project gave me and how it helped me to become the writer I am right now and how it helped me to express my feelings. I also give vivid description into how I felt about the project and how I felt with life and the hardships I have dealt with in my life. The weakest aspect in my paper is my conclusion. The conclusion is my weakest aspect because I don't know how to end my paper. I want my conclusion to show and not tell the significance of how a poetry project has affected me and my life but it seems like I am telling it and not showing it. My tutor told me to use poetry in my conclusion to show the significance but I don't know. Hopefully by the time this paper is due, I will find out how to end my paper and make my conclusion do what I want it to do.