Framing Letter Learning Outcome 1

During the revision process of the first paper I mostly just made easy local revises. Through listening to my peers suggestions I slowly added a couple of global revisions, however these were minimal for paper one. In high school, revision to me was just a proofread the day before something was due to look for simple capital letters, punctuation marks, and FANBOYS, which is now something that I do 15 minutes before handing in the paper as a final read through, not a whole revision process. Since then, as the months of English 110 have gone on, I have increased my usage of local revises but more so global comments to reshape a paper based off of how my own opinions connect with evidence of reliable sources on the topic.  

One major piece of writing development that I’ve learned throughout the course of English 110 is that it is okay to completely abandon a first draft, only taking significant pieces that you like. In the past week I have exhibited this understanding when responding to Jordan Sullivan’s Aha! Moment. In an email I said, “I’ve been thinking about the fact that you can date a first draft and dump it. You can date a second draft that has cutesy characteristics you like that are common with the first draft and you can dump it too. You can date the third draft and dump that too and even the so called final draft always has room for improvement. The point is that each draft helps you grow as a person and a writer. You don’t have to marry a first draft and I think this is one of the most powerful things for me to realize in both writing and life” (Jewell).

I tend to be an over planner when it comes time for papers and I think this has prohibited my creativity within my writing. I’ve always been afraid of leaving or revising the outline. There’s a reason I had a plan right? What I have since learned is that the course you start on does not have to be the one you finish on, meaning that it’s perfectly normal to follow global comments in switching paragraph order as well as switching the thesis of an essay as well. I have exhibited this in project 3 as my showcased significant writing project through the global comments from my peers to focus in on certain aspects of human behaviors. Between drafts, my order of paragraphs went from 1,2,3,4,5,6 to 1, a mix of 2 and 3, 6, a brand new middle then 4 and 5 together, and a brand new conclusion as well. Developmentally this ability to take my peers global comments regarding essay structure and theme shows that I’m willing to put in more effort into my writing for a more exciting approach and helping the reader understand my work.

 

Learning Outcome 2

 

My understanding of integrating sources into my work has immensely improved over the course of this English class. In Project 1 I didn’t fully understand how to introduce an author and their significance to my paper. I put in “hit and run quotes” and sometimes just picked quotes to fill the word count. Whereas, in Project 3 I was better able to integrate quotes into my own work through especially text-on-text citations. One such quote I have added into my own work was from David Foster Wallace in project 3 where I wrote, “we as humans don’t have a collective way to treat animals with full respect. Wallace speaks to this phenomenon as he states, ‘when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I haven’t succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient’ (Wallace 510). Wallace speaks to the underlying truth of humans wishing to live with high morals, yet inconsistently treating animals and ourselves” (Jewell). This quote of my own work with Wallace’s nested inside speaks to the troubled middle mentality of human behavior. Here I have exhibited my own relations to Wallace’s admittance that he too doesn’t believe his ethical system is quite up to par or as well developed as he wants it to be.

In addition, this directly relates to learning outcome 3 (seen below) about critical reading skills. As my critical reading skills have increased, I have better been able to see connections between sources such as the death podcast and David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster”. At the beginning of the assignment for project 3, never would I have imagined relating how humans act at funerals  to tasting seafood. Since then, I have been able to understand the text more, question the authors pions, and show how each opinion is juxtaposed with the addition of another source. Also, in high school I would write a five paragraph essay with one quote per each of the three body paragraphs and that would be a solid paper. Now, I know that the beauty of writing is that it is more important to have a conversation between my own thoughts and the connections between writers through integrating quotes throughout the piece. As my critical reading skills have gotten better, I’ve been able to draw parallels between texts as well as how they support my own opinions.

 

Framing Letter Learning Outcome 3

 

Critical reading is something I have never been strong at. Between falling asleep while reading SAT passages or missing crucial concepts from a biology textbook because I was sidetracked, critical reading is just not a strong suit for me. If I could even finish reading something without falling asleep or getting distracted, I surely never understood what the text meant because I never really interacted with the text. Susan Gilroy reflects on this in her piece “Interrogating Texts: 6 Reading Habits to Develop in Your First Year at Harvard,” from Harvard Library: Research Guides (1980). She suggests to, “make your reading thinking-intensive from start to finish” (Gilroy). I think this piece of advice is something that many freshmen college students would benefit from. It’s almost as if the text itself  isn’t as important as your interactions and understanding of it. Furthermore, what is more important is the conversation that arises from this thinking intensive process.

My reading skills have drastically improved throughout the course of English 110. At the beginning of January, my idea of annotations was underlining the topic sentence or an important word here and there and writing in my own comments on the side such as “ew” or “haha!”,  just writing down merely my initial reactions. Through the progression of learning objective reading three in the syllabus which states, “ employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking”, I have been able to see that reading and writing are more about conversation rather than thousands of daunting black words on a white page. This is seen in my progression of learning through annotating Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace. I first looked at the packet of paper the weekend of January 16th as a circling confusing text with the clear points, fearing for the course load ahead. My notes on the side included “ew”, “huh” and “wow”. Minimal comments and interactions with the text had led me to a lack of confidence and lack of understanding within the text itself. Then, when I came back to rereading it for project 3, around March 30th, my annotations were much more in detail. They included connections to other texts that we had read in the course. I wrote in notes saying “parallel to death podcast, people think is okay to have avoidance”. Not only did these connections help my understanding, they also helping my writing process when it came time for Project 3 looking for contextual evidence in my paper. I can now read a 10 paged article without falling asleep, and can not only understand it but challenge it and form my own opinions much better since the beginning of English 110.

 

Learning Outcome 4:

 

In previous sections of peer editing we all went for the simple local fixes. A so called helpful comment would be a quick comment about  the clarity of someone’s thesis. Going above and beyond as a peer reviewer would be saying a comment about MLA formatting. The simple sixes like “make a better thesis” or “you need a punctuation mark here” were most evident. During peer review round 3, my peers provided much more substantial feedback pertaining to global comments. These included the order of my paragraphs, main themes intertwined throughout, ordering of sources and much more. One of example of this is when Megan Morrison suggested to me to use more text-on-text evidence and even thought of a source that my sentence directly connected to. Christine Nelson also mentioned that I needed to provide more background information on authors for the sources I was using. These comments helped me grow much more as a writer.

Similarly, the peer feedback I have given has increased tremendously which has improved my own writing. I used go for the easy fixes like FANBOYS and comma use, and now I’ve been going more and more for logic of paragraph placing and how sources connect to each other.  Although some would say that giving feedback on someone else’s paper doesn’t directly impact your paper I highly disagree. When I found things to fix in my peers papers, I went back through my own paper with two or three extra read throughs to find similar shortcomings and places to improve my own work. In social situations, I tend to give my closest friends great advice yet I’m not the best at listening to others advice and listening to my own. Through writing, I have gotten much better at this by helping others which in turned helped me.

 

 

Learning Outcome 5

 

The significant writing project I have provided is Project 3 that I called Hide and Seek with Death.  This piece above my other two projects best shows my improved ability to cite sources using MLA guidelines. An example of this in on the middle of my third page where I introduce who Jessica Mitford is and then use a quote from her and include the author’s last name and page number. Before this project, I would struggle in not knowing simple things like page number before the author or if its an indirect quote to cite a source or not. My peer reviewers have immensely helped with this local revision in addressing these typical formatting errors as well as completely introducing sources. In this class, using what I’ve learned from They Say I Say about avoiding “hit and run” quotes has also helped. I now explain quotes and my overall use of sources much more in depth which helps the readers understanding of my paper as well as my credibility.