Learning Log
Writing as a recursive process
Every essay I write I start off with a brainstorm of notes, for this essay I wrote down everything I knew about abusive relationships and I was able to start my rough draft.
First draft: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OhZOEFdiNXJeSwgHAH2zffbUNEkAHEujJnY1hgPTqv0/edit
The essay at the start was very rough, I brought it to my tutor and we went over it together. She helped me discover the faults in it to clean it up and make it much better. In class, my essay was read out loud to the class so I received a lot of feedback from everyone. I took everyones comments from all the papers, and wrote them down on one copy, as shown below.
I did not put in every comment, just the ones that were helpful and by putting them in one place it was much easier to fix my essay. Having the entire class look over my essay was great, I got feedback from people that I would not normally get it from. There were many local errors in the first draft that were brought to my attention thanks to the workshops. Also helped me figure what in my essay should be changed. I have a problem with wording, I tend to have a lot of awkward sentences so that helped me clean it up.
Final Draft: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rIHKP0tjEDi05Pklt7POv1ZeH525v8jjQmgCstEfS_Q/edit
I felt a lot better with this essay then the one before. My points were a lot stronger, and were backed up with good evidence. I changed the introduction paragraph, in the beginning it led right into a quote and there was no topic sentence. Throughout my essay I found it a problem that there were no topic sentences. So, from the rough draft to final I added in topic sentences to strengthen the paragraphs.
Integrating your ideas with the ideas of others
Adding quotes and other ideas into an essay makes the paper stronger and more well written. I have a bad habitat of forgetting to add quotes in and need to work on adding in quotations to make my papers stronger. I typically use the quotation sandwich technique when quoting in my essays. “Using the idea of social cohesion, which Epstein defines it in “AIDS, Inc.” as, “the tendency of people to talk openly with one another and form trusted relationships” (116). The idea of social cohesion could not only can abuse victims benefit, but potentially could help prevent someone become an abuser.” This is a quote from my essay in which I used the quotation sandwich, I told where the quote was coming from, stated it properly, and then referred it to my own work. From the first essay to now, I have improved in integrating my ideas to others, I had much more evidence in this essay then the previous. In this essay I included a naysayer, which helped improve my argument and make it stronger.
Active, critical reading
Making sure you comprehend what you are reading is key to writing a strong paper. Actively highlighting, underlining, and writing notes are all great skills of critical reading. As I read I make sure to highlight and take notes as a go so I can easily find the important information when it comes time to write an essay.
In the picture above is the AIDS Inc. article and as I was reading I would highlight and fascinating information and write down summaries on the side to know what each paragraph was about. This way when looking back into my articles all my information is easier to find. However, I need to work on relating this information back into my paper. Taking notes and writing blogs in class helps when it comes to the essay. Instead of going in cold, I have a great understanding of the topic, and have ideas to bounce off of. My third paragraph was taken right from a blog, so writing the blogs ahead of time is a great tool to se
Critiquing your own ideas and others’ work
The editing process is crucial, no one can write a perfect essay on the first try. With each essay comes an editing process, from editing your own work to having others look your essay over and even you are editing their work. I am not great at editing other people’s papers and need to get better at it. I have a problem of second guessing myself and thinking that I am wrong. I need to become more confident in myself as an editor in order to help my peers. I find myself only giving local feedback and need to work on the global feedback to help strengthen my partners paper. I have grown as a peer editior, I go further than just saying the local mistakes. In Ally Poulins essay, https://docs.google.com/document/d/17TEQQG2XCG1GKL4eZBYAW1PPwPfRRgaNOlChhv56_bU/edit, I commented an idea that would help make her essay much stronger. By commenting ideas and not only local problems I can help make someone’s essay much stronger.
Before, I used generic editing comments that should have more detail to better help the person whose paper I was editing.
I was mainly focusing on getting the work done and not focusing on how making the comments helpful. I still can improve to be a better peer editor, by adding more comments on what to add/take out.
Using MLA citation
Making sure you properly cite your sources is key in every paper, using other people’s ideas is great but you just got to make sure you cite your sources. As you will be able to see, my quoting in my first draft and final draft (links above) has slightly improved. However, there was some awkward quote integrations that my professor brought to my attention. In the second paragraph on the third page, I did not do a good job of integrating my ideas with the quote. The quote was somewhat random in my essay, it could have been a great point if I related it back better. I am strong when it comes to MLA citation and works cited, I have spent so much time working on this throughout high school. I do not think there is too much more room for me to grow, as I know this topic very well.
Managing individual error patterns
Reading over your essay can help get rid of errors but as you read through it you may find yourself making the same mistakes. I have an issue of using run on sentences in my essay by trying to avoid fragments. Throughout my essay I found myself using comma splices, I have a problem with doing so. I changed some, but didn’t catch them all, so some were left in my final essay. In my rough draft one sentence that was rather confusing was, “Being able to talk about racism, and get have it to be a social understanding that it is bad is what will help end racism.” I fixed the wording, just by getting rid of the extra words for my final essay. I also have a problem with awkward wording in my essays, once I read through the first draft I typically catch onto it and change it.
