writing skills

I believe that my writing skills have improved. I have a much better understanding of citations, then I did when this class began. Before this class I had never done personal research. I never got out there and asked people questions for a paper. I feel that, overall, I am leaving this class with a better understanding of how to write a college paper. I believe this will help me in many of my future classes.

4th essay

Something that I have struggled with this essay, has been the citations. I am still new to this process, so I have a hard time knowing how to do the in-text citation. I think that is what it is called. I hope that after this essay I have a better understanding and am able to move on to my next english class without this difficulty. Luckily the research part was easy.

turnitin.com

At first I did not like the idea of using a website to turn in my homework. Although part of my concern was my inability to access the site from my home computer. Now that my computer is working better and I am able to easily gain access to the site and I like it. It was helpful for me, since I was sick the week before the draft of a paper was due and using this site made it easy for me to still turn in my assignment. And allow me to take advantage of the e-conference this week and be able to get a little extra sleep on Monday morning.

My family

In my family, writing and literacy are not very important. My grandma has only about an eighth grade education level. We are still able to write to each other. Both of my parents have just a high school education. They are all very proud of me for continuing my education. Not many members of my family have gone to college. It does make it hard though, I don't have many family members that I can turn to for help.

Summary and response

I really did not expect to do that well on the summary and response essay. I was very glad to see that I had received a decent grade on the paper. I had a hard time with writing this paper, but it looks like my hard work did pay off. Hopefully I will be able to repeat the performance with this new paper that we have been assigned. I am strruggling to find the material that I need. I am just trying to be patient and I will find what I need.

IMRD

This was my first time writing a paper like this. The research part took a little longer then I had expected it to, but I think my overall paper came together pretty good. I made sure to pick a topic that I would really be interested in, I think that helped to push me a little more on this paper. I really did want to know what people thought about my topic.I also think this paper was a little easier to write because of the structure of it. It was nice to have a specific layout for writing a paper, and an example in the book.

another reflection

Before I had mentioned that starting a paper was hard for me. When given the freedom to write about anything that I want to I feel that it is so much easier. Some people feel that given a more structured paper is easier to write, I do not agree. I have really struggled with this IMRD paper, it is very specific on what needs to be done. I do feel more confident though, now that my research is done and I have begun writing the actual paper.

Struggles

The main struggle that I have had so far was doing the research. I had to rely on my friends, through Facebook, to get the answers that I needed. I really appreciate the friends that helped me, but I have well over 100 friends on Facebook and only maybe a dozen or so actually responded. I was a little let down, and will have to write a paper using a small research base.

Papers of my past

I have never had to write a paper like the one that we are currently assigned. This IMRD is very hard to do. It may not seem so bad if I had more time to work on it. I still need to do more research. I feel very rushed with this assignment. I hope that I am able to obtain a decent grade on this, even though I have rushed through this assignment.

Reflection

I really struggled with this paper. I am not very good with writing a summary, and I have never done a response like this. I hope that I did well for not having much experience with this style of writing. I am also unsure of my citations. I hope that I have done them in the proper MLA format. I believe that I did the work cited right I am not sure of the citations within my paper though.

Citations

I have never really used MLA citation before now. But after going over how to do it in class and the cheat sheets that we have in the keyes book, I really don't see me having a problem doing this. The citation for this class was pretty basic, I just used a book from another class. In the future it may be a little more difficult, when you have multiple citations or are lacking some of the information needed.

Summary struggles

I have never been very good at writing summaries. I usually add too much information. I really hope that I am able to write a good summary for our current assignment. I usually have a problem picking out what is important info and what is not. I think that part of the problem is that I do not have much experience with it. Maybe after I do this many times I will have it down. I hope that I get some good feedback in my peer groups to help me with this problem.

My writing challenge

I usually have a hard time starting a paper. It usually depends on what I am writing about. When I get to write about my own experiences it seems a little easier to get started. Like the essay that we turned in for this class was easier to get started because I just had to think back and start writing. Maybe that is why I like to write about myself rather then other topics. Although part of that is, I don't like to have to do research either.

Reflection

Something I continued to struggle with in this essay was the ending, and I plan to continue working on this. That is exactly what I did. I worked on it for most of the weekend. Tweaking the end this way and that. I hope that the changes I have made work for the end of my narrative. I generally find it difficult to end a paper. I don't want to end it too soon or drag it out and say too much.

Something I tried for the first time in this essay was the peer review, and here's how I think it went, I think that this was helpful. It was nice to have someone else read my paper and give me some suggestions on changes that I could make. I did use some of the ideas that my peer group gave me.

Something I learned about myself as a writer during this unit is that I can actually write a good paper. At least that is what I am hoping that my grade shows. I know that I still need work when it comes to writing a paper but I do feel that I am getting better.

revisions

In my first semester at Delta, I enrolled in an english class. Throughout the semester, we wrote many papers over the same topic. The good thing is that we were able to choose our topic. I spoke with some friends to bounce ideas off and see what they thought. Also to see if they could give me input on something that I might find interesting enough to continue writing about. Eventually I decided to write about one of my favorite book series. By the end I was still tired of writing about it. Although I ended up having to write about the author insead of the books themselves.

1st Blog

As I once again dive head first into a full time student schedule, I am reminded of how stressful and time consuming it can be. I enjoy reading in my free time, if I can find any. When I read I have no due dates, no arguments with my boyfriend, no dishes that need to be done. I am able to escape into the world of make believe.


Over the summer I was able to take some time off and do some reading. Though I told myself I would never, I found myself mesmerized by the Twilight saga. It was very easy to forget all troubles and just keep reading. Especially when reading books about a teenager that falls in love with a vampire and finds out that her best friend is a werewolf. Not to mention the crazy love triangle that comes out through it. I was especially surprised to find out that my brother has read all of the books in the saga. I found that it was wrong of me to think that these were books written only for young girls.

Although, when you look at the importance of reading and writing, I could not imagine our world without them. There would be no newspapers, email, internet or even text books. Not that I enjoy reading text books, but they do have a lot of very helpful information. Without them I do not know how we would learn or what our society would be like.

Reading and writing are some of the basics to the foundation of our entire learning experience. I can remember as a child how excited I was when I was finally able to write my own name. Especially my last name, that took a little longer. It was a very proud accomplishment. Now I get to see the same thing happen with my nieces and my boyfriends’ daughter.