Elizabeth's Site

Learning Outcome 1:

For the significant writing project I chose the essay from prompt 3 because I felt that it best represented my approach to revision from learning outcome 1. Learning outcome 1 states that I should be able to demonstrate the ability to approach writing as a recursive process that requires substantial revision of drafts for content, organization, and clarity and well as local revision. Before taking English 110 I thought of the revision process as a process for going through the sentences and making sure they made sense and that I used the right words. This is similar to how Nancy Sommers describes how students go about the revision process, “by rewording their sentences to avoid the lexical repetition, the students solve the immediate problem…” For this essay from prompt three I made an outline of what I wanted to say and what evidence I wanted to use to support those claims. Then I had my peers review my first draft so I knew what I could work on regarding the organization, content, and clarity on my paper. After peer review I focused on the organization of my claims so I could decide what I wanted to change about my paper. Finally I revised that smaller more local errors within my paper. This course taught me how to see revision as a recursive process and how to figure out what “my essay as a whole needs for form, balance, rhythm, or communication”(Sommers). I was unable to think about the big picture when revising and this English 110  course gave me the tools I needed to figure out what to change and work on in my first draft of a paper.

Learning Outcome 2:

The final draft of the significant writing project that I chose is also from prompt 3 and demonstrates my ability to use sources as evidence from learning outcome 2. Learning outcome 2 states that I should be able to integrate my ideas with those of others using summary, paraphrase, quotation, analysis and synthesis of sources. Throughout this essay for the writing prompt 3 I was able to chose evidence that accurately supported my claims and then explain how that evidence related to the claims I was making. One way that I was able to do this was by making an outline of my paper before actually writing a first draft. I looked at the main points of the texts that I was using, came up with what I wanted to say about those texts relating to the prompt, and then went through the texts to find quotations that supported my claims. When writing my first draft I focused more on the integration of the quotations I wanted to use and then used analysis and synthesis to make my points clear. An example of how I analyzed evidence is from page three of my essay in the ending of the fourth paragraph when I explained the advantage of using the internet to communicate following a quote from Bill Wasik. “Students are able to use this to their advantage to learn more about an interesting topic or tell people about their own research or experiment.” (page 3). After having my paper peer reviewed I went back through my paper and tried to add more summary and paraphrase of the texts and authors before introducing them. This paper shows how I have learned how to use sources as evidence and that I am able to select, integrate, and explain quotations.

Learning Outcomes 5 and 6:

The significant writing project that I chose from writing prompt three also shows how I am able to cite sources using MLA format from the learning outcomes 5 and 6. Learning outcome 5 states that I should be able to document my work using appropriate MLA convention and learning outcome 6 says that I should be able to control sentence-level error. This English 110 course has taught me how to properly cite my sources using in-text citations and a works cited page. I included a works cited page to the end of my paper from writing prompt three and one example of how I used in-text citations is on page 2 of my paper. I included the page number of the quotation that I used, but not the last name of the author because I had already named which author I was quoting from in the preceding sentence. Overall, this course taught me the correct way to cite my sources and focus on local revision after making global revisions.

Learning Outcome 4:

Marked First Draft of a Peer’s Paper

Above is a link to the mark first draft of one of peer’s papers. This paper includes comments from myself and my instructor, Professor Emerson. The comments that I have made are highlighted in purple. This peer review example is one of three that we had to complete in English 110. I chose this paper for my four-part framing letter because I feel that it is the best representation of what I have learned from the learning outcome number 4. Learning outcome 4 states that I should be able to critique my own and other’s work by emphasizing global revision  early in the writing process and local revision later in the process. In this peer review I gave one of my classmates suggestions for how to revise the ideas, evidence, and organization of her paper. In the ninth comment I suggested that she should move a sentence to the beginning of the paragraph. “By moving this to the beginning, the information you already have in the beginning will become more like analysis for the quote,” (page 1). Another suggestion I made was in the thirteenth comment I made about evidence. This peer’s paper was lacking some quotes and I suggested that she could add a quote from one of the texts we used in class, “you could add a quote here from Anderson’s text about how focus and attention is a voluntary thing,” (page 2). Using a quote from this text would make her claim better supported and stronger overall. Practicing peer review made me more comfortable asking questions about my own work and helped me see some of the ways I could make my writing stronger by changing the organization, adding evidence, and having clear ideas and claims.

IHS Essay

The link above is to a short essay I wrote in my First Year Experience Interprofessional Health Science class this semester.  In class we had been reading a book called This I Believe edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman, which was a collection of short stories or essays about what people believe in. For this assignment we had to write an essay about something that we strongly believed in. This essay demonstrates a few of the things I have learned in English 110. I approached this essay with the recursive writing process from learning outcome number 1 in mind. I wrote a first draft and then came back to it the next day and read it over to make revisions. I reorganized the structure of this essay by moving some of the points I made at the end of the essay into the first paragraph. I also broke up the first paragraph and used a form of a naysayer paragraph. After revising the organization of my essay I read it over again to proofread for local revision. I was also able to use what I have learned from learning outcome number 3 by keeping in mind what I read in the book, This I Believe during class. I needed to employ techniques of active and critical reading and keep the structure of the This I Believe essays in mind when writing my own version of a This I Believe essay. I was also able to use the learning outcomes 5 and 6 by being able to control sentence-level errors by using the techniques learned from the presentations about grammar, punctuation, and spelling given during English 110.

I was also able to avoid some of the things that make bad writing bad that are talked about in Steven Pinker’s essay, “Why Academics Stink at Writing” because I wrote this essay after reading the article. I avoided using “metadiscourse” by not talking about what I was going to be talking about in the essay. Pinker says that “the art of classic prose is to use signposts sparingly, as we do in conversation…” (5), I kept this in mind when writing my This I Believe essay. I also avoided hedging in this essay by being confident about my position about what I believe in. As Pinker writes, hedging is when people “… cushion their prose with wads of fluff that imply they are not willing to stand behind what they say,” (7). Overall I tried to use the topics that Steven Pinker mentions in his essay to make my writing better.

English 110 has given me many tools that I can use and apply to my writing even outside of an english course to make my writing stronger and more understandable to those reading it.

Final Draft of Writing Prompt 3

The Internet as a Tool for Students

Students are the future of society, and it is important that we provide them with the right tools to make the future great. Children have amazing imaginations and are able to put their dreams into actions with the help of the internet and new technology. The internet is a fast and efficient way for students and children to put their plans into motion. They are able to search for any topic or research project on a vast variety of databases and learn about whatever interests them. Students are also able to communicate with many different sources instantly through text, email, and video chat. The internet also gives students a way to make their new ideas known. They are able to start from scratch with a small idea and make that idea grow larger with the help of the internet. Students are able to pursue whatever they please if they focus their mind on making the world a better place. The internet provides students with a tool for learning and pursuing their life purpose.

The internet can essentially help people create something out of nothing and get students started on pursuing their purposes. Students are able to generate new ideas, connect and synthesize those ideas, and then use those ideas to make the world better. If a student has an idea they can use the internet to research that idea, communicate with others about that idea, and then create a following behind that idea. In Wasik’s article, “My Crowd Experiment: The Mob Project,” he comes up with an idea and implements it and it grows immensely because of the internet and digital technology. Wasik states, “I could use e-mail to gather an audience for a show … the e-mail would be straightforward about exactly what people would see, namely nothing but themselves, coming together for no reason at all … a promise to create something out of nothing.” (475-476). He gathered a large group of people and was able to create an event and a following out of nothing. Every single invention or perspective starts somewhere and the internet makes the process faster. Students can use this idea to gain confidence that anything is possible when using the internet as a tool. Even the smallest idea can grow into something huge. Scientist and philosophers were able to come up with new ideas and make them well known before the internet came to be, but now that we have the internet we should use it to our advantage. In Sam Anderson’s article, “In Defense of Distraction,”, he touches on how people from a time before the internet would be doing even more amazing things now. “If Einstein and Lennon were growing up today. Their natural genius might be so pumped up on the possibilities of the new technology they’d be doing even more dazzling things… the Beatles would make the best viral videos of all time.” (12). Students should use the internet to their advantage and know that it is possible to create great ideas by starting from scratch with technology as an aid.

Students are able to explore and learn more when provided with instant accessibility to information through the use of the internet. Sugata Mitra talks about the benefits of technology when used in safe environments in his article, “The Internet Can Harm, but Can Also be a Child’s Best Tool for Learning.” Mitra states “Groups of children can learn almost anything by themselves, using the internet. Children who access the internet from such safe, self-organized learning environments gain immensely over ones who don’t.” (1) Students are allowed to explore their interests online instantly by just typing into a search bar or asking a device a question. If we teach children how to use the seemingly unlimited archived information on the internet correctly then they will be able to learn as much as possible. Children’s brains are like sponges and will absorb much of the information given to them. The internet provides them with a tool to explore so much documented information and learn as much as possible. As long as adults and educators are able to monitor and teach children the correct way to use the internet, for research and leisure, children will be able to “learn to read sooner and better, gain in self-confidence and retain what they have researched for much longer than that gained through traditional rote learning.” (Mitra 1). Students benefit from the internet when used as a tool to learn and are able to gain information from credible sources.  

One of the many ways the internet can be used as a tool for students learning is by enabling them to communicate and spread their ideas. With so many different ways to share information, students can share their ideas with a much larger audience. All they have to do is post a link to a website or send an email that explains their experiment, project, or new idea and all of their followers will then have access to it. In Bill Wasik’s article he explains how he used the internet to get hundreds of people to show up at an event by sending an email. Some of those people didn’t even know him personally, but he was still able to reach out to many people with a click of a button. Wasik explains how the internet can be used to communicate by stating, “Yes, the Internet allows us to communicate instantaneously with others around the world … [and] allows us to find others with similar interests and chat among ourselves.” (480). Students are able to use this to their advantage to learn more about an interesting topic or tell people about their own research or experiment. Students can talk to people who have done something similar to what they’re interested in. They can tell their peers about their opinions or ideas so that they can learn. They can also receive feedback from others who have experienced the event they are conducting. Overall, the internet is a great tool for communicating with others and spreading ideas.

The internet gives people an easy way to gain followers and create a bandwagon effect, which influences how students are able to spread their ideas and learn from other students. The bandwagon effect happens when people choose to follow an idea or an act because they don’t want to miss out or feel left behind. Wasik describes it as “the instinctive tendency of the human animal to rely on the actions of others in choosing its own course of action.” (482) The idea of the bandwagon effect can help students gain momentum on spreading their ideas about pursuing their life’s purpose. Students can use the internet to make their ideas well known and the more people that know about those ideas the more they will spread. If something is of interest to a group of people, those people will tell others to join their course of action or their “bandwagon”. Students can learn about things from people across the globe that they might not otherwise be able to without the use of the internet. The internet shows its users the most popular topic at the time and students can use this to their advantage to spread their ideas and do good in society. If students are able to make their ideas heard it will become popular and then they could eventually create a bandwagon effect. Through the bandwagon effect other students could learn about these student’s ideas and ways to make the world a better place.

Many adults say the internet is more of a distraction to young people and students rather than a tool they can use to learn. Technology can make it harder for people to focus their attention with all of the crawlers on television screens and notifications popping up on cell phones. Sam Anderson talks about the many ways that attention can be averted in his article, “In Defense of Distraction.” He researches multitasking and attention by talking to some experts on the topics, but also mentions how he becomes distracted during these conversations. “As Meyer and I talk, the universe tests us with a small battery of distractions. A maximum-volume fleet of emergency vehicles passes… my phone chirps to tell us that my mother is calling… then beeps again…” (3) Some of these distractions are related to technology while some are not, but it proves that humans are easily distracted. Anderson mentions a conversation with Winifred Gallagher, who enjoys focusing on a task and feels that focusing can be used in a muscular way, “It made her realize, she says, that attention was ‘not just a latent ability, it was something you could marshal and use as a tool.’” (6) If students are able to think about focus in this way and use this tool along with the internet they will become more productive and be able to learn faster. Students, and adults as well, can learn to use their attention and focus as a muscle and will become less easily distracted.

The benefits for students using technology and the internet as a tool can outweigh the negative effects if they are able to combat distractions effectively. Students benefit from the use of the internet by having access to a variety of archived information, having the ability to communicate with anyone in the world, and by being able to spread their ideas to create a bandwagon effect. To overcome being distracted by all the possibilities of the internet and technology students can learn to use meditation to become more focused. Winifred Gallagher, in Anderson’s article, talks about how Buddhist monks have been shown to have great attentional discipline and be able to handle more information that those who do not practice meditation. “Meditation can make your attention less ‘sticky,’ able to notice images flashing by in such quick succession that regular brains would miss them.” (6) Students and adults should practice meditation to combat distractions to get the most out of using technology for their benefit of pursuing their purpose in life. Meditating can also make people happier which makes them more attentive. Meditation is just one of the ways students should practice combating distractions, along with learning how to use the internet effectively, students can use the internet as a tool to benefit their learning and pursuing life purpose.

First Draft From Writing Prompt 3

The Internet as a Tool for Students

Students are the future of society and it is important that we provide them with the right tools to make the future great. Children have amazing imaginations and are able to put their dreams into actions with the help of the internet and new technology. The internet is a fast and efficient way for students, young adults, and children to put their plans into motion. They are able to search for any topic or research project on a vast variety of databases and learn about whatever interests them. Students are also able to communicate with many different sources instantly through text, email, and video chat. The internet also gives students a way to make their new ideas known. They are able to start from scratch and pursue whatever they please if they focus their mind on making the world a better place. The internet provides students with a tool for learning and pursuing their life purpose.

Students are provided with instant accessibility to information through the use of the internet. Students are allowed to explore their interests online instantly. All they have to do is type into a search bar or ask devices a question. If we teach children how to use the seemingly unlimited information on the internet correctly then they will be able to learn as much as possible. Sugata Mitra talks about the benefits of technology when used in safe environments in his article, “The Internet Can Harm, but Can Also be a Child’s Best Tool for Learning”. “Groups of children can learn almost anything by themselves, using the internet. Children who access the internet from such safe, self-organized learning environments gain immensely over ones who don’t.” (1) Children are able to learn from each other and from others on the internet. Their brains are like sponges and will absorb much of the information given to them. The internet provides them with a tool to explore so much information and learn as much as possible. As long as adults and educators are able to monitor and teach children the correct way to use the internet, for research and leisure, children will be able to “learn to read sooner and better, gain in self-confidence and retain what they have researched for much longer than that gained through traditional rote learning.” (Mitra 1). Students benefit from the internet when used as a tool to learn and gain information from credible sources.  

One of the many ways the internet can be used as a tool for students learning is by enabling them to communicate and spread their ideas. With so much social media and ways to share information students can share their ideas with a much larger audience. All they have to do is post a link to a website explaining their experiment, project, or new idea and all of their followers will then have access to it. Email also gives students a way to make their ideas heard. In Bill Wasik’s, “My Crowd Experiment: The Mob Project”, he explains how he used email to get hundreds of people to show up at an event. Some of those people didn’t even know him personally, but he was still able to reach out to many people with a click of a button. Wasik  explains how the internet can be used to communicate “Yes, the Internet allows us to communicate instantaneously with others around the world … allows us to find others with similar interests and chat among ourselves.” (480). Students are able to use this to their advantage to learn more about an interesting topics or tell people about their own research or experiment. Students can talk to people who have done something similar to what they’re interested in. They can tell their peers about their opinions or ideas so that they can learn. They can also receive feedback from others who have experienced the event they are conducting. Overall, the internet is a great tool for communicating with others and spreading ideas.

The internet gives people an easy way to gain followers and create a bandwagon effect. The bandwagon effect happens when people choose to follow an idea or an act because they don’t want to miss out or feel left behind. Wasik describes it as “the instinctive tendency of the human animal to rely on the actions of others in choosing its own course of action.” (482) The idea of the bandwagon effect can help students gain momentum on spreading their ideas about pursuing their life’s purpose. Students can use the internet to make their ideas well known and the more people that know about those ideas the more they will spread. If something is of interest to a group of people, those people will tell others to join their course of action or their “bandwagon”. Wasik also talks about how the internet affects our decision making because of this bandwagon effect. “The bandwagon effect is especially pronounced in Internet culture-making, however, because popularity can immediately be factored into how choices are presented to us.” The internet shows its users the most popular topic at the time and students can use this to their advantage to spread their ideas and do good in society.

The internet can essentially help people create something out of nothing, which can get students started on pursuing their purposes. If a student has an idea they can use the internet to research that idea, communicate with others about that idea, and then create a following behind that idea. Every single invention or perspective starts somewhere and the internet makes the process faster. In Wasik’s article he comes up with an idea and implements it and it grows immensely because of the internet and digital technology. “I could use e-mail to gather an audience for a show … the e-mail would be straightforward about exactly what people would see, namely nothing but themselves, coming together for no reason at all … a promise to create something out of nothing.” (475-476). He gathered people for no reason at all and was able to create an event and a following out of nothing. Students can use this idea to gain confidence that anything is possible when using the internet as a tool. Even the smallest idea can grow into something huge. Scientist and philosophers were able to come up with new ideas and make them well known before the internet came to be, but now that we have the internet we should use it to our advantage. In Sam Anderson’s article, “In Defense of Distraction”, he touches on how people from a time before the internet would be doing even more amazing things now. “If Einstein and Lennon were growing up today. Their natural genius might be so pumped up on the possibilities of the new technology they’d be doing even more dazzling things… the Beatles would make the best viral videos of all time.” (12). Students should use the internet to their advantage and know that it is possible to create great things out of almost nothing with the technology as an aid.

Many adults say the internet is more of a distraction to young people and students rather than a tool they can use to learn. Technology can make it harder for people to focus their attention with all of the crawlers on television screens and notifications popping up on cell phones. Sam Anderson talks about the many ways that attention and be averted in his article, “In Defense of Distraction”. He researches multitasking and attention by talking to some experts on the topics, but also mentions how he becomes distracted during these conversations. “As Meyer and I talk, the universe tests us with a small battery of distractions. A maximum-volume fleet of emergency vehicles passes… my phone chirps to tell us that my mother is calling… then beeps again…” (3) Some of these distractions are related to technology while some are not, but it proves that humans are easily distracted. Anderson mentions a conversation with Winifred Gallagher, who enjoys focusing on a task and feels that focusing can be used in a muscular way, “It made her realize, she says, that attention was ‘not just a latent ability, it was something you could marshal and use as a tool.’” (6) If students are able to think about focus in this way and use this tool along with the internet they will become more productive and be able to learn faster. Students, and adults as well, can learn to use their attention and focus as a muscle and will become less easily distracted.

The benefits for students using technology and the internet as a tool can outweigh the negative effects if they are able to combat distractions effectively. Meditation can be used to become more focused. Winifred Gallagher in Anderson’s article, talks about how Buddhist monks have been shown to have great attentional discipline and be able to handle more information that those who do not practice meditation. “Meditation can make your attention less ‘sticky,’ able to notice images flashing by in such quick succession that regular brains would miss them.” (6) Students and adults should practice meditation to combat distractions to get the most out of using technology for their benefit of pursuing their purpose in life. Meditating can also make people happier which makes them more attentive. Meditation is just one of the ways students should practice combating distractions, along with learning how to use the internet effectively, students can use the internet as a tool to benefit their learning and pursuing life purpose.