Tag: Learning Log

Sentence-Level Error

When peer editing other’s work I have noticed that many people struggle with the use of commas. Some people use them too much or don’t use them at all. Commas are a tricky subject and I know that I am sometimes unsure about when to use them. Usually, when I read a sentence out loud and it sounds weird without a pause then I add a comma. I have also noticed that many people accidentally put two spaces after a sentence or don’t put the space in the right place when using a comma. Some people just write very quickly and when they read it over to themselves they don’t catch the small errors. I have a hard time knowing what my voice is when I am writing. I recently just edited a peer’s essay and her essay had such a clear tone of voice and it differently than you would typically see when writing an essay, but she made it work. When I am writing and reading in my head I have a certain voice that I can hear, but I feel like in comparison to others I do not have a strong tone with my writing. I would like to try to improve that and also try to make less sentence level spelling errors in my writing.

MLA Formatting

To properly document my sources in the past I have used easybib.com. That is a good source to use when working with online sources because you can just put in the URL and it will give you all the information you need. You can also use this site for books and resources that aren’t from the internet. I have found the the Little Seagull handbook is very helpful. It lists many different ways to cite sources, but it is hard to know which one to use. Knowing how to use the “Russian Doll” structure for document sources is also helpful, but when using this I became unsure if I was actually doing it the right way for the different texts I was using. I lack confidence in knowing if I am actually using the right format and I plan to pay more attention to the details about the text. I will pay more attention to things like, how many authors the book has or what kind of article the work is and if I am unable to find this out myself I will look them up to know for sure and become more confident.

Critiquing work

It has been difficult for me when peer editing to look at global revision before paying attention to local revision. I tend to get stuck on the wording of a sentence if it doesn’t make sense to me and have a hard time looking at the big picture. During the first peer editing session my attention was grabbed by local revision errors and made minimal comments on global revisions. When editing during the second peer editing session I payed more attention to the author’s organization. I gave suggestions about the organization of the paragraphs and said to move quotes closer to the beginning of paragraphs. I also gave suggestions about connections they could make to the text with specific quotation examples to support their claims.  “People in the digital world tend to choose not to focus on communication like you said and you could support this with a quote from page 6 in Anderson’s text.”

Employing Techniques

At the beginning of English 110 I approached reading an essay by trying to read critically and interact with the text. I would circle words I didn’t know the meaning of, look them up, and then write a synonym so I would remember what the word meant when going back through the text. I also would read the questions about the text before actually reading the text so I would know what to look for when reading. If I agreed or disagreed I would write in the margins. I would also ask questions if I didn’t understand what the author was saying. I also apply these techniques of active reading, critical thinking, and informal reading when reading articles for my psychology class. For homework we are usually assigned a couple articles to read and then answer questions about. To know what I’m going to be writing about I read the questions first and then mark where there are possible answers to the questions in the text. To improve, I could possibly read with the idea in mind that I will be using this article or essay to write a paper about and could look for ideas that interest me and that I could expand upon or connect to another piece of work.

Integrating Ideas

In the past I have only ever really used quotes to integrate my ideas with others. I have been working towards transitioning into a quote and introducing a quote in a smoother way rather than just plopping a quote in the middle of a paragraph. For English 110 we had to read through our first essay prompt and highlight the different aspects of summary, paraphrase, quotation, analysis, and synthesis. After doing so, I found that I don’t paraphrase or synthesis as much as I could. I incorporated quotations into all of paragraphs and was able to analyze them well. An example of a quotation and it’s analysis is from my first essay prompt in the fourth paragraph, “‘… the regions involved in emotional control and higher-order cognitive function,’ (Henig, 204). This means that even towards the end of a young adult’s college career and into adulthood they are still developing their emotional control and problem solving skills.” I was able to use a quote from the text to support my claim and then analyze it by putting it into my own words to further explain how a young adult’s brain is developing. To pursue this learning goal I plan to incorporate more paraphrase and synthesis of the ideas from other texts. 

Ability to Revise

I am working to achieve the goal of approaching writing as a recursive process by writing with the mindset that my first draft is not my final draft. When writing the first draft for the first paper for English 110, Emerging Adulthood as a Life Stage, I was weary and unsure about changing things. After having it peer edited and talking about ways to change the organization in class I became more comfortable with making global changes to my first draft. Peer editing also helped me learn how to make the claims of my paragraphs more clear. Instead of starting off my second paragraph with a quote “According to Robin Henig’s essay, What is it about 20-somethings?, emerging adulthood is a period of ‘identity exploration … ‘” I revised it to start by saying “Emerging adulthood is a period of “instability” which gives young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five a chance to find themselves and their purpose.” By changing the first sentence I was able to make the topic of the paragraph more clear. After this first essay prompt I was able to go about the process for writing my second essay prompt a little differently. Before actually writing a rough draft on the computer I wrote down different ideas from each text we were told to use and connected them to see how I wanted to my make claim for the prompt. After that I outlined the ideas for my essay by coming up with a topic sentence then listing the claims I wanted to make and the evidence I planned to use to support those claims and writing a few sentences for what I wanted to talk about in my conclusion. Then I went back to my thesis statement to make sure it fit the claims in a specific way.