assignment # 15

In comparison to the first essay I wrote at the beginning of the semester, I believe I’ve gotten to closer in achieving the goals I get for myself. Although I still might have the same struggles or weaknesses, I was able to learn different strategies to fix the mistakes I make when writing an essay. Although having to write rough drafts and revisions were a pain at times, it allowed us as readers to identify the mistakes we made and gave us a chance to fix them. Another thing that was very helpful was the peer revisions we had to do for every essay. It allowed us to get other peoples feedback on our writing and gave them a chance to express the different ideas they had about the topic. Along with peer review discussions, the packet we filled out was very helpful because of how specific the feedback had to be. One suggestion I would have for the class would be to be able to write essays on topics we were interested in. Also, maybe have an example essay for each of the different types of essay we are required to write throughout the semester.  Although, I feel like my writing has somewhat improves throughout this semester, I still have a lot to improve and to work on. Before this class all I knew was that I was a bad writer but never knew specifically why or how I could fix it. This class allowed me to recognize my mistakes and showed me different strategies on how to identify them.

assignment #14

For my portfolio I chose the revise my arguing a position essay. Two strengths I had in my essay were that I had a clear stated thesis and reason to back up my thesis. Weakness’s that were in my essay were my organization of my paragraphs as well evidence to support my reasoning’s.

In order to revise my essay, I am going to work on better phrasing my sentences and taking out other sentences and ideas that are irrelevant. I also have to reorganize the order in which my paragraphs are in.  A good strategy I can use would be writing a summary of each paragraph to make sure the point I am trying to make makes sense and is easy to follow.

assignment #13

I believe the essay I will most likely revise would be the fourth one. I will most likely choose that one because of the fact that this is one of our last papers and we are able to use what we’ve learned throughout this semester and apply it to the paper. It is also much easier to write about a topic of your choosing rather than something you are not really interested in. In this last essay we are able to see if we have all the quality an argument essay should have.

In the fourth essay, I believe I chose a topic that, I as a teenage girl could somewhat relate too which makes it easier to state my opinion. The topic I chose was about whether or not teens should be allowed access to birth control without parental consent. I chose this topic because I could write this essay without having to research anything and just use my own background knowledge.

assignment #11

For my third essay I chose to analyze the article, “get smart about college”.  The argument this essay made was that parents and students don’t think as thoroughly when it comes to the right college to choose, as they think they do. They tend rationalize the decision without even knowing. I believe this argument had a good trust worthy tone and had a lot of specific evidence. One thing I thought lacked was more specific details as to what students rather than just parents, can do about the situation. They should have put some tips as too how students can apply to scholarships to make the tuition more affordable, this taught me that I have to make sure to broaden the ideas I right about. Another thing the essay act was the type of audience it was portraying too. The essay consists of only referring to middle/high class people. It doesn’t talk about people who are lower class and how paying for school is a major struggle. They should talk about what lower class people can do to have better opportunities, this taught me that I have to make sure to portray to a wide variety of audience instead of one specific type of people.  I also thought that the flow of the essay could have been a little more organized. It seemed to occasionally go back into talking about an issue that was addressed at the beginning of the essay. This showed me that I have to make sure my essay is well organized and not complicated or all over the place.

assignment #10

I believe the peer review is effective because it gives you another opinion to help you revise your paper. Your peer reviewer might catch certain mistakes that you might have not seen  or can give you insight on something you never thought of before. On the other hand it can be I proved by maybe have more than one person review your paper, or maybe have the other person can give you more critique. My weaknesses in peer review would be that I might not catch organization errors.  My strength could possibly just have an insightful comment on something. I think bigger groups help because you are able to have a broader conversation about your topic. They might be able to bring out certain points you missed.

assignment #9

In the first two essays we’ve written in this class I have similar mistakes in both. Three of the major problems that both essays have in common would be my abruptness, organization, and the awkward phrasing in some of my sentences. I think these three problems are a major factor in writing a decent essay. These errors might make it difficult for readers to follow my essays and be able to understand the point I am trying to make. In the future, I think I should keep going to someone to read my essay and make sure that it makes sense. By doing that, they are going to be able to notice the sentences that don’t really make sense and point them  out so that I could fix it.

assigment # 8

The article I chose to pick is the “get smart about college” article. This article mainly consists of what parents and students should consider when choosing what college to attend. They say that although people think they are thinking about all the aspects of choosing the right college, they might make the wrong decision without even realizing it. It goes in a lot of depth about debt and how people might be borrowing too little which limits the child’s options. It states that going to college and choosing which one is the best for you involves both the parents and student. The article emphasizes how crucial it is for a student to choose the right college with the right, as the article refers to it, “fit”. It also shows how college is a very big and important investment that will stay with you for many years. You have to be able to choose the best college for yourself and make the most out of it. The school has to be able to have the major you want, as well as motivation.  It makes a very valid point about choosing the college for the right reasons. Overall, this article makes some useful points about choosing what college to attend and ways to narrow your options.

In this article, I like that they talked about all the aspects of college instead of just thinking about the cost, which is what most people go based off. I think they made a very good point at pointing out, if the student doesn’t enjoy where they are studying they are less likely to graduate due to the lack of motivation they have in their environment. I believed this was a good choice because I myself struggle with choosing what school is really best for me.

assognment #7

At the beginning of this semester, I was a little skeptical about writing these blog posts, but as time went I got more and more used to them. At first they were more of hassle, but they actually helped by being able to compare your thoughts about certain papers, to other classmates. An aspect of the class that I believe has helped my writing would be reading the essays in the book and looking over the tips they give you. It gives you different ways of starting and ending an essay that can be extremely useful.  The only thing I would change would be although we do peer review with our classmates, it gets kind of confusing whether they’re critiques are right or not. It would be nice to get some sort of critique by the teacher just so we get on the right track. Since we’ve only written on essay so far it’s pretty difficult to tell whether my writing has improved, but in compared to my high-school essays and the one we’ve got a grade on I have not improved much. I believe if I spend extra time they might be able to improve.  Overall I think by the end of this semester this class will help improve all of our writings. My writing process has changed simply by getting other people’s opinions and suggestions on the essay we’ve written. As long as we carefully read each assignment we are given, which pretty much has a lot to do with our essays, we’ll do better as time goes by.

Purpose: The purpose for my analysis paper was to find an advertisement and describe what I think the message and the reasoning for the advertisement was. In my literacy paper is was to write and tell a story about a significant writing experience in my life.


Audience: In my first essay my audience could be anyone who read my story, which didn’t have to be anyone in particular. For my second essay the audience it targeted would mostly likely be people who smoke cigarettes.


Tone: The tone is the two essays were kind of opposite. For my first essay, there were a few jokes here and there. For my second essay it was way more of a serious tone because I talked about people losing their lives.

 Genre: the genre for my first story was simply to just telling a story while my second essay consisted of analyzing an advertisement and stating my opinion on it.

In the rhetorical essay you had to talk about specific facts and a lot about what you perceive about the ad that you chose. For the first essay you basically just told a story and without needing certain facts. For the analysis essay you were trying to prove a point and have someone see through your eyes and get the same message across.

assignment #5

The purpose of this ad is to obviously sell the Swiffer. It shows that while being a house wife and looking after the kids, Swiffer makes it easy and fun to clean with.

Its audience would definitely be middle aged women who are stay at home moms. It appeals to women who have busy life styles.

These types of cleaning ads usually always involve the “mom”. Not only for the Swiffer ad, but for many household products, they show the mom with the kids and her cleaning up the mess. For example bounty commercials show when the little kids spill their drinks and the mom always comes to the rescue with the napkin. It is never the dad.

The tone this ad is trying to portray is that moms are happy being house wives cleaning up after the kids while taking care of them as well.

assignment #4

Some differences, between my final draft and my first would be my conclusion and introduction. I completely changed my intro to try and set the tone of the paper. I took my peer review’s opinion by changing my conclusion a little bit so it sounds less "cliché". I also went and changed some of my sentences and got rid of some unnecessary words in the sentences. The major changes would just be my introduction. Some things I do wrong that I noticed were that I always need to go back and fix some organization problems. The first time I might not catch it but being able to revise your essay allows you to see things you hadn’t the first time. Peer review definitely helped because it gave you an outsider’s perspective. I also got my friends help to get other opinions. The aspect I think that is the strongest in my paper would be the amount of detail and expression I put into the paper. I tried describing in detail what I saw and how I felt.

assignment #3

I’m sure I am not the only one who struggles with writing essays. Not only do we have to make the reader engaged, but we also have to make sure the essay flow as naturally as possible. Throughout our essay writing, we have to keep in mind a lot of different rules. Three important rules I strongly believe you need in a paper are organization, good vocabulary, and an attention-grabbing intro. These three rules are what differentiates a C paper from an A paper.

o   Organization of the paper is probably the most important aspect in writing an essay. It allows the reader to follow along and gain the main message of what you are trying to get across in your writing. Without organization, the reader will be confused the whole time and will have difficulty staying interested in what they are trying to read.

o   In a C paper, most words are easily comprehendible which limits the amount of expression you are able to write your paper in. For example, if I were to talk about how angry I was, a C paper would consist of the word mad. In an A paper I would use a word such as irate or infuriated to show the amount of frustration or anger I was feeling. It allows you to express yourself in more detail.

o   I believe that another crucial part of an essay would be the intro. It is the first thing readers read and it determines whether or not the reader is going to continue reading your essay. An A essay consist of excitement in the intro and a good eye catching thesis.

assignment #2

One of the topics I will consider talking about is in the 8th grade. We had a big project in English where we had to choose an author and read a few of the author books. The author I chose was Lois Duncan. By the end of the year I had read every one of her books that we had in our library. Most of her novels were all mystery books which kept me at the edge of my seat. At first I started off reading the books because I was required too but by the end of the year I realized my strong passion for reading suspenseful novels. This would be a good topic to write about because it is something I am passionate about. 


My second topic I would write about would probably my junior year English teacher. She was one of those teachers that stuck out and wanted you to write your paper for yourself rather than for her pleasure. You instantly saw that she was more worried about improving our own writing skills rather than just criticizing our writing based on her taste. She inspired me to write from emotion and feeling while using a structural formal essay.


Another topic that comes to mind was when I was younger. During fourth grade, we were forced to write in a journal at least a few times a week. We were able to write about anything we’d like and along with writing we either had to bring in pictures or draw one. That gave us a way of being able to enjoy writing on a regular basis. This is a good topic to use because of the fact that it teaches us that writing can be fun and maybe even a good way to write down memories for people to look back on.

why im taking this class :)

A part from the fact that English 101 is a required general education course, I have many other reasons as to why I’m taking this class. Throughout my years in high cool, I was never a strong writer. I seem to struggle with the organization of my essays. During my last year of high school, we were asked to write one in class essay once a week. It was a bitter sweet feeling because although I was dreading the idea of writing one every week, I was hoping to get better, and for a while I thought I was, until I went from getting three’s and four’s to getting a one. After that I gave up.  I took my time and still wasn’t getting the results that I wanted, so I’m really hoping this time around I can make a huge improvement in my writing.  I enjoy reading other people’s writings because they usually inspire me to write better. I really admire the way people can express themselves in unique ways.  A lot of people are just gifted writers and hopefully after taking this class I will become one of those people. I expect to take a lot from this class which will later help me throughout my future.