15

          In my first blog post I really wanted to become a better reader and writer. I hands down became a better writer. Before when I would write I would usually just says what on my mind and run with it. But I have realized that isn’t going to get me good grades, and after reading my paper aloud I realized how off topic I get and all the tiny grammar mistakes I make. I feel like in the past three months I have come a long way from where I started, I am definitely not at the top, but I think I started at the bottom when I entered the class.

          This class has awakened my senses and aroused my curiosity in the literary world and I feel I have made significant strides in my writing process. The most important of which being how, by the proper use of commas, transitions, and supportive quotes, I transform my mediocre essay into a well composed, interesting literary work. I hope to keep everything I learned in this class and apply them to the future papers I need to write. It has also helped me with my speech believe it or not, I can now think and organize in my head of what I want to say.

                                                                                                                                                        

       I really do appreciate all the things you have done for me, the extra time and the meetings. Not a lot of professors will do that for me. I’m sorry if I put you through a lot this semester but I just wanted to say thank you for all your extra help with me. I actually have more confidence in writing now. So thanks! Merry Christmas

#14

For my portfolio I chose to revise my argument essay. The strengths of my argument essay were that I had good ideas and I did stay on topic for the most part. However my weaknesses were that my paper lacked a main focus because some of my thesis points didn’t relate to why hunting is actually beneficial to other people besides the people that are consuming the meat. Therefore my intro and conclusion need to be revised along with a better supporting paragraph to follow

To effectively revise my essay, I am going to create a better thesis that supports my argument more effectively then I can better focus the rest of my paper around my thesis. Then I can make sure that each of my supporting paragraphs relate to my actual thesis. I need to make sure that each paragraph stays on topic. I also will read the paper over and over so I can catch all my grammar mistakes, and make sure that there is an overall flow.

My conclusion will also need to be effective, I will need to make sure that I can conclude my thoughts and blend my whole essay so that it will have a proper flow. Making sure that my reader will want to finish my paper, and that I don’t offend anyone in the process.

#13

#13

 

The assignment I enjoyed the most would have to be essay number 4. In the past I have been picked on because of the fact that I do hunt. I have been very passionate about hunting since I was a little girl. Almost all of the men in my family hunt as well, and I use to hate staying behind because I was too young. I liked this essay because it gave me a chance to state my opinion about hunting, show how hunting can be beneficial to other citizens. All the while keeping in mind the rhetorical situation, this was very important to me because it showed me how I can come off as narrow minded when the topic of hunting comes up in a conversation. This made me make sure that I didn’t rub my reader the wrong way in this essay.

            This essay was definitely not the easiest, due to the fact that I do have strong opinions about hunting. It was very hard to mask my feeling and relate to the other opinions about hunting. I did not receive the grade I was hoping for in this essay which is why I am considering rewriting it my final portfolio. Then I can have the opportunity to fix my mistakes and hopefully receive a grade that I can be proud of.

#12

My most compelling evidence is my claim that Hunting provides an alternative to industrial or processed meat which is usually not "organic", and has been injected with steroids or contaminated in another way; it also may have been raised and/or killed under inhumane conditions. By hunting your own meat guarantees organic meat, humane conditions, and responsible use of the animal (as long as the hunter is responsible). A responsible hunter mean he or she will respect that animal for what is providing them with and not let any meat or fur coat go to waste. Another strong point I have is that Animal overpopulation in some areas is destroying nature. In some areas of overpopulation, food is becoming scarce and animals have started to eat endangered plants and other vegetation that they would normally not, some even dying of starvation. Animals also cause a lot of problems along our nation's freeways and for many farmers. I believe these are my four strongest points in my paper because they aren’t just my personal opinions on hunting they are facts and problems that need some sort of solution.

My weakest evidence is my rebuttal to my claim of hunting being beneficial. Besides the people who already have strong feelings against hunting in general, hunting is a sport and just like others sports people don’t always follow the rules. Hunters also don’t have as many trained police to catch them in the act of committing a crime while hunting. For example, Poachers usually kill animals for only one product: tigers are slaughtered for their striped fur, elephants are killed for their ivory tusks and rhinos their large horn. The bodies of the animals are left to rot. Giving one conservation police officer 20,000 acres to patrol there’s a good chance of the poacher is escaping before the officer reaches the dead animal. Another point is that hunting is a very dangerous sport. Being dressed in camouflaged attire you can be mistaken for a moving target and end up getting shot, safety always has to be most important! I plan on addressing these issues because it can relate to their frustration about hunting in the first place but it can remind them that hunting legally, is a beneficial sport that helps society, wilderness, and provides a food sourse.

#11

            Their tone!

-         By having negative ways of saying how they really feel might be true to the writer but as a new writer and reader I have been taught and learned that readers are important and you don’t want them to stop reading your paper because of your tone. Instead you can sugar coat your personal opinions.

-        

Their topic!

-Choosing a topic that is specific enough so that readers will have an opinion. Whether they are on your side or not, you want to gently persuade them by showing them proof that your side of the argument is actually logical.

Their humor!

- Humor is a good thing however you don’t want your paper to be a complete joke. Cracking a joke here and there is good as long as the joke isn’t derogatory, because once again you don’t want to turn off your reader. The point of an argument essay is to get your point across and maybe persuade your reader into the seriousness of your topic or see your side of the argument.

#10

Peer review I believe is an amazing aid to help student see their own mistakes before grading or in this weeks case read their own mistakes. I am not a good reader so I would have a lot of trouble reading mine to others. However when a student in my group read her paper aloud you could get her opinion on the paper by the tone of her voice and she didn’t need us to correct her grammar because by reading aloud she caught them herself. The only way it can hurt you is by having a reader who doesn’t care enough to help you improve your paper. I think my strengths as a peer reviewer is seeing if they include all the questions they were suppose to answer in the paper and identifying what else is needed. Also being honest, you can’t help someone achieve better if you don’t tell them what is wrong. If the paper doesn’t grab your attention right away, giving them an example of how they might be able to grab my attention, they can take my opinion and make it their own by still capturing the readers interest. The ideal peer review for me, would be to have a rough draft and have the professor go over it with the whole class asking if we have mandatory points and answers in our paper. Then having us go home and correct it, and having a student review it one more time before the final draft is due. This way we clearly know what the professor wants and well as another opinion on how we are capturing all the necessary points and attention the paper needs.

#9

Taking my work into consideration I realize now that I tend to write my papers just how I tell a story. I jump from topic to topic or idea and try to make the whole paragraph or story blend. This is a major problem because if I go back and highlight every different idea in each paragraph I end up with at least 3 or 4 separate ideas. Starting today I need to dedicate a single paragraph to a single idea to make my paragraph more organized in the end. Another issue I think might have an effect on my reader is that my vocabulary is not up to par with other students. I try my best to think of creative words to replace some thoughts but my paper always ends up sounding informal. I don’t know how I would become better at this problem but maybe I can study vocabulary words online to help with the wording of my papers. Another problem is I use the words I and You way to much, in high school we would fail our paper if we had one “you” anywhere inside our paper. However I find it to be beneficial sometimes when I am peer reviewing someone else paper, and when they ask the question for example, “Wouldn’t you be upset as well if you had a felony charge on your record from when you were 18 years old, that still kept you for voting when you were 40 years old”? It is a question that most people would consider to be unfair, for me I see this as an opportunity to draw the reader in, and show them how absurd our justice system can be. Over all I think I need to be very careful on how I organize and word my papers, keep the questions and my opinions to a minimum and hopefully I can actually do better on my next paper, I try harder and harder each time to become a better writer but I still manage to receive a bad grade.

#8

      I chose this ad because I found it shocking to believe that just 50 years ago people actually believe that smoking is “good” for you. The reason I chose this specific advertisement compared to the other outrageous ones was because they had every age group in this ad looking healthy and happy smoking camels, however so many people today are dying or have to drag around oxygen tanks because their lungs look like an ash tray. In 2011 society knows now that cigarettes lead to cancers, emphysema, heart diseases, and the list goes on. If some people choose to keep smoking they can seal their own fate. The main issue was in the old camel ads were that they did not show any warning labels to their product. Meanwhile having innocent children advertise for them, only to bring in more business of young adolescent smokers. They wanted to emphasize the benefits of smoking. Also persuade the public to believe doctors know best and science proves a longer life expectancy. I believe Children are the most valuable assets we are given in life and they SHOULD NOT be in cigarette ads. We should try to educate them while they're young to be independent thinkers and to not be swayed by the tobacco companies who are trying to take advantage of their mind and body.

#7

• My goals for this class have not yet been accomplish, they may be on the way their. I haven't found much joy in writing any of the assignments or papers. I personally liked writing about topics i have strong opinions about or specific events. I need to passion to motivate my drive to create a good paper. However, I have learned some helpful tips while writing a paper, such as gathering my goals for what i want the finish product to read as, also that peer reviewing is the most helpful thing, to have another readers opinion before your final draft is due. I personally like when the class works as a whole to dissect example sentences and paragraphs to make them grammatically correct. a positive technique have learned to think about how i want my paper to sound or come off as to my reader. Considering all these factors i do believe my writing and writing process are beginning to improve.

# 6

The purpose of my ad was to elaborate on the benefits of smoking, they state that smoking camels will keep you looking younger and beautiful as her mother does in this advertisement. However the doctor prefers camels over any other cigarette and says that people that smoke camels have a longer life expectancy. "NOT!"... The kind of people they are advertising this to are children!, which is absolutly insane. Also to adults, both non smokers and smokers, persuading the ones that do smoke to switch to camels, because "doctors know best". I would have to say the genre of this ad is "healthy" smoking ad promoting smoking benefits oneself both in beauty and a longer life expectancy which is a complete utter lie. I believe the tone of this ad when it was advertised was to be thought of as truthful and believable ad that people back then seriously believed in. However in this day and age, I do believe people look at this ad as a complete joke, knowing all the lives lost from smoking cigarettes.

# 5 meade

The purpose of this ad is to tell the audience that smoking camel cigarettes will entail your to a longer better life. That it will keep you looking younger just like her mother and doctor do in the ad. Also that out of all the leading brands of cigarettes, doctors choose camels. They want to get the attention of older men and women who want to feel and look younger, and also the younger generations who want to have a long and healthy life. The genre of this ad is very persuasive, smoking is very addictive and on average take away 8 years of an average life span. however they are selling the complete opposite in teh ad and saying that doctors know best and if they smoke them why shouldn’t you? The toned portrayed is very up beat and happy every one is happy in the ad, however millions of people have died just from cigarettes alone.

#4 meade

In comparison to my rough draft, my final draft looks one hundred times better. My rough draft was all over the place, it was kind of a on going story of my reading and writing from 1st grade to now. The peer review helped me tremendously. having someone be completely honest and critique was very helpful in determining what you need to change.  After revising I thought that my story was the strongest part of my paper. however the conclusion was harder then i thought and it needed some work. I made major changes in my paper i probably erased about one and a half pages from my rough draft and pretty much organized my thoughts to make my narrative more clear to the reader. Next time i need to organize my paper with an outline before, so that i wont have to make so many revisions on my rough draft.

#3 meade

The difference between an great and mediocre paper is that a average paper wont make you want to keep reading, but it isn't so bad that you want to stop reading it. A good paper draws the reader in with the intro paragraph, they use extreme details to get the reader to actually have a vivid picture in their head of what is being described. They also have a flow to their paper, it is organized, the reader doesn't have to jump back and forth to paragraphs to have an understanding of the entire story. What I think that is most important is a sense of humor in a writer, because if a reader picks up on the same sense of humor, he is going to remember that while critiquing it.

#1 meade

As we all know Writing 101 is a mandatory class for your general education in college. Honestly if it were up to me, i probably would have never taken this class to begin with. Even after twenty years me and English still have are differences. Writing is not something i do for fun on the weekends, however they say that to become a good writer you have to read to become a better writer. i guess one can say i am taking baby steps to that approach because i don't enjoy reading unless the book really interest me. therefore i do not read many books. I am wanting to become a better reader and writer in this semester so that it can come more natural to me. I need to have the drive to actually want to keep reading. Also i need a topic that i actually care enough to write about. Motivation is key for my willingness to do well in class.

Literacy Narrative

My first memory of reading was when my great grandma Ellen sat me down on her big blue chair on my 4th birthday. in her lap she had this tarnished yellow book that i always saw her reading to my sister. she told me its about time i start to learn how to read. It was exciting to me, I was doing something my big sister did, and she always gave me a caramel candy after we were done with the book, so i couldn't wait to finish. The book helped me sound out words, it didnt actually tell a story. next, we read one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. That's when our story time ended. Grandma Ellen had gotten really sick and stayed in my mothers bed until she pasted away. With her gone no one else had time to read with me. My mother was always working and my father did not live with us. Reading was now known as something that was mandatory for school, not something i did for fun with my grandma Ellen.