“The ability to approach writing as a recursive process that requires substantial revision of drafts for content, organization, and clarity (global revision), as well as editing and proofreading (local revision).”

I’m working to reach this goal in various ways. For the last essay I wrote about emerging adulthood, my first draft was very disorganized and the transitions between paragraphs were choppy and hard to follow. I attempted to solve this by reordering my paragraphs and by using transition words that helped the flow of my paper. In my final draft, it was still somewhat disorganized, and that is something I need to work on in my next paper. As for global revision, many of my ideas were vague and needed more evidence after my first draft. I went back and filled my essay with quotes, since I had none to begin with, and worked off of the quotes to form new ideas and used them as evidence, as well. This helped make my paper more interesting and made my argument much stronger.

 

“The ability to integrate my ideas with those of others using summary, paraphrase, quotation, analysis, and synthesis of relevant sources.”

When I wrote my first draft for the emerging adulthood essay, I added quotes but did not elaborate on them much and would sort of lose them in my writing. After peer editing and getting help from the professor, I was able to add more details and “sandwich” my quotes so that I could incorporate my own thoughts into what others had said. I used their ideas to help evolve my own and it worked much better and made my paper much stronger than when I had just added a quote with no elaboration.

“Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning and thinking.”

I have improved my essay reading skills already by making more detailed and thoughtful annotations on the essay while I’m reading it. Previously, I would really only highlight sentences if anything at all, but I have learned that it can also be beneficial to make actual comments in the margins of the essay. I think that I could definitely still improve my skills on essay reading because adding comments and more than just highlighting is still new to me. At times I find it difficult to leave comments because it feels weird to just write comments on the essay. I think as I keep reading more essays and practicing this skill it will become easier and I’ll struggle less with this.

“Be able to critique their own and others’ work by emphasizing global revision early in the writing process and local revision later in the process.”

The first time we did a peer review/edit, I found it very difficult to ignore grammatical errors and to not local revise early in the process. I got hung up on them and even made a few corrections even though we were supposed to only do global revision. As we worked on it more, I found it easier to ignore the little things and to help my peers with their main ideas and to global revise. I made comments on one of my peer’s papers such as, “ I think if some of the points you brought up, such as how emerging adulthood as a life phase could produce cultural and scientific advantages, were elaborated on and discussed in their own paragraphs, you could really strengthen your argument.” This was a big claim made that my peer did not have much information on, and after we discussed this she was able to add more evidence to it and strengthen her paper. 

 

“Document their work using appropriate conventions (MLA).”

In my first essay, I did my in-text citations slightly incorrect because I did not name the essay with the authors last name. I previously have not worked with MLA format as much as I would have liked to so I think in order to avoid making mistakes like this I will just need to check online how to properly cite things before handing in my paper. This is important because incorrectly citing things could cause a lot of problems and could be seen as plagiarism.

So far for my sources I have used online sources, sources from books, and one from a speech/video. The one I struggled with most was the speech/video because I have never used that as a source before.

 

“Control sentence-level error (grammar, punctuation, spelling).”

I have not really noticed any problems in my work in terms of grammar because this is not really an area I struggle with. My spelling, punctuation, and grammar are typically good, with the exception of a few mistakes here and there. Most of the time, when I do make a grammatical error, it is because of poor revision rather than trouble with the actual grammar because sometimes I read over the mistake without noticing it’s wrong. I think to improve this area, I really just need to revise and edit my paper more thoroughly. I do feel motivated to learn better grammar because I think without it, no matter how great your thoughts and claims are, the credibility of the paper will be dismissed because it sounds unintelligent.