Learning Outcome 1
When it comes to revising, I revise in almost all of my stages of writing. First, I make the outline and jot down what I think I am going to be writing about. After I do that I look over it and often make changes about what I am actually going to be writing about. Next, I add little claims or main points under the topics in my outline. My finished outline has the paragraphs titled with the main topic, then I bullet the claims below the main topic. This makes it extremely organized which makes writing the first draft much easier. This is where I decide to change the structure of my essay or if I want to take out or add ideas. A big change I constantly make is rearranging the paragraphs to make better sense to the reader. Once I finish writing my first draft I reread it many times. After a couple times I start to notice that I do not see any more mistakes. I clearly have many more mistakes but I just overlook them because I missed them the first time. Next is peer review and after I change what needed to be changed I often send my essay to my girlfriend for a last proofread. She always catches the grammar mistakes that me and my peers missed. As Sommer’s discussed the difference between student writers and experienced writers, I believe that due to this class I have been taking big steps to become an experienced writer. I have started to look at the big picture when revising and not just going through to check for grammar mistakes.
Learning Outcome 2
In my significant writing paper I used two really long quotes. The quotes were so long because everything that author that I quoted said had relevance to my paper and I felt the need to use that quote. The two quotes were so long that I ended up having to box quote them. The one I want to focus on is a quote from Sam Anderson about the distractions of the internet. I started off my paragraph discussing how the internet can be harmful due to its distractions. Sam Anderson gave a ton of specific examples that went perfectly with my essay. After the quote I sort of generalized what he said and then I tried to make a personal connection with the reader about overusing the internet. I feel as though making that connection with the reader was ok to do because it will give the reader something to relate to. When readers can relate to the essay then it will be much easier for them to read and it will make it more interesting. Overall, I think I selected the perfect quote for my essay and I believe the box quoting was much needed along with the explaining the quote to the reader afterwards.
Learning Outcomes 5 & 6
Over this class I have learned to cite my sources in the MLA format. This is something I have never had to do before so it was new for me. We did an exercise in class where the fastest person to correctly cite an author in the MLA format got extra points. This incentive helped me learn how to use this citing format pretty quick. When it comes to local revisions I had a major help from my girlfriend like I said earlier. The peer reviews helped a ton but I believe that when you send an essay to a person who hasn’t been working on this topic it can help a lot. She would not only fix grammar mistakes but she would help with new ideas that came from an outside perspective. Having another set of eyes looking over your essay never hurts and I believe it was very beneficial to me
Learning Outcome 4
Peer reviewing never was and never will be my strongest ability. I never like to critique someone’s writing even if it is for their own good. When it came to peer reviewing for this class I struggled as well. A huge problem was when I would actually buckle down and start peer reviewing, the other person peer reviewing would almost always take my comments. This would make it much harder because everything I wanted to say was already taken up by someone else. A big help to this problem was sticking to the sheet and focusing on three comments per page. Most of the comments I made were local revisions because all I could find were grammer errors. The main ideas and revisions were almost always taken by my other peer. I felt as though I did not give enough comments or areas to revise. However, when I found myself with nothing to comment I would usually stick to my favorite formula, the TRIAC. A lot of my comments came from my peers not connecting their thoughts and main ideas of their paragraph into their concluding sentence.
