Archive for September, 2009
Look at the 5 categories on GSW’s rubric for grading essays (found in your Portfolio). In which category do you feel the strongest? The weakest?
I would say that my strongest category would be the audience because I know how to firmly grasp the attentions of the readers. To me that portion is the easiest and I can use supporting sentences to grab every reader.
My weakest point is organization, which I learned from the last essay, because some of my sentences become jumbled and I don’t notice it. I need to carefully revise this essay and make sure that my thoughts are straight.
What questions or concerns do you have about the position you are taking and the sources you are using?
The concern that I have for my paper is that when I tried looking up the rates for student loans for families and students, I was not able to find them without applying. It made it a little difficult to fix but I used three other supporting reasons and did not fully mention the loans because I couldn’t get information.
What do you like the most about your final essay? What would you work on if you had more time?
I liked the final organization of the paper – but I think that I should have added more detail behind the paper. I had issues with transitions which would have filled the paper a little better than what I had previously written.
What (if anything) did you decide to change about the order of your essay? Why or why not?
Although it is already turned in, I changed a few of the wordings and I turned around some of the organization. It is still a little confusing to read through which was shown in the grading.
From the peer editing session, I found that I need to add some transitions in my writing. When I went back to read my paper, it needs some added details that expand on some of the thoughts that I already have.
My next area of focus is going to be going back over everything that I already have and trying to expand on certain points. I want to add more transitions to keep the reader interested and to help the reader fully understand why they should join my club.
For the two pre-writing activities, I did the audience awareness sheet and I used microsoft word to list my main points and list my thesis and all of my supporting ideas.
For the audience awareness sheet, I didn’t see it to be that much of a help but I haven’t fully completed the back. I found it a little more difficult because I still wasn’t sure of the final thesis that I was going to use but once I was able to figure that out, I didn’t have any difficulty.
My other activity was listing the main points. This is the normal approach that I take to write a paper so I find it very useful. It helps to organize my thoughts and when I write my rough draft, all of my thoughts are in order and I’m able to move swiftly through each part of the paper. I think the next time I may try the tree to see if it helps to organize my thoughts just as easily.