Homework 4.m

Writing has never come easy for me.  I struggle to get all the thoughts I want to write about, down in the right order.  When I hear I have to write a paper it takes me so much time just to get started.  You could say that I have a "fear" of writing papers.  My English teacher last semester tore my essays apart, even though I thought they were really decent, so now since I have been at college I seem to take more preparation time before writing my paper.  The first thing I try and do is write out an outline.  I try to include every thought that I possibly could think of that would work well in my paper. In my outline, my thesis is created, but it never is that strong because I never know the exact direction that my paper is going to go in.  I always tell my self to just start writing, which sounds cliche, but it really does help me.  As long as I get started writing, I usually can go for a while.  All my writing occurs at my desk.  If I was anywhere else, say my bed, I would get too distracted.  What I find strange, is the fact that I listen to music when I am writing.  You would think that it is distracting, but when I can't hear anything in my room or my room mate is talking, I get a lot more accomplished.  

When I was younger I remember when I used to have to write out my entire rough draft.  Now that I think about it, that sounds like a great idea, but honestly do we have enough time to hand write our papers?  To replace the handwriting process I will write my rough draft on my computer, print it out without reading over it and then take my pink pen and mark it up.  Also I read the entire paper out loud, which helps me hear my mistakes.  I usually find tons of mistakes when proofreading my paper, so I go back into the computer and fix them.  When I take my paper to class to get it revised by my peers, I feel confident about the product, but I know that there has to be changes made because it has much better potential.

All the revising sessions that I have attended seem pointless.  Don't get me wrong, there are some kids whoare  actually there to help you, but for the most part students see this workshopping day as a day off to do whatever they want. It is frustrating because I actually want my peer's response to see what they think I should do to make it better.  Every once in a while you will get someone who will mark up your paper and give you good suggestions, but those chances are slim.  What I tend to do is look for someone who seems like they care just as much as I do and give my paper to them, hoping they will help me out.  After the revising session ends I take my paper back to my room and review their marks.  For the most part they are right about a lot of things in my paper, but there are times when I just keep what I originally had.  After the revising process I realized that the key to have a good paper is to work on it a little every day.  I found if you try to cram all your editing into one day, your bound to miss something.  Every day I usually read my paper once looking for mistakes and things to change, and you will be surprised that I find things every time I read it over.  It doesn't bother me that I have to read my paper so many times because I know it is just making it better.  

My writing has improved so much over the past years, and I hope that it continues to.  The writing process that I do, seems pretty straight forward, so a lot of people might be able to follow what I do if they ever needed help getting started.  A way I could improve my writing would be to look more carefully at my paper as a whole because my biggest problem would be staying on topic.  I know that is what my outline is for, but no matter how much I try to stay on topic, it never really works. By taking this class I hope to learn better workshopping skills that will be extremely beneficial.  I know that my writing is nowhere near perfect, but to be successful in college I know that my writing is going to have to keep improving.  I plan to sharpen my outlining and organization skills, along with asking for opinions and help throughout the writing process.  Hopefully, by the end of this second Freshman English course, my writing will be good enough to get me through college.

Workshopping Homework

1. When I think about a workshop draft I think about a rough draft.  The point is to basically get your thoughts down on paper, but not to expect it to be your finished draft.  Your paper should be organized, but have room to be revised.  You shouldn't worry if the person working on your paper writes all over it because they are just trying to make it better.  From what I got out of the reading last night, I noticed  it said that when your paper is being revised, don't hesitate to change things because it didn't really take you long to come up with your first draft in the first place.  Nobody expects their first draft to be amazing, even though we all wish we did, so editing it isn't the end of the world.  When I write my workshop drafts I basically just put my thoughts down on paper and then add more later.  The purpose of your paper, I think, should stay consistent throughout your draft and final paper.  You may not have all of your complete thoughts yet, but beginning to come up with ideas and sources in your workshop draft would be a good idea.  You want to have something valid to work off of, not just any random sentences that have nothing to do with the topic.  Your purpose should not really change from your workshop draft to your finished draft, unless you need to change your paper completely.  I think your audience though, can be different from your workshop draft to your final draft.  This is because when you first start talking about a subject you may think you know who you want to focus your attention on, but in the end your ideas may shift to another audience.  It is not big deal if you eventually change who you want to be focusing on, but make sure that you keep it consistent in the end.

2. If I was workshopping on Essay "R" I would be up to helping the author make it a lot better.  Everyone agrees that it is not the best paper, but revising it will make it more like a finished copy.  First I would tell the author to try and start by making an outline.  If he took the ideas that he had in his paper and tried to put them into an outline, then maybe the flow of the paper would be better.  The outline would also allow for a clear thesis to be written, basically summing up what he was going to talk about in the rest of the paper.  Also I would go and look for as many sentence fragments and mistakes that are obvious.  I would try and give some suggestions on ways to make the paper better, by helping with transitions and different ways of saying things.  Basically I think if this author set up an outline and organized everything better, his entire paper would be much better.  I could possibly start helping set up the outline, but this kid needs to put in more effort to create a finished draft.  The people revising your paper are not going to re-write your paper for you, but will give suggestions on to how to get started on improving your work.

Grading essay "R"

When I was reading the essay written about WWE it reminded me of the work shopping that I did in English 1105.  I read over the essay and looked for what stood out to me and what seemed like obvious mistakes.  Overall I would grade this essay as a B-.  It was obvious that the author was trying to get the point across that WWE has changed since the 80's, but the way he went about writing his essay wasn't that great.  He had great ideas and lots of information to back up what he was trying to say, but I thought he needed to have better organization.  The transitions from one paragraph to another seemed to be lacking and whenever I thought he was going to continue on a topic, it seemed like he jumped to the next idea.  There were also a few grammatical mistakes and some sentences that seemed unfinished.  An example of a sentence that seemed unfinished would be, "Mainly from its live events, this grossed 295.4 million last year."  This sentence could easily be revised to make more sense.

To me this seemed like more of a rough draft then a final copy.  The author has a great start to the paper but needs to clean it up.  He answered the question that he was focusing his paper on, but the way attacked the question could be more clear.  This paper is in no way terrible, but could definitely be improved for the better.  The facts that were given are perfect for the paper, but to improve his grade I think he needs to give a stronger introduction and use his facts in a more orderly fashion.

homework assignment 2.h

1. a. The rhetorical situation which represents this text would have to revolve around a political standpoint.  Bryan West directed his audience towards people who have not made up their mind about who to vote for.  His purpose was to review what Gabriel McVey talked about in his article "Do Not Be Fooled By the Clintons Again."  Bryan West wanted to point out certain points of his article and make them clear and help the audience understand what McVey was talking about.  The occasion that started the political articles was the 2008 presidential election.  Both writers wanted to help people who were unsure of who to vote for make the right decision.  West's genre would more likely be on the informative side because unlike Mcvey who is trying to persuade, West is simply explaining and informing you on the information that was stated in the first article.

b. Bryan West's main purpose was to analyze how Gabriel McVey used certain ways to appeal to his audience.  Bryan took everything that McVey said and broke it down finding out whether it was appropriate or not.  He specifically looked at how McVey used pathos and logos.

c. His audience could also be for people not sure about who to vote for, but also for people looking for responses to the first article and whether they should believe everything Gabriel said or not.

2.  a. This article seems like it is more of an informative essay.  The author does not really sound like he is trying to persuade anyone, but instead just taking the information from the previous article and explaining and informing the audience about it.

b. During my high school years I had to write plenty informative essay during my many english classes.

c. I have read speeches that are very informative and I have had to review many articles from newspapers and magazines about information then write papers on what I found.

d. The genre that is probably most familiar to me would be informative because I have written many research papers that are extremely informative.  I would say I am least familiar with persuasion because if I remember write I only have written maybe two small papers dealing with persuading someone.

3. a. I think the author could have also used a persuasive viewpoint by taking what he thought was wrong with the first article and using that information into trying to persuade the audience either one way or another.  The persuasive viewpoint is basically trying to get your audience to either agree or disagree with you.  The informative viewpoint is to take facts given to the author and explain to you different ways of thinking about a topic.  This author is supposed to inform you and let you make your own decision, while the persuader is trying to persuade you to their side.

4.  a. The author could use a narrative genre. He could take all the information that he knew and put it into a story about his experience with the election.  

b. A different audience he could direct his attention to would be his family and close friends. This group of people would listen carefully and understand where he was coming from.  Also if he wanted to go to a support group to read his article, I think they would be a good audience also.

c. Instead of using a persuasive perspective the author could take all of their ideas and make them extremely strong to try and prove a point to the audience.  Instead of trying to persuade someone, the author should just make their viewpoint extremely strong that their audience will just want to agree with them.

5. These genres used in both of the articles could be used anywhere.  To me it seems like teacher's would use more of the informative approach.  Teacher's seem to do a lot of research, so when they finish their research they could write an article informing everyone about the information they have gathered.  Someone who would use a persuasive article could easily be a newspaper writer.  A newspaper writer could use the editorial section to try and persuade someone.  Genres are used in just about every writing, and by using them you will improve your papers and articles greatly.