Annie’s Site

I have many strategies when writing a first draft of an essay.  I start of by organizing and making an outline. It’s easier for me to organize my paper that way.  Then once I incorporate all the information I need I read over it and ask for someone to peer review.  Getting a second look from a different set of eyes definitely helps because they will give you feedback and new ideas that we wouldn’t be able to come up with on our own.  Peer reviewing is probably the best strategy I gained from this course. It helps for every single paper that I will write in the future. Without peer reviewing you can’t really say you have a final draft.  Throughout this class, I believe that the recursive writing process helped me strengthen and create new strategies for every new paper I write.

When  I wrote my paper “The Connection Between Art and Climate Change” it  was very difficult for me to think about how to format my paper. After writing the paper I decided to incorporate pictures into my multi modal paper.  The topic of my paper was centered on the impact art can make on society. As I started to incorporate pictures into my final draft I made sure I cited my pictures in the right format.  I also cited my articles correctly on my works cited page using MLA format. I’ve never really had a problem with citing, however I always had problems with format and organizing my papers, so this paper was a challenge for me.  In conclusion, I thought this multimodal paper showcased my best work as far as citing and formatting goes. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1USyhLxhJDp15KXutWVPwlErzu8qTtrji1_bp5MzT7D4/edit

Correcting and editing your own paper is hard to do which is why it’s crucial to have someone edit your paper, since we are used to our own writing we won’t pick up on all the mistakes and suggestions.  I had practiced peer editing before in high school, but it was not the same. I made comments about my peers organization, to help them realize how their wording sounds from a different perspective. I also helped my peer add onto their paper to make it meet the requirements and make it sound better.  I explained to my peers that they need to elaborate on the why for every argument they make. Peer Reviewing madame a better writer for sure. The suggestions that I made to my peers are actually the things I struggle with most, but it is easier to pick out others’ mistakes instead of your own. After reading your peer’s paper it also gives you new ideas or things that your peer added to their paper you could  also add to yours.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1szr6xo3aU6PEw0rMy8f_naaoNMY0bOCstFowp8xOsyo/edit

As a student that is told to annotate articles and read pages upon pages in most of my classes, it can be hard to define what annotating really looks like.  I personally read the article, and as I go through line by line I wrote down what my brain is basically thinking about what the author is trying to say. When I annotate each lin I circle words that I don’t understand.  I underline phrases and points the author is trying to make to make it easier for me to incorporate quotes into my essay. That is all that annotating meant to me when I started school here. I did not know what else to do besides underline and circle words and phrases.  I can honestly say this class has taught me a lot especially when it comes to annotating. I learned how to annotate articles and readings correctly. Although it is important to circle and underline when annotating that is not the only thing you are supposed to do. Good annotating looks like the page is full of writing from a pen.  I learned that when annotating it is important to make connection to yourself, the world, and other authors. It is a good idea to make connections when reading, because it helps you retain the information more and gives you something to remember the information by. Not only did I learn how to make connections, but I learned what not to underline and what to underline.  Not everything is important or needs a lot of attention, there are some lines in articles that do not need to be underlined. Knowing what information to annotate is important, because it helps you with other skills like note taking which is part of annotating. I also learned how to pick out good information and quotes. This class taught me a lot of things, but incorporating quotes correctly and clearly into my essay really helped me as a writer.  Another thing I never realized was a smart idea while riding along was to ask questions on your paper. It’s important to write down the questions you have as you read and that way you can either ask or look up your question later. Analyzing each article in this class definitely helped me become a better writer, but it helped me more with becoming an active and critical reader.

The Trouble with Metaphors paper that I talked about in the first learning outcome definitely took the longest to revise and edit.  Incorporating quotes and evidence into my paper was hard for me, because I did . not know what my argument was. After re-reading the three articles over and over and carefully annotating them a second time I finally got ideas for my evidence.  This quote in particular that I decided to end towards the end of my essay was the most important quotes throughout my paper: “But it’s when we start testing our metaphors for their social and cognitive usability that design can become really powerful” (Erard 2). This quote talks about the meaning behind metaphors and why there needs to be a meaning which is a very strong and powerful point when talking about such a controversial topic.  Through my essay I talked a lot about military language and the meaning behind the usage itself. Writing this essay gave me the chance to reflect and think about how important metaphors really are and how much impact they can cause. I never really thought about metaphors and how much they can affect someone until I wrote this paper. This paper definitely helps strengthen my skills as far as writing goes, because it made me think critically about things I normally would not ever think about.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eCsCgDSZoqhelnNQPU70td6wo-d0wCBHeOnauzkUeQ0/edit

“The Importance of Metaphors” was one of the first papers I wrote in this class. I would say I gained the best feedback on how to improve and change my paper for the better. In my free draft, that was my first draft for my essay I didn’t write much because I was struggling on making connections to my thesis. Not only was I having trouble with making connections, but I also needed to support more evidence with quotes.  If doctors did not use metaphors when treating patients, not only would they not be doing their job, but patients would feel too weak to  heal their disease. In my introduction on my first draft it was not fully developed at all, but one thing that I tried to focus on in my introduction was my word choice. I needed to be very conscious on my word choice because in thee articles wee were referencing in this paper, there were some sensitive topics. I decided to focus more on the medical importance, and how metaphors affect patients, but also mentioned that they affect everyone whether they are a patient or not. It is a sensitive matter so I had to be careful when using words like “fight” or “battle”. There is absolutely nothing wrong with incorporating the words in an essay, it is just better to be aware of your audience, if you choose to incorporate certain words they have to have a significant meaning. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KuNM4W2bBgmNEfJRAeXjBuXYwo1ohe6ATLhN4757UnU/edit

As I started wrapping up my first draft, I made major changes to connect my thesis to every point I was trying to convey throughout my essay. One great changes I made was supporting and providing the evidence I needed to include in order to connect all my ideas to my thesis. I struggled a lot on not only including enough evidence. It was not necessarily including quotes, but I had a hard time explaining what my evidence actually means. I clearly added several more paragraphs so the reader would be able to understand my evidence that I was supporting. I began to explain Khullar’s piece of writing when I went more in depth, by writing a few more paragraphs about his beliefs on military language and how it affects others around us. I also expanded on that by mentioning when it is acceptable to use military language and when it is not. Metaphors are very blunt sometimes, and it can be a bold move to use them in certain cases. Elaborating more on Geary’s Ted Talk helped strengthen my essay as I connected Khullar’s thoughts in comparison to his talk. One quote that helped summarize and connect every authors ideas and beliefs about metaphors was: “Metaphors imply the deliberate action of a living thing pursuing a goal” (Geary 4). This quote supports my thesis when talking about pursuing a goal. A crucial statement I was trying to make throughout my essay was that if you are going to use metaphors, they must be significant or have a meaning behind the metaphor. You never can know for certain how a certain phrase or metaphor can affect a person. How we use our own language influences other people and may change our belief or views on others around us. I believe throughout this writing process and peer review it set me up to write a better paper next time, since this was one of our first pieces of writing. As I continued to write throughout this class it meant that I gained a better understanding on how to include specific pieces of evidence and then expand and explain, and after connecting these thoughts and ideas to my thesis.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ItFjDfI1UD3U4TmuWlhRiBQYKklN9nxkLU9fuo4E_Zg/edit

Studying English or any language in school, gets tiring. We grow up learning and practicing our native language. We hear and use it everyday which is why we’re so fluent in our own language. In this podcast it talks about a man who had to relearn his own language all over again due to a terrible tragedy. He had to learn everything all over again as if he was just a child. Nobody likes relearning something after they already learned it once. For instance, in high school if I failed a test I had another chance to retake it if I did all this extra practice and corrected my test. Math is like a whole other language so nobody likes relearning a unit. When you are motivated or have a purpose you can always accomplish what you think is unachievable, even if it’s a process.

I would personally always think of taking English classes every year of school, was unnecessary. After listening to this podcast, I never thought it was important to relearn the same subject and repeating every year. The bottom line is we’ll lose our language if we don’t practice more ethan we should everyday. Every year we learn new ways to go about writing an essay, or putting words together and expanding our vocabulary. English has never been my favorite subject, but after listening to this podcast, whether or not something tragic happens to someone, it’s important to practice language everyday everywhere you go.

In the future I expect language to only grow on me, meaning I will just get used to it over time and except it. I realize the importance of language and learning new ways to go about it. Imagining a world without language or words is hard for me to imagine. I think in the future I will apply what I learned since I was just a child, and just use it to my best ability to communicate to others around me. Without words none of us would be able to communicate with each other.

Chapter 7 in “They Say I say” talks mainly about why we care about the topics we write about, and who cares? It’s hard for any student to realize when they’re not being specific enough all writers do it, ot just students. We assume that the audience already knows what we’re talking about so we never go into full detail. The writing templates that were displayed in this chapter were most helpful in my opinion, when writing a thesis statement. Writing a thesis statement is crucial for any essay. Thesis statements need to be not only clear but specific. The point of the thesis of your paper is to prove your point throughout your paper. In conclusion, the point of this chapter was to pin point the question and address who cares about what you’re writing, and why are you writing what you’re writing.