weekly blog

this week i have anxiously waited to find out weather or not i passed portfolio and cant bare the wait any more. Can anyone post a blog letting me know when they believe we will know weather or not we passed and failed and what our grade in the class is?

what I've Learned This Semester

Over this last semester in English 101 we really focused and became experts in taking two different sources, stripping them down to their main points, and using them to compare and contrast our own topic or thesis. After that we wrote detailed reflections on our essays. Looking back to the beginning of the semester I know there is no way I could have properly wrote a interpretive essay let along write a reflective paper on it. To start off we wrote some smaller papers comparing reality game shows with english class. From there we moved on to reading someone else's essays and interpreting them. This is where things became a little more difficult because it's real hard to not just give a recap of the text. Instead you have to put the story on the back burner and really focus on the main points. We spent quite a bit of time on this step because it was crucial to our final portfolio. After it appeared that most of the class had this process down, we moved on to reflecting on our interpretive essays. Just like before, when writing a reflective essay its extremely difficult and essential to not summarize the original work. Although you might do a great job of retelling the story, that is not what reflecting means. When writing these kinds of essays you want to get your main points across to the reader and in a deliberate or blunt fashion. The reader shouldn't have to reread a section, the main points should jump out of the page. All in all, I learned a lot from English 101, and truly believe I'm a better writer because I took this class.

weekly blog

It feels so good to know I completed my portfolio! I put a lot of work into my essays and I know that I did all I could and the final decision is up to the judges. Looking back I know I have developed my writing skill and I plan to take what I learned and adapt it to all my college writing in the future. Each step is a growing experience and I'm anxious to see how portfolio judging goes!

Well today is the day. All the hard work we have put in this semester is all falling on this last day and to say the least i am a little nervous. But my writing has grown tremendously and i have given these papers all i got. Whatever the outcome my be all i can say is that i am very grateful to have such a great class full of classmates and a instructor that has help me along the way. Although i was flustered at times i think that this experience will befit not only my writing but everything else in between as i continue my long journey of college. Best of luck to everybody today and don't worry I'm pretty sure that we will all pass ;)

Final blog

This my final blog post for the semester. It is a great relief and I feel much better having everything complete but this blog. The only thing left is to submit my portfolio for review. All of my work through the semester hopefully proves to be adequate because I feel as if I have improved enough to meet the goals of portfolio and move onto the next level to English 102.

Weekly blog

The most difficult aspect of English 101 was the fact that we receive no grades until after portfolio. We had no idea what we were doing right or wrong making progression hard to achieve. Although we received a little feedback at one point, I feel it wasn't enough. I do feel as if I have progressed as a writer, but if I would have received more feedback throughout the semester, I feel that I would have progressed even more.

Weekly blog

From the start of English 101 to now I feel I have made some strides to becoming a better writer. Although writing is not my favorite thing to do, English 101's focus was only on writing making me write quite frequently. High School writing courses were my least favorite class mainly because I struggled to get ideas. English 101 has helped me to develop my ideas and helped me to strengthen my arguments. Writing essays now takes much less time than before because of the amount of writing I have done in the short amount of time in the semester.

Course text essays

The assignments to use different essays from the course text seemed somewhat similar. Our goals and objectives were different but the overall essays had many of the same ideas. Many ideas throughout the essays coincided making each essay more and more easy to interpret. For the most part, the ideas throughout the essays focused on the morals, ethics, and politics.

Politics of Writing

The politics of writing can be very useful. They shape how you get your ideas across to your audience. To use a cliche to help explain politics, "Its not what you say, it's how you say it," pretty much explains politics. For example, if you're writing an essay for elementary school children you're not going to fill it with scientific terms, when on the other hand if you're writing an essay to scientists, this would be very appropriate. Politics of writing distinguish between what is and isn't appropriate based on who your audience is.

Citing Sources

Citing sources for papers has never been one of my strengths. It was easy to just state the article name and the author, but whenever it came to using any formal type of citing, I was at a loss. The hand out we completed in English 101 on Monday was a ton of help. Specific examples were given on the hand out and the way to create the MLA format was easy to follow. Without the hand out I would have struggled greatly with creating my works cited page for my essays to submit for portfolio review.

Adding Quotes

While trying to think of ways to strengthen my thoughts while writing interpretive essays, I found that using quotes is one of the best ways. My essays would use a quote here but half the time I wouldn't even use a quote. I added a few more quotes to my interpretive essays for each idea and my ideas have much more support.

My worst date

For my second interpretive essay, I chose to use my essay about my worst date ever. After reading through my essay, I realized that throughout my writing I only retold the story of my date. My revisions to my essay consisted of telling what made the date bad and also I explained how I let things that happened that were out of my control judge whether the date was bad or not. With these revisions made, I was surprised to have added over two pages of writing to my essay. The revisions I made to my essay have added some confidence to passing portfolio.

Portfolio

Tomorrow is the last day of English class. Our portfolios are being submitted and Ill have to admit I am quite nervous. I feel comfortable with my reflective essay, but my two interpretive essays worry me. Its not that I don't think they're good, I just really don't know how picky the judges will be. Throughout the semester people have been making it sound like portfolio review is almost impossible to pass and it has added a lot of stress. I hope that I pass portfolio because I have worked hard on my essays and I would like not take English 101 again next semester.

Interpretation

Interpretive essays are my weakest form of writing. Reading is not something I do on a regular basis and is one of the main reasons why I struggle with interpretive essays. After reading through one of my interpretive essays, I found that my ideas were not clear at all because I myself had no idea what I was trying to interpret meant. By reading through each piece of writing that I was interpreting at least three times, I found that the overall meaning of the text was much more clear. Therefore, I re-wrote my ideas throughout my essay and made it much stronger.

Revising my reflective essay

Reading through my reflective essay today and make my final revisions has added confidence in my writing. I am proud of what I wrote and I feel that I meet the goals for the reflective essay. At first my essay was only 4 pages, but with my revisions I was surprised to find that I added another page and a half totaling to about 5 and a half pages.

final blog

English 101 has come to an end and I have learned a great deal. My essays have more details than ever before and I spend more time on them than i did back in high school. I really hope I don't have to take this class again next year. I feel my essays are good enough to pass portfolio and earn a good grade.

Real-final one!

I think I might have missed a blog...so I am doing another "final" one just to make sure :) It's hard to even think what to write because literally the only thing on my mind right now is the fact that portfolio is due tomorrow! I hope everyone does extremely well, and we will all see each other in English 102 next semester :)

Weekly Blog-16 (Final one!) :)

This is the last weekly post! This semester and class have just flown by. At this point, portfolio is due tomorrow morning in class, and I am almost completely done and it's such a relief. I have two of my papers printed and already in my folder and everything, and am just fixing the little things on my 3rd essay. It will be so relieving to finally hand this in tomorrow morning and know that we are completely done with English 101! It has been a long journey, but we have all made it down until the end. I know I am going to constantly be checking the mail about everyday next week to wait for my letter, and it's going to be nerve-racking waiting for the letter, but I'm feeling very confident on my finished essays. I have not only spent hours...but literally days revising and fixing these essays and have put everything I could into making sure they were good and met all of the goals! I am hoping for the best, and am going to miss all the people in class next semester! Good luck to all with your college careers :)

Weekly Blog-15

We are continuing to work on portfolio, and I've been spending several hours, everyday trying to not only revise my own essay, but now my 2 other group members. We dont have class this week, and instead we are having group meetings again in the Grind coffee shop. It was a little overwhelming be at the meeting and realized that all the work I had done for my essays were almost completely wrong. I had to start over completely and rewrite two of my essays because they were not correct, and that just added to my stress about this portfolio. I cannot wait for all of this to be over with, and it's going to be so stressful waiting for the news on if we passed or not! I am crossing my fingers!!!!

Weekly Blog-14

We are still working hard on our own work, and trying to pick and continue revising the 3 essays that we are for sure going to use for portfolio. It keeps getting more and more scary knowing that this is due in about two weeks. It's definitely stressing me out trying to make sure these essays are going to be almost perfect, and have all of the guidelines in mind that the judges will be looking for.

Weekly Blog-13

We are starting to work on portfolios, and its extremely frustrating. It's hard to write these three essays that your entire grade in the class when we haven't had a lot of feedback. I've been relying on my peers a lot to help me get this done, and I'm really glad they've given me such good feedback and been a big help in helping me edit/revise all my essays.

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Today my plan is to write out each first sentence to all three essays and make sure i can clearly understand what the paragraph is going to be about based off of that one sentence. I also think that seeing it in front of me will help me to see if my ideas connect and transition well. This aspect of writing is one that is harder for me, i think i jump around with my ideas too much - this exercise will definitely help me to figure out where my paper needs the most work

weekly blog

Today it was really helpful to get feedback from a peer. Reading it through out loud made a big difference and not only did the editor see errors but I could hear sentences that i didn't like or that didn't make sense. I read through my second interpretive essay and I think that essay will need the most work right now, but I'm pretty happy with my other two so time to revise!

weekly blog

Last night I read through all of my essay again and found even more errors that I missed earlier. Things are getting better for each essay and I'm really improving my writing. Comparing what I had at the beginning to what I have now I can see a huge difference in my essays. All the work put into the papers during class and outside of class have helped me to have meet the requirements, have a clear focus, and correct mechanics and spelling.

weekly blog

Today in class i got to edit a paper. He had a few sentences that needed to be fixed in order to make the paper flow more easily. Other than that, his paper was well put together. He had numerous quotes out of the course reader and explained those quotes well after putting it in. By doing this the reader was more able to understand the quotes. If he fixes up the spots that tripped me up while i was reading the paper, he should be good to go!

Just in case you missed today's class or if you need a friendly reminder here some last minunte things that Matt told us...

Final Portfolio's should:
1) Include 3 separate papers, each with their own works cited page (if needed)
2) NOT have your name listed in the header or on the folder. Use your student ID # in place of your name.
3) Have your ID #, section # (english 101.14), semester (Fall 09) and instructors name in the folder tab header for each paper

Your Welcome

Today should be extermly helpful so i hope Matt shows up. I think i am finally ready to turn in my protfolio so i just need to know how to turn it in. I happy that most of my classmate showed up today and i think for the people who didn't show should be well prepared as well

weekly blog

Today I started to add my works cited and properly cited my sources. Credit for all the quotes I used are now properly give and my work is almost done. Just a few more revisions to my papers and they will finally be ready for portfolio.

weekly blog

Today in class we discussed how to properly cite sources. For our assignment we have to cite all our sources in our essays. This will take some time because we have to find the page numbers from our course reader that correspond to our quotes. After we're done, we will have properly cited sources in our essays and our essays will be ready for final revisions.

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My plan of action as of now is to just take on one assignment at a time and see how that goes. I am obviously going to want to work on things that are due say tomorrow but I do not want to end up overwhelming myself. I was planning on doing a lot of homework over this weekend and really catching up on things but due to me being sick it was very hard to concentrate on anything at all and I am afraid this cold is only going to get worse which is going to make doing these assignments that much harder to complete.

weekly blog

School is becoming basically unbearable for me. I have so much to do in so little of time that it is really starting to get to me. I am doing everything to the best of my abilities but I am worried that if I do not start stepping up right now my grades will not be what I like to see. English class however is one class that I believe I am doing just fine in.

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Today I reedited my paper that is going to be submitted for my portfolio. So far I think is turning out pretty well but just to make sure I am going to have more than one person edit it for me so that way I will be almost guaranteed to pass my portfolio. I am really nervous however that portfolios are due this Friday and I don't think I am ready for it. Especially because this decides whether I pass or fail this class.

weekly blog

In this english class we are in the process of writing our portfolio papers. For portfolio we have to write two interpretive essays and one reflective. I think my reflective is good and strong. But it got my to thinking what constitutes as an inerpritive essay?

After my revisons I am starting to feel pretty good about my writing. I still know that it isn't the best but it has gotten way better. With one week left i hope that my paper are at the point they need to be for friday. But having all three hit the four page mark I have no other choice but to be happy with my progess.

Weekly blog

Today I worked on my reflective essay. I like this essay the best out of all three. I feel that I need to also make stronger connections between my main topic of how conflict expand the possibilities of ideas to the body paragraphs. I also looked at each topic sentence and made them stronger - taking a closer look at the topic sentences helped me to have a clearer understanding of the main topic and I was able to convey a deeper thought throughout the paragraph. I still have more work to do but am happy with what I have at this point.

Weekly blog

This weekend I started really revising my interpretive essay. This one was more difficult for me. I had to find one main topic that I could connect each paragraph to. I decided to talk about how the importance of each aspect of style makes the paper more fluent, clear and enjoyable for the audience. I found a lot of areas in my essay that I needed to connect to the main topic. I also found multiple mechanical errors that I began fixing. I think I have made a huge improvement on my essay but it still needs more work.

Weekly blog

On friday I had my conference and it was very successful. We discussed each essay and I now have a clearer understanding of the expectation. I feel that it will help give me a better head start on revisions to my essays. It really helped me to look at my partners papers to see what I can improve in my own. I also got all of my questions answered and am ready to start another round of revisions!

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Portfolio's are due this Friday and before that date I need to do a couple of more things. First, I need to keep working on topic sentences, redrafting and revising them in order to make my paper flow better. Second, I need to start looking for grammar mistakes. This will also help contribute to the flow of the paper. Lastly, I need to keep revising my introductions and conclusions and make them so they answer the thesis of the paper. If I do these things, I will have successful essays.

weekly blog

While reviewing my essays for the final portfolio, I've noticed a few more things that needed to have work done. First was like the last time, my topic sentences were vague and could use to be more precise. Second, tying the paper together at the end has given me some trouble. I need to work more on the conclusion to further my essays. The introductions have been revised numerous times and now its time to move on to the conclusions.

Weekly blog post

Revising and reading through other classmates essays has been very helpful to me. You can see clearly what needs to be included to make the writing good. Reading through them puts me in the audience and enables me to think more about my audience when i am writing. Even when there are some things in the writing you're reading through that are awkward or not good, you can use it to your advantage to try and not make those mistakes.

Portfolio review is getting closer and closer. I find myself struggling to make corrections to my essays because everything I do just doesn't seem to be good enough. One of my biggest problems is I don't feel like my English 101 professor is helping me at all to prepare me for portfolio review. I'm really nervous and stressing out about portfolio because I don't want to fail.

Weekly blog post

Everyone's a critic and when it comes down to revising essays, criticism is always prominent. After getting my paper revised by a few of my friends, they all concluded that my essay was pretty well written. But after some others revised my paper, I found many of there ideas and statements they made about my essay were unnecessary. The problem is, my writing is specific to my personality and opinions making it hard for me to accept corrections made by people because it sometimes is taking away from the paper being more my own. Just because you don't agree with every statement in an essay doesn't necessarily make the essay bad, it's just someones opinion.

weekly blog post

After attending the third and final conference on Wednesday, I realized my topic sentences can use much improving. Topic sentences add support and help boost the clarity of the main ideas. Including specific ideas and adding many details within the topic sentences is one aspect I need to work on in my writing.

weekly blog

Today at my meeting I learned that all my topic sentences needed work. They weren't bad but by adding more detail to them, they could improve. I give a vague idea of what I'm going to talk about in the paragraph which leaves the reader to guess what I am going to talk about. When I add more detail, the reader will know exactly what I'm going to talk about and thus have a better understanding of my paper. Today's meeting will help me with my final portfolio.

Just about to go though some of my partners papers and i was just wondering if I will find a lot of simlarties in their papers compared to mine. I really hope so beacause that means that im that much closer to my actual goal of getting my A for this class.

make up #4

Going through and looking at all my first sentences of each paragraph is helping a lot. I feel like the first sentence should be the strongest and by doing this, it has made me realize that mine aren't as strong as the ones that passed portfolio usually are.

make up #3

I feel like this class has no prepared me for my portfolio. Friends of mine that are in the same class just a different section feel more confident than i do going into it. I feel like it would have been really effective if we would have revised each paper as it was fresh either before we turned it in, or right after.

make up #2

Edited my reflective paper was easier than i imagined. I am just going through my paper and breaking every section down and expanding even more than what i already had. I hope my group members will give me more ideas to improve it as well.

make up blog #1

as it comes down to the portfolio time, i am starting to get a little nervous. I feel like my papers aren't as strong as they could be and i'm hoping that i pass. I hope that by doing group conferences it will help me with revisions and i will feel stronger about my papers than i do now.

weekly blog

This week we are to review and revises other peoples paper looking for specific things. By doing this I feel that by seeing what other people are doing wrong I know what not to do and if I did do something wrong how to correct it. This was helpful and was a good thing to do because I feel more prepared for my portfolio now.

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Reviewing my topic sentences for my reflective essay turned out to be a success. I noticed that most of my topic sentences started out the same way and were plain and simple. By doing this, I changed them and now there is a variety of different topic sentences to keep the readers attention and to explain what I'm going to talk about in the paragraph. The same thing went for my interpretive essay. I started every paragraph the same exact way and it didn't add to the flow of the paper. Lucky for me they were only the first of many drafts to come.

weekly blog

Last week we were asked to add a page to the papers that we wrote both interpretive and reflective. The reflective paper included background information about what happen during our collaborative paper assignmentment. We were told that these papers along with another interpretive paper will make up the requirements for our portfolio. Overall our portfolio grade will be graded based on the length and quality. We were also told that we need to make specific changes to the papers that were already written.

weekly blog

This week we were asked to revise our interpretive papers along with our reflective papers. We were also asked to revise the papers of our group members and have feedback for our upcoming conference. Throughout the sememster we worked on various amounts of interpretive papers for our portfolio.

weekly blog

this week we were given the assignment of writing or revising one more paper to insert into our portfolio and were told to do the same thing we did to the other papers and that was to re-read the paper and add a page if not more into the old paper. We also have to read our group members papers and come up with ideas of how they can alter there papers to make them better prepared for their portfolio.

weekly blog

last week we had to revise 2 of our already written papers one being our reflective essay and the other being one of our interpretive essays. In revision we had to read our papers over and add a page into both of our papers by doing this i noticed that it helped me make my paper much more detailed and it helped the reader to understand my key terms and distinctions.