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

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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!

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I noticed last night when I was doing my last minute revisions on my Reflective essay and my Interpretive essay that when you read it over and start doing some revisions you can really make your paper more clear and easier for others to understand. Also it made my paper significantly longer and allowed me to do what was asked for the assignment.

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So I was thinking of how I could relate my class (English 101) to the Thanksgiving break. I wanted to show my love for the holiday season and English. I thought of some creative ideas; for example, over thanksgiving everybody is sharing their food with others to help out other people and it relates to English because when you work in groups and you have an idea that your group is responsible for brainstorming ideas for that particular idea.

weekly...

yeaaa sooo i haven`t been totally diligent about doing a weekly blog but when i remember i do it.

i have been feeling aside from my normal self these past couple of weeks... personal reasons. so i`m getting myself back on track! i just put my revised essays on d2l & i feel pretty confident. why idk. prior to break, i can`t say how class was because i was there physically but my mind was else where. this week is a new week & i`m feeling good... right now. hopefully no one screws this up. =D

weekly blog

today i realized that our generation created the word "texting" before there was only the word text, used to decribe letters and nouns (jon says). I found this quite interesting.

Good news everyone!

1) Im having a great Thanksgiving break
2) I revised my papers this morning and i think i found the "formula" to add qoute onto the bad date essay!

I qouted my friend in the stoy and elborated on how there point of view changed my may own. Im not complete sure if this was the goal at hand but its got to be close

Weekly Blog #15

As i have been revising my essays I am noticing that I think i have the majority of the assignment done right. So that is a good sign. I think that if I just keep revising and getting new eyes on my essay that I might just be able to pass portfolio. I guest what I realized will hopefully motivate me to revise closer to make sure I do well.

Hi everybody,
I just wanted to say happy thanksgiving and i hope everyone is enjoying their break so far and revisons... see you on monday

weekly blog

Tonight I decided to start on my second interpretive essay. I decided to write about a current event that really interests me. I thought I could turn it into an interpretive essay by giving detail and depth to my essay through incoporating differnt resources and then adding my personal opinion on it. I can't wait to get started.

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Doing peer edit today really helped me see things from a different perspective. Getting feedback from a peer is always important because they will see things that you over look. I still have a lot of work to do with my interpretive essay but I think I can start heaading towards the right direction. Thanks Becky!

Hooray! Another succesful revison! with this essay from last night that gives me my two interpertive essays and my refeltive essay for protfolio. Thank god because no offense I am so tired of writing papers! This one was on my worst date ever and if you was to ask me i think its a decent paper except it seems a liltle choppy at times and because of it may be confusing. Well we will see what happens in class today, hopfully its okay so i can just spend the rest of the semester revising and studing for my finals. See everyone at class and if i dont Happy Thanksgiving

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Right now i am going through some tough personal times, and it is affecting my writing and how i think about my writing. I am seeing the world a little different and how things are viewed. I noticed this quite frankly in my memory essay, i went deep into what memory was, and as i was writing with my new knowledge i thought about how our memories impact our daily lives.

Where does it not, we remember where to go and what to do and bring each day, it affects our conversations, like when you bring up past events to talk about and discuss and laugh about. Creating new memories off the old ones, we all do it, and as i thought about this i wrote it in my paper. How even when there are parts we miss or skip we fill them in with what me believe that they should be. But why do we do this, what makes this a recurrence of our lives everyday. Sometimes I really wonder how people work each day.

HELPP

Does any body know where we posted our worst date essays? because i apparently didnt save it on my computer, and i cant find where we posted them. thanks
Heather

Weekly Blog #13

Today in class we went through our essays and somewhat revised them. I think this was very helpful class period. I like to receive criticism from other writers in the class because i know they know exactly what i am going through so they can help me understand what needs to be changed and why. Receiving a new view of your own writing always helps you improve.

Don't worry Becky. You will do just fine. I have read some of your papers in the in class packet and your essays are consistently in the top 5. And even if you don't think your prepared then you should still see improvement in the right direction to meet your goals for portfolio.

Weekly Blog #12

We have been finally starting are revisions and I am quite worried that i am not prepared. I believe that I can write pretty well but i honestly feel like i have no idea what the panel of judges or the criteria are looking for. I am suddenly becoming very stressed about this class that I though I had under control.

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Reflecting upon my essay was very simple. I made sure to show in detail the process in how we wrote the essay. I also touched on what we talked about in my conference and how i understood the paper more after. I am a little unclear why we have to do another page for the essay because I seemed to touch on most of the things we listed in class on Wednesday.

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Revising my reflection essay was a success. I understood exactly what I wanted to go back and fix, which made the process easier. I added a lot more detail to add depth to my paper and I feel it is much better than it was before. Adding a page went quickly and I feel made my paper better. I'm hoping this took my paper one step further to being one of my portfolio essays.

For the first time im no waiting untill the last hours to do my homework assignment! I know i still waited until the last day but i technecly started yesterday. Although im finding it hard to correct my paper it seems like writing in general for me has improved

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We just wrote collaborative papers in this class. I think that it helped our social skills. And made it easier to work with others. I think that it is nice that English 101 is not only helping us with our writing, but also helping us to work well with others.

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This week we had to make corrections to our reflective paper. After making corrections I was much more satisfied with the out come. Which got me to thinking that maybe we should start writing our essays for Portfolio. That way we could start making corrections and make sure that our end product is something that we can be proud of. I think this would make every one much happier. And it would be all and all better for everyone.

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In class we have been writing reflective essays. And I began to realize what I can do better in writing. But it also has me reflecting on my decisions and things. Thank English 101.

sorry about the last blog being muti colored... i dont know why it did that

So to make up for some of my missing weekly blogs i thought i might tell you a little about myself. So i thought i would tell you the most recent weekend. I bought Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2! I know that most of you dont see this as a big deal but this is supposed to be the higest grossing video game of all time with a groundbreak 500,000,000 dollars made in the first month! Did anyone else buy it??? If so let me know so we can share out experinces

Although my essay wasnt essay #1 I found that both of our essay were very similar. In both our papers we could use more qoutes. Even though we both have lots of details and example it seems like they are more from a experince viewpoint other than a context viewpoint. I think if we both used more context that both our papers would be great!

Weekly Blog-12

We had to write a reflective essay on our experience working together in groups. It was difficult trying to write 4 pages reflecting on the experience and I thought the length was a little long. Most of the essays I read through in the sample packet are repetitive, but have a lot of really good and strong information. As always, some are much better than others.

Weekly Blog-11

We have all picked our topics for our individual essays and have completed them. We then met with our groups twice and came up with a 3 page introduction and conclusion, and added all of our 3 essays into one huge collaborative essay. My group worked extrememly well together, and I think we created a really good and strong essay. We worked really hard at it, and it was interesting working together in groups while writing an essay. However, this is good practice because this is what we will be doing in our work fields.

Weekly Blog-10

We have now all picked questions and groups and are all going to write individual papers in our groups, then make a big collaborative one. We are working on picking topics and questions that are papers are going to be about this week.

Weekly Blog-9

We are flying through this semester and everyone is working hard. We are yet still working on the goals and following the course reader. We have had more assignments dealing with this as well. Everyone seems to be doing well in the class.

Weekly Blog-8

We have written several papers now, and have tried to improve our writing. We are still focusing on portfolio goals and have a much better idea of what those goals include. Everyone is much more comfortable talking in class and we are working on giving each other positive and negative feedback on all of our work trying to make everyone better writers.

weekly Blog-7

We had a week off of class and had conferences to meet and talk about our personal essays and get feedback.

It's always nice to know how you are doing in a class and if your work is right. We are still focusing on portfolio goals and relying more on the course reader to base all of of writings off of.

Weekly Blog-6

We have been working hard in class and still trying to make sure everyone knows all of the portfolio goals. We are trying to incorporate those goals into our writing and make sure that everything we write includes the goals and does it right.

weekly Blog-5

We have been writing a lot and working on portfolio goals even more. We are trying to make sure that everyone is prepared and passes portfolio and follows all of the guidelines. There are a lot of expectations in portfolios and they require a lot of goals to be followed. We all all helping each other with revising papers.

Weekly Blog-4

The first month of English went by extremely fast.

We focused a lot of the TV shows and the aspect of Judging.

We wrote a few small assignments, but no major papers at that point.

We had the blog all set up, and everyone was getting used to D2L and posting on here as well.

Weekly Blog-3

We continued to discuss judging in class and all of our assignments had to do with judging. All of our assignments again have focused on judging and the guidelines in the Student Handbook.

We are learning how to incorporate these rules and guidelines into our writing so we can pass portfolio.

Weekly Blog-2

We continued to still talk about Project Runway and Top Chef and had to watch 3 episodes for class for our homework. We again discussed the episodes and how that relates to our own English class. We also discussed how the judging is similar and different between TV and English class as well.

Weekly Blog-1

We started outt he year by watching Top Chef and Project Runway and relating that to almost everything we did in class. We watched an episode in class as well and discussed how that relates to our classroom.

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Reading over my individual paper that was incorporated into the collaborative essay I found multiple corrections. I feel that although I added a lot of information, my thoughts became unclear. I feel that when revising my paper I should look for the main thought and make sure it is clearly conveyed. Then I should add detail that pertains to only that thought. Finally, I feel that I just listed off a lot of information rather connecting everything I mentioned to the main question. I have a lot of revising to do but now that I know specifically what to look for I'm on the right track.

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I really wish i would have done these blogs from the start, and not misunderstood that we needed to do a blog in additon to the assignment, because then i wouldnt be so far behind! also im running out of stuff to write about. In additon to being behind on these blogs i cant shake the sniffles off soo fusterating!! I know we were all kind of getting sick of top chef n project run way.. but i kind of miss it! yes this blog jumps around alot but im out of stuff to write!

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I felt that English went fairly well today. I really feel that we're taking off and heading toward the right path for portfolios, and I finally see where everything is coming together. I really hope my relfective paper turned out okay, but if not theres always time to revise it. Im getting nervous about the fact, that our fate of the class lays in some strangers hands.

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During the course of this semester we have written a lot of essays in English 101. This class has truly made me realize how difficult it is to write a paper. First one must struggle with coming up with enough ideas to make the paper as long as it needs to be. Then they must struggle to come up with enough detail to make it as long as it needs to be. At the same time they must come up with quotes and details to support their topic. All while worrying about grammar and spelling. Over all writing papers is extremely difficult.

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Looking over my reflective paper there were things that I found that I liked, and things that i didn't like. I liked how I explained what the assignments were. Although I feel that I could've used more detail and more quotes. I also feel that my topic sentences could've been stronger and more interesting.

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While reading my reflective essay I noticed a few things that I would like to revise. I found that I need to add more supporting detail to further explain to the reader what the assignment is. I would also want to incorporate more detail and quotes to support each topic in my group member’s essays. Another requirement that I failed to meet was explaining the ethics and politics of an interpretive essay. I found that going into more detail will lengthen the paper and further explain and meet the guidelines. Ultimately, I touched on the surface of reflecting but I need to go into more depth. It is nice to have a clear understanding of what I need to work on and the next step is to put it into action and revise my essay.

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This week we are figuring out how to write an outstanding reflective essay and how to incorporate the goals into it, whihc include talking about the choices you made in your interpretive essay.

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last week we looked at how to make each paragraph stronger by changing the introductory sentence in your paragraph so it helps answer the big question you are trying to answer as well as it giving insight to what the paragraph is going to be about.

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2 weeks ago we worked in groups to put together a collaborative essay, which we found was much more difficult than we thought because everyone in the group had there own way of writng an essay.

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3 weeks ago we wrote an interpretive essay about a question we picked in our groups that would help answer a much larger question that we would have to answer in our collaborative essay.

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4 weeks ago we focused a lot on key terms and distinctions within papers and how a key term or distinction can sum up what the whole paper is about.

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5 weeks ago we were assigned to write a paper incorporating quotes form "texts" or 3 stories as well as to interpret the details form all 3 stories.

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6 weeks ago we had confrences about our writing and other peoples writing where we focused on analysing data and wheater the writing was vivid and detailed and if it answered all 6 questions form the DK handbook.

Reflection Essay

Reflection Essay
Many college students often work in groups on projects and papers. This is because it is proven to help them to get used to real world and learn to cope and work well with all different kinds of people. For example in English 101, students are asked to get in groups, choose three questions in which all have a common theme and each person write a paper answering the question. Then the students will collaborate there papers to answer a bigger question they think of that has to do with all three questions. The collaboration process seems to be somewhat tedious. It can take a while to come up just with ideas and titles then the writing process can take even longer.
I am in English 101 and asked to do the collaborative essay. The initial paper was not that difficult. The question I decided to answer was, “How can making up the truth be a positive thing?” and the two other questions in my group all had to do with what is true and what is not. When it came around to the collaboration process, it took quite a while to think of just the question which we decided was, “How does one’s recollection of an event shape what is true in history?” Once that was out of the way we had to decide what points in each of our own essays were strong and how we could use those points to help answer the bigger question. The rest of the paper consisted of us attempting to make the points flow and explanations strong enough so the paper was readable.
The way that we were able to find common ground worked out very nicely. We were able to brainstorm what we were doing and come up with the best way we thought we could write a collaborative essay. We understood what we needed to have in the essay to make it the easiest to follow without being the class. Our collaborative essay was made of all of our ideas and main points in our papers. We tried to be as detailed as we could without repeating what was in our three individual papers. We tried to come up with a title that would help readers get an understanding of what was going on in the entire essay. We also tried to think of words that would get our points across more effectively which we found made out paper a lot more entertaining than before and not as repetitive as it would have otherwise been.
As a group, we decided that the best way to help our readers fully comprehend our main points was to incorporate the facts from our paper that seemed to have to most value. We used details from essays and short stories in our class book, “The First Year Composition Reader.” Our group thought that with examples from a text, quotes and explanations we were able to put our point across. Our points were stated and we tried not to give too much away from each of our individual papers. The collaborative essay is explained well and fully.
There were some decisions we had to make that we knew could either make or break our essay. Some points we decided to change around a bit so that it would make more sense to the readers. One example of this is when were attempting to state how each person has their own different interpretation on an event. At first we had four or five different sentences in which when we read it out loud just did not prove the point we wanted it to make so we had to do a lot of revision while writing the paper. The whole decision process can result in making the paper a terribly under explained answer to a question that has to do with nothing, so we attempted to brainstorm as much as we could before we actually started writing. Our paper would have turned out completely different if we did not do this. We probably would not have explained anything as much and our paper would have been very choppy. When we sat down and started making these decisions we were unsure at first how detailed we should be. I feel that we were detailed enough for having to write an introduction essay, however after talking with our teacher, I realized we could have gone in to much more detail so that all points expressed in each of our individual papers would have been touched on and understood, instead of just the main points in each of our papers.
The paper we wrote as a group has a sense of worthiness when answering the question. It might not be a professionally written piece of work, but it does have points that are explained well. They probably could be a bit more developed but for a first draft of a paper it answers the question at hand and does a good job at it. The readers will be able to understand the answer to our main question, maybe without even reading it. The reader may say we could use a bit more, however overall it does answer the question and explains our main points with detail and example.
There were some parts of the process where we needed to remind each other what the main question actually was. There were parts in the writing portion that we sometimes found that we were starting to drift off and were not fully on topic. It is easy while writing an essay to find yourself way off topic and having paragraphs of nonsense in which you will then have to cut and basically start all over again.
The collaboration process has given me the time to work with others and see how my peers write. This has helped me somewhat improve my own papers by showing me ways that others answer the same questions. I feel that with the whole collaboration process I have become a better writer and the process has forced me to understand that my papers do not always flow well and do not always explain themselves the way I though they did while I was writing them. The idea of working with people who have a different sense of writing styles can help students think outside the box the next time the write a paper. It helps to allow students to experience a variety of ways to help explain their points in different ways instead of just writing the same repetitive papers.

Topic Sentences

Topic sentences are critical in a paper. They tell what the paper will be about or even what the paragraph will be about. My topic sentences give information as to what the following paragraph will be about, but I could make them more interesting. All my topic sentences sound similar and don't really hook the readers attention. This is bad, because topic sentences also pose as attention getters. If my topic sentence is not interesting then the audience won't want to read what follows it. This is why topic sentences are so important.

Assignment 8 Reflection

A necessary aspect of attending college or any school for that matter is that you are going to get homework. No one likes to do homework but it is essential if you want to learn anything new and advance in school. Occasionally you will also be required to write an essay or a report for your classes. It can be very difficult at times researching information and then ultimately writing the paper. However this can usually be completed within a couple days of working. Although every once and a while there is a twist thrown into the directions for the essay that may make it more difficult than normal, in my English class we received such an assignment.
In my English 101 class we were instructed to write an interpretive essay that addressed a question chosen from a list. This may not sound so difficult, which it was not. The question I addressed in my essay was; “What is the fine line between arguing on behalf of the truth and making truth up?” We were instructed to refer to and quote in detail three essays from our textbook, which applied to our topic.
Personally I thought this part of the assignment was fairly simple. I was able to find three essays that applied nicely to my topic, and was able to receive a lot of good information from them. A major point of my essay was that everyone looks at things differently, so something that may be true to one person may not be true to another. Everyone has a different upbringing and comes from a different background so we all look at things differently. In my essay I quoted from an essay in our text book called They have a Different Idea About That. I stated, “Each perspective in its own environment, or circumstance, will be true or valid-in that environment, in those circumstances. One statement that may be true in one person’s circumstance may be making up the truth in another circumstance.”
As stated earlier I felt that part of the assignment was no different than any other assignment. The more difficult part came when we were instructed to work on a collaborative essay with other students in the class. We were required to use each of our own individual essays together to address a broader question. We were then instructed to get into a group of two or three people and work on this collaborative essay together. For my group I only had one partner, which believe did make it slightly easier for us since we did not have a third question that had to be addressed within our essay.
My partner for the collaborative essay was Katie and the question which she was addressing was; “How might making truth up be a positive thing?” Our topics were fairly similar to one and other which I believe also made it slightly easier on us to form a collaborative essay around our two topics. A major point of her essay was that leaving out information is not necessarily lying. As well as if you are making up truth to help or protect someone it can be a positive thing. In her essay she states, “If someone thinks a different way than someone else, if they make the truth to get their point across I believe it is ok. In the end I think as long as you are doing it to help someone and you are not hurting anyone I believe it is a positive thing”
As a group we were instructed to write an introduction to our collaborative essay tying together each of our topics and addressing a larger question. Within our introduction we stated “There is a fine line between arguing on behalf of the truth and making the truth up, but when? In this situation it may even be acceptable to leave information out. How can making the truth up be a positive thing?”
I believe trying to combine our two essays into one that addressed both of our topics was the most difficult part of the assignment. Not only were we trying to make two completely different papers sound like one. We also had to work together on an introduction and conclusion to the paper. This is what caused most of the problems for us. As we stated in our essay everyone has a different way of looking at things and everyone has a different way going about their work. This is why it was such a challenge for us to complete our work as we each had a different idea about how it should sound.
Everyone has their own way they like to go about writing an essay, and their own particular word choice. Writing a paper with someone else can be a bit of a challenge sometimes, as one person thinks it should be written they way they normally do it. When the other person thinks that it might sound better written they way they like it.
Overall the assignment we were given in my English 101 class was challenging when we got to the end and to find some way to make our topics work in conjunction. I do believe it was a good experience for me, as I was able to receive feedback from one of my peers on my writing. I was also able to provide feedback to her as well, which I believe strengthened our essay in the end.

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The hardest part about writting a collabartive essay to me was the fact that we each had different ideas and since all our paper were on a different topic we all wanted to put different stuff into the introduction paper. also trying to meet as a group was almost impossible since we all had such different schedules. but im glad we made it through and its done and over with and im pretty dang happy with the out come of our over all papers.. thanks ladies :)

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I am getting a little worried that my reflective paper wasnt done right, and if it wasnt ill cry becuase i dont want to rewrite it. everytime i ever had to write a reflective paper it was only like a half page but to stretch something out for four pages was a little difficult. I am glad i accomplished it though i just hope its done up to expectations!

reflective essay

Have you ever had to write a paper that really stumped you to the point you didn’t even know how to start? The paper I had to write did exactly that. This wasn’t your however wasn’t just your ordinary English paper. The challenge to this assignment was that it was an interpretive essay. Therefore there was no right or wrong answer, or way to go about it; thus making it a very complex essay.
This assignment derived from my English 101 class. For this particular project we were instructed to organize groups containing three members. For my group I selected Katilin, and Becky to work with. We were then given a sheet of paper which contained a series of different ideas and questions of which we were to form a bigger question pertaining to three of those ideas/questions on the sheet. From the three base questions we were then each assigned one that we had to compose a four page paper, using three stories from our composition reader as references. After each individual paper was constructed we then had to combine the three separate papers into one large paper. Each of the essays’s had to collaborate to answer the big question for the final paper. Our main question that assembled, from the smaller questions, was “Do one’s own experiences and the history we read in textbooks influence the way we would solve a social demographic situation?” The three questions in which this question was created are as follows: What makes differences in social demographics (race, economic class, gender, nationality, ethnicity, etc) so difficult to resolve? What does memory have to do with making an argument? And what relationships do myths have with memory and history?
As a result of the three small questions getting divided amongst us, I was designated to write on the topic of “What does memory have to do with making an agreement?” So once I started to dissect and pick apart my question I had to determine what was the question really saying/asking; who would be reading my paper, and what details would be most fitting to put in. After I determined that my paper would directed towards readers not in my class; I decided to stay away from referencing the actual assignment in the essay. I also prepared it for a more mature audience by expanding my vocabulary, and including questions that would really make the reader think, such as “how can you base an agreement off a memory if memories can’t be held accountable for being truthful?”
The toughest part about composing my individual paper was trying to contemplate how to write it, and where to even start. I decided the easiest way would be to pick a side of the agreement and take it from there. My main choice of topic was that memories cannot be the only thing an argument is based off since memories are often altered. I then went on and explained how memories are often altered, what happens when a memory is altered, and how people tend to fabricate their memories in their minds, but believe that it’s the truth. The three sources that I received information from for references were: The Method of Memory, by Jonah Lehrer, My Father’s Brain, by Jonathan Franzen, and A Photograph Is Not an Opinion, Or is it? by Susan Songtag.
I set my paper up by first explaining my take on the topic, and then continuing onto why I thought this using the details from my resources. I made the paragraphs flow into each other by taking the topic of one and slightly altering it and forming it into another question which would then be a new paragraph. To grab and keep the reader’s attention and really make them think, I threw some questions in some of the paragraphs, with the intent that they would have to stop their reading and think for a minute about the question proposed. Even though we did have to use three resources, my topic was broad enough, and opinionated enough that I could take my own ideas and conform them into the same ideas of the writers from the composition reader, so most of the paper was indeed using my own ideas. While thinking about my own paper in its entirety, I also had to remember that my paper would be combined with the other two papers so I had to maintain a theme so that the papers would easily fit together.
When the time came to combine all three papers, we were then stuck with the predicament of how we would get these entirely different papers to conform into one. We wrote an introduction for the large new paper, that used the idea that myths are derived from memories, since information can be added to memories making them false and fabricated thus turning them into a myth, and from these memories which are turned into fabricated myths, social demographics are formed. We formed our introduction in a way that we felt best represented all of our papers as a whole. We started the introduction paper out using three questions that we pulled from each of our papers. We then took those questions and made three separate paragraphs giving a brief overview of what each paper would be about. Following those paragraphs we continued to write about how these papers tied together to form one, and answer our main topic question. Once the intro was done, we then just used title headings to transfer from paper to paper.
The most difficult part of writing the intro as a team was just that. We had to work as team, not individuals. Everyone has different writing styles, different vocabulary, and different ways to go about writing a paper. The hardest part about that for me was the fact that we would be stumped on how to go about writing a sentence and they would just want to skip it and come back, and for me I need everything to go in sequential order. Also I like to try to expand the vocabulary of a paper, but they didn’t agree on some of the words I suggested to use. It was also difficult because we all had such diverse schedules we had a rough time finding enough time to meet in a group making it very rushed to try and achieve a good paper.
Although it was a new experience writing in a group, which got a little stressful at times it was also very beneficial. I took away different ideas of how to go about writing a paper, like waiting until the end to turn the format to double space instead of doing it right at the beginning. I also gained new vocabulary from them, and different ways to proof read a paper. I learned that team work can make a project easier in the fact that you have other people’s opinions, and ideas to use, or give you ideas. It makes you look at a project in a new light, it brings more enjoyment out of it knowing you have teammates to support you and cheer you on.
Over all, this assignment turned out to be very educational. I learned how to go about writing an interpretive essay, how different people write papers, and most of all that team work really is the key to success. If we wouldn’t have collaborated together and made compromises here and there we would have never been able to compose a paper. So even though it got tough at times and I wanted to cry, it was all worth it for the sense and feeling of accomplishment.

Reflective Essay

Becky Fellows
English 101
The Difficult Process
Writing an essay is never easy work, having to write an essay collaboratively with two other idea driven girls is much more difficult. “The Explanation of Social Demographics” is the collaborative interpretive essay that Heather, Kaitlin and I cohesively wrote. We each had our own individual essays about somewhat similar topics and we needed to bring each of our essays together and make them into a cohesive essay. Writing an interpretive essay “Myths, Memories and History” was difficult to make the many choices. Then to have to hope that the choices one made would condense well with the other two in the group.

Each and every author approaches an essay from a different direction, some come at it head on, start from the beginning and end at the end. Others just write their ideas and elaborate and make the order more defined after they have completed the essay. The focus of an essay is really the defining aspect, without the purpose behind the essay there is no real determining factors. Looking back each decision that was made within both, the individual interpretive essay and the collaborative essay, from the purpose, and the context, all the way to the audience that is being targeted, are what drove the essay to its focus.

While writing the interpretive essay “Myths, Memories and History” there were many different directions to go to depict the relationship that memories and history shared with myths. Initially it was difficult to determine who was going to be the target audience for this essay. To completely understand and comprehend the connections that are being made in this essay the readers must be of a certain age. Above the age of 17 years would probably be best. Not that the essay is a difficult read but the contexts used could be considered confusing at points. The diction, context, purpose and connections that were used in this paper could have been the factors that made this essay more advanced and difficult to read. The collaborative essay was targeted to approximately to the same audience, generally my two group members and I had the same target audience.

As my interpretative essay was developing it was difficult to see how the contexts would connect the interpretation. In this essay specific word choice and concepts were utilized from other essays. The essays that were used were “The Gospel of Consumption and the better future we left behind” By Jeffrey Kaplan, “Marcel Proust: The Method of Memory” by Lerher, and “The Future of the American Frontier” by John Timran. Theses essay were chosen to be featured in the interpretative essay because they all had topics which correspond to the topics that were being used in “Myths, Memories and History”. “The Gospel of Consumption and the better future we left behind” discussed facts and history which was easily tied into the history portion of the interpretive essay. Also Kaplan’s essay used descriptive words which were perfect to describe the relationships that myths shared with history and memories. For example “conjured” and “reviving” were some of the words that allowed many connections to be made. “Marcel Proust: The Method of Memory” obviously focused on memories, this essay not only helped develop a basic knowledge on memories but also gave a different look at exactly how myths and memories are connected. This essay created some thought provoking concerns and ideas, “One could say that Marcel Proust had a myth on his hands, a concept which he conjured up about the origin of memories that he was attempting to prove to a disbelieving public.” Finally “The Future of the American Frontier” gave an example that coincided with the interpretative essay perfectly. While attempting to prove to connection of history and myths Timran’s essay was easily explained in “Myths, Memories and History”, “This myth is all about the outlook on the future of America. The “Frontier” the horizon where everything is better, this is a myth because no one person knows the future of a country or the world so to assure and promise to anyone that everything will be fine is pretty much impossible.” The context of “Myths, Memories and History” is what made it interpretive, utilizing outside sources to develop the argument of the relationships between myths, memories and history.

In the collaborative essay used the context of each of our own essays. We each had a quote from ourselves that help support our argument, by utilizing our own work I feel it helped us to become more involved to our topic. For example “Everyone has different memories of different situations, some good and some bad, and in situations people tend base their view of something off that one memory.” (As quoted by Heather in her essay, "Memories") I believe that by utilizing our own interpretative essays which have already been affected by other authors we included some of the most in-depth though provoking ideas into the collaboration.

The purpose of “Myths, Memories and History” is to compare the relationships of memories to myths and history to myths. These relationships are quite important to the outlook of the world. Memories are difficult to distinguish between false and true, they can diminish over time and can become hazy and difficult to remember. This being the problem with memories is what causes the relationship with myths, my being unable to recall every aspect of a scenario each memory become very unreliable. These unreliable thoughts and stories will suddenly be turned into myths “Myths are hard to define; they are invented stories, ideas, or concepts. Myths are typically a traditional or legendary story, with or without any proof of fact or a natural explanation.” As stated in “Myths, Memories and History”. History is typically considered to be fact and of course true because that is what the majority of the population believes, by having theses loop holes in history there is room for myths. Myths in history are usually just another view of an event, but also myths can make history what it is, as discovered in “The Explanation of Social Demographics” “Without these myths, facts couldn't be considered true because one would have nothing to compare them to.” This is displaying the connection of history and myths, and the way they depend on each other for their credibility or lack thereof. Within the interpretive essay “Myths, Memories and History” the intent was to carry the purpose throughout the essay. Dividing the paper into sections of introduction, memory verses myths; history verses myths, and then concluding with myths and a restated purpose. The layout and elaborating that was included in the interpretative essay was intended to clarify the intent and purpose.

Within our collaborative essay we wanted to have a cumulative larger thesis question to tie our entire individual essay together. A question that could and would be answered by reading each of our essays, from the essay ‘The Explanation of Social Demographics” our thesis question “Therefore, is it fair to say that one's own experiences and the history we read in textbooks influence the way we would solve a demographic situation?” This statement is what lead to our purpose to give knowledge to the reader to answer this question.

While I was writing this interpretative essay I attempted to take the less popularized side to each argument I made. The main idea I kept returning to was to make the connections clear, using my own words and my own interpretations of the sources I used and the questions I answered. For example in “Myths, Memories and History” I stated “Each one of these so called historical “facts” that everyone assumes is the truth could really just be yet another myth that someone tells you to make everything seem to be O.K.” by giving my audience something to think about that in the end the will hopefully come to a conclusion about. I struggled always having to keep my group members in mind as I wrote and I feel it went quite well. The many hurtles my group and I were forced to overcome will in the long run help us to become much better authors.

The collaborative essay “The Explanation of Social Demographics” which I wrote collectively with two other classmates was an elaboration and connection of all of our personal interpretive essays. We each had a question that we were to interpretative, in this collaborative essay we used all of our ideas and research to come together and give reason to the questions we were trying to answer. Some of the difficulties that my group had was our combination of layout, while we each wrote our essay the way we normally do weather that be traditional or not, bringing everything together was difficult due to the fact that we all too different views on essay writing. Also each group member came with their own idea of what is the most important aspect of an essay. I feel that the content and diction are the most important aspects to an essay they give the information and create an easy to read intelligent essay. Whereas it seemed to be that the rest of my group felt layout and sentence structure should have been taken into top consideration. It was a difficult process to work through having many ideas being discussed it was hard to keep track. Many times it took much convincing and possibly some majority rules to make a decision, but I believe along with my group members that we, in the end, had an informative combination of ideas which is “The Explanation of Social Demographics”.

Weekly Blog #11

I am now quite worried about the collaborative essay it is always hard to share ideas and views with a group but now in this case we are all going to want the essay to go our way because we all want good grades. Coming together with my group and discussing wasn't the easiest thing. I felt like there were a lot of great ideas that were lost in translation.

Weekly Blog #10

It is difficult to use sources in my writing having to try to use essays from the First Year Composition reader is going to be hard for the interpretative essay. I know that actually in the long run for the well being of my essay it will be much easier to interpret my question if i have other essays to back it up. I will just need to focus on incorporating the sources well enough.

Weekly Blog #9

Writing essay make me think of how much i don't really like the process of having to come up with ideas for essays. Also how much i dislike trying to have enough information to make a long enough essay so that I can be taken seriously as an author. I hope that i will fill the requirement for portfolio even though I don't know what that is.

Topic Sentences

The topic sentences for my essay seem to be generally on topic, I rarely steer away from the focus. My topic sentences sometimes will b more focused on what is in the paragraph to come rather then the overall essay.

The talk of topic sentence was very helpful this week. The most helpful thing i got out of it was that a topic sentence should be concise but detailed at the same time. By making the topic sentence concise it make it easier for you to stop run-ons in what your going to write about in your paper. The other thing i saw that was important was to make sure you give small detail. This means that you tell the reader about the assignment but your careful to leave out key point so that they have a reason to keep reading. Just make sure you give an answer at the end

When writting a paper, your topic sentence says a lot. After writting the first sentence in each paragraph of my paper out. I could tell cearly what the general idea of the paper to follow would be about. They all relate in the sense of theyre talking about memory. I did notice that I did have a few run on sentences. Another thing i could work on for my paragraph topic sentences would be to better transission them, because even though I know what the paper will be about so it makes sense to me, the reader of the paper may not. However over all i think my sentences were fairly good.

First Sentences

AFter looking at the first sentences in my paper, they all seemed to be pretty similar. Many of them simply included the title of the article i was citing from. While most of them did address what the following paragraph would be about they were vague for the most part and did not address the question of the essay.

First sentence

By reading the first sentences I realized that most of them were very similar and broad. They were very boring and not attention grabbing. Looking back there were a few things that I would change about my paper. I feel that some parts were rushed. The first senctence to many of our paragraphs did not best suit the rest of the paragraph. There are many corrections that I would make.

First Sentences

After reading all the first sentences of the essays, I concluded a majority of them were structured fairly similiar. Although most of the first sentences introduced the topic, they were vague and for the most part boring. I also noticed the word choice of the essays were vague, making the sentences generic and repetitive. Some strategies to enhancing the first sentences and even the introduction as a whole would be to incorporate quotes and ask specific questions to give the readers something to think about and develop an analytical standpoint.

First Sentance

After reading my first sentences of each paragraph I have determined that I could not make out what my paper was really about if I combined them. I think the reason for this is the fact that I did not have very much description in my first sentences and I was way too informational and limited to whom my audience could be and who would actually understand or be interested in actually reading this paper. I think for future papers that I right I am going to start off my first sentence of my paper with my thesis statement and then my first sentences of my paragraphs after that not be about what I read but about what was in the readings and what I was hoping to find in those readings.

first sentence

From what i was told the assignment was sense i wasnt able to make it to class wensday i went through my paper i wrote and looked at each of the sentences that started off my paragraphs and i noticed that even though they let you understand what the up coming paragraph was going to be about and they helped answer the main question at the end of the paper i believe I could have spiced them up because they were very repedative and started to bore me. To do this i could have used quotes to grab the readers attention or i could have worded them differently so it didnt sound like i was mono-tone and boring.

first sentences

After reviewing all of my topic sentences on a different sheet of paper, I realized they all need a lot of work. First of all, I start three of the topic sentences in the same way by saying what the title of the article I read was. I could have started the paragraphs with a quote or something different to make my paper more interesting. In other words, I directly stated what I was going to talk about from paragraph to paragraph. Also, my topic sentences don’t relate too much to the question I’m trying to answer. By making them go with the question will further help me answer the question in as much detail as possible. All in all, I need to work on making my topic sentences go back to my thesis and having different structures for each topic sentence to avoid repetition.

First Sentences

I wrote down each of my first sentences and evaluated how well they supported and connected to my paper in its entirety. When I looked at my essay from a different perspective I noticed an important flaw. Although my topic sentences seem to set up what is going to be in the paragraph – by directly relating to the topic – I didn’t do an adequate job of connecting my ideas throughout the paper. Instead I just switched from one idea to the next. While revising my essay I need to work on fluency between my ideas and the first way I can improve on that would be by insuring my topic sentences give both a clear understanding and a direct relation to each thought.

First Sentences of my Essay-

You look at your paper very differently when you are reading all of the first sentences of each paragraph together. It gives you a completely different outlook on your paper and topic. When I looked at all of the first sentences in my paragraphs, I realized that some were too short. In all my sentences however, you could tell what the paragraph to follow was going to be about, but in some I needed more detail and more of a solid idea about what was going to be in the body of the paragraph. You never want the first sentence to be too wordy, or too short, and it's sometimes difficult to find exactly what to say without doing that. I realized that some of mine were in fact, too short or too long, but otherwise I think they were pretty solid sentences. When you separate all of the sentences from each paragraph and put them all together, it's easy to see when the entire paper is going to be about, because you get a little preview about each paragraph that is in the paper. It's important to make sure that all of the first sentences make sense, and in some way relate to one another. These should be some of the strongest sentences in the paper, so I realized that I need to go back and do a little revising in my paper and the first sentences.

Articles

I will be using the articles title Culture and Struggle, What Should a Billinaire Give- and What should you?, and a photograph is Not an Opinion. Or is it. i chose these articles because i believe that they will be full of key terms and ditinctions which will allow me to answer my question to the best of my abilities.

Articles

I will be using the essays "The Gospel of Consumption", "Marcel Proust: The Method of Memory" and " The Future of the American Frontier". "The Gospel of Consumption" is the essay that I will find the majority of my key terms and distinctions. I am using this essay because it refers to differences and history. I am hoping that these key terms will help me add many vivid details to my essay.

Distinctions

In class we were assigned to read two articles. The first article was "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" The second article was "Letterpress Language:..." Both of these articles were about how technology changes writing. However their styles were kind of different. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" was about how everyone is getting so used to having everything instantaneous, so much so that it's even getting difficult to sit down and read a book because the reader has trouble paying attention. However, "Letterpress Language:...." was about how technology effects the way our writing appears. For example, it mentions all the different fonts, colors, and placements. Both essays basically have the same point, which is: technology has made the writing of today much more advanced.

weekly blog

this past week, we focused on conparing different writing styles & our interpretations of them. we didn`t have any major writing assignments so i`m happy. hehehehehe. i`d rather analyze things anyway.

Both of the articles that had to be read for today where very similar to each other. My question was to come up with the differences between the "is google..." essay and the Technologies one for class and doing it again for this article now. Which has made me realize their writing styles in "is google..." and the article to be read for today are very similar.

interpretations

the article we read in class was very similarly written like the "is google....". they both were very detailed when speaking about their topics. my question from monday was based off the interpretations between the "is google..." & the other article. by reading this new article/essay, i do now better understand the style of writing that they share. by looking for words that i had a hard time interpreting & find them in context, i was better able to understand what the writer was trying to portray/explain in their writing.

Distinctions

Writting is influenced greatly today by technology, which was discussed in both articles that we read. Some of the aspects that may stand out to you as a reader, or draw your attetion to it are, the fonts, such as what size it is, is it bold, underlined, italized, or just regular size twelve New Roman font. The number of paragraphs and how the body of an essay is set up may also draw your attention to it. Along with the body and paragraphs how the letters are set up on a page can also draw attention to a reader. Through technology our writting has become more advanced, in which both essays discuss different types of technology used.

Distinction

Writing has significantly influenced writing today and in the passage “Letterpress Language: Typography as a medium for The Visual Representation of Language” the author, Johanna Drucker, talked about format and how the visual aspects of typography in a piece of writing are important to understand when writing an ssay. This includes how the words look on the page and what point they are trying to get across. This related to my group question in that we discussed how the font, number of paragraphs, larger quotes, and visual aid differed from the article and the essays we have written in class.

Differences

The essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” displays some aspects of the work and detail that goes into a well written essay which was described in “Letterpress Language: Typography as a Medium for The Visual Representation of Language”. Johanna Drucker the author of “Letterpress Language: Typography as a Medium for The Visual Representation of Language” speaks about the assumptions that are made in language, also the different types of languages that are in the world. In Carr’s essay he writes with distinct terms referring to many different technical features.

Johanna also mentions the emphasis on letters she references a essay in which “Each page was headed by a letter of the alphabet located in a word which spoke the letter’s name.” In Carr’s easy he used larger sized font and bold lettering to distinguish his thoughts throughout the essay. He also used his title and first paragraph to his advantage by utilizing his fonts and also by using a quote from Space Odyssey.

Many of the examples and explanations through the essay “Letterpress Language: Typography as a Medium for The Visual Representation of Language” were about differentiation between important, less important, well known, unknown, thoughtful, thoughtless, and many other words and terms incorporated in an article. In Carr’s essay he would use smaller fonts, upper case letters, pictures, quotes, and colors to help differentiate his meaning behind the words he chose.

Distinctions

There were many distinctions between the article we read for Friday and the "Is Google Making Us Stupid article.'' Both articles focused a lot on technology and how that affects writing in several different ways. The article by Johanna Drucker, "Letterpress Language: Typography as a Medium for the Visual Representation of Language" article focused a lot on typography and the way the words ended up looking on the page. She talked a lot about the structure of the page as well, and how letterpresses used to be used. She notes that writing produces a visual image and the shape, size, font, color, and placement of letters on a page all incorporate into your writing as a whole. She then discussed the visual differences between using a letterpress and using the printing devices that we use today and how big of a difference there is between them. Overall, both articles talked about the ways that technology is making our writing different.

distinctions

After i finished reading the article we had to read by this Friday i noticed a few major distinctions. However when i look back on the post that i had to post for Wednesday i realized that the main distinction she made form her article which helped answer my question for my post was that there were technological restraints.

The question that my group had was to compare and contrast the differences in the "Is Google Making us Stupid" essay and the Technologies one. Now I have to talk about those differences and talk about how I interpreted the article differently because that was my question.

I guess first our group came up with the similarities and the most obvious one is that they're both about technology. Both of the articles talks about information and what it is doing to our habits. The Google article is talking about how Google is negatively effecting our brain and the Technologies essay is talking about how graphic designing programs can help us come up with new and interesting ways to write a paper, forcing us to think about what we are writing a bit more. We also said that another major difference is that the Google article had a much more negative tone and the Technologies article had a much more positive one.

After saying all that I would have to say that question didn't change how I reader either article or effect my comprehention of it. It didn't do either because I didn't know what my assignment was when I was reading through both of the articles. However, when we where assigned that question I did have to look back through both to get more points to talk about. I would also have to say the the way the Technologies article was written might have effected how well I read the article because of the formating some of the sentenses seemed cut off and choppy. The Google article I might had read a bit differently because I'm tired of reading articles written telling us that technology is bad and making us stupid.

The assignment given to my group was to figure out what effected out interpretation of the essay "Is Google Making us Stupid?" We had to come up with all the different factors that might make us understand the essay less or more.

Some of the factors that we chose were in the essay itself. For instance, the fact that the writing was so small and close together made the essay appear intimidating. Therefore make those who read it want to just skim it, instead of making sure that they understand it. Then there was one picture that was kind of distracting. Then some of the other factors had to do with the way the essay was presented to us. For example, when it was given to the class we did not even have a clue what it was going to be about. Then we were only given ten minutes to read it, thus making us just want to skim through it. However, on the positive side the classroom environment being quiet made it much easier to pay attention to the essay, because ther were no distractions.

Overall I did not finish reading the essay in class. These examples were some of the obstacles I had to pass to read it or some of the things that made it easier for me to concentrate. These are things to look for to either prevent or help when the students are reading essays.

group 2

When it comes to putting the materials and elements together for a paper there are many things you need besides the topic. It’s the same for putting together a car. You not only need the brand and the name and the engine, one also needs the wheels, the paint job, the interior design, and the steering wheel. Your essay is not going to catch eyes with just text, your not going to win a prize for your big words and definitions alone. The author needs to include eye catching parts to create an image for their essay.

One of the things that Nicholas Carr gave to his essay to capture the reader was that he created a unique title, that drew attention and gave the reader the question, “um, I wonder that this is about?” which made them read on. Another thing that Nicholas Carr did with the essay was that he quoted from the movie Space Odyssey 2001 which gave the reader a familiar feeling and comfortable about maybe what the material is about. This gave the reader even more reason to read on.

As a reader would follow on in the essay they see that there is not only very good research, but also very good visual aid. He gave a picture which gave a visual picture in the readers mind to see what the author is talking about, and help understand his topic. Later on I saw also that he would use big letters to start off a new part of the topic in the essay. This is very good because it lets the reader know that they have completed a thought of the essay and it helps them connect it to the next part. It can also be seen as a check point in the writing, showing that they have gotten such far and has such and such more to go, before all date is collected.

In the essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid" Nicholas Carr tries to make it seem that Google and other search engines are making it WAY to easy for today's generation to find answer to their common everyday problems. This relates to the our writings in a way because of how it reflects to modern day topics.
Other comparisons between the two is that although Carr's essay is very long it still has a very simple structure of intro body and conclusion. Another main mechanical difference is how both the class and Carr rely text to various parts of the essay to give example and other evidence.

group1

When asked to compare the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr to the essays writing in English 101 there was a lot of thought that needed to go into finding specific similarities and differences. At first glance, whether it is a story about the author through their own eyes or the personal opinion on an issue, all the essays were written as the author’s opinion on the situation. Yet, when further evaluating the essays materially and technologically, there seemed to be a few specific details in each that made them contrast more.

Materially, in the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr went into great detail about how technology, in specific the internet, has changed the thought process for many people today. With advances in technology, people are having a shorter attention span. The author incorporated a lot of outside research that went into creating this passage. This differs from the essays written in class in that we have been writing from personal experience and have not researched information to support our writing. When a writer incorporates resources, statistics, and facts in their writing it supports the main topic and conveys that the author has a valid point. Another way to do so is to offer different points of view for the reader to consider. Where the author of this passage showed different facts that represented each take on the issue, our essays in class tend to be focused on one view. The point of view, in which our essays have been writing in, is through the author’s eyes or first person.

Technologically, the essays in English 101 have been basic essays with a set amount of paragraphs. In the article by Carr, he added interest to the reading by incorporating pictures and large quotes. When adding pictures and quotes it should convey an important detail about the paper. The essays have also been significantly shorter than the passage. This does not necessarily make the passage better but it does convey that the author has a lot of detail and can fully support their topic. One way to lengthen the essays written in class would be to add more detail about each event that occurred. This would depict a specific picture in the audience’s mind while reading.

Group 1

My group's question was about how the publish text of "Is Google Making us Stupid," is different physically and technically, than our own papers. We came up with a few ideas, such as that it was longer in length, the font was way smaller than our papers, and we figured it would be about 8 pages long. The longest paper I have written this year is about three. Also, the topic is different than we have written, because the author researched and added quotations from scholars and professors.

Also, in our group we decided that this paper was somewhat ironic because the author talks and researches about how people are too lazy to read lengthy pargraphs, yet he has a lengthy paper, expecting people to read it. We all agreed in our group, that we barely even fininshed reding it, and if we did we skimmed through the packet.

Group 3

between the 2 essays, they both were very interesting to read. they both spoke on something (internet/technology) that our society currently finds very important in our lives. "is google making us stupid?" was somewhat of an informative essay in my opinion because it made me actually reflect and think about the affect the internet has had on how i conduct research and find answers. however, the other articles showed how technology is very beneficial and good for our lives.

i must say that reading the article in class didn`t really change my interpretation of the article. either way the article(s) still read the same. they weren`t hard to comprehend at all. it could possibly be because i`m missing an important concept or something. i`m not sure.

since the "what is the internet doing to our brains?" article was more interestingly put and written, i was more able to read it. i liked it more. not saying that the other article was boring, but the "what is the..." was more creative with how it was explained.

Group 2

Our group talked about the ingredients and materials that make up this article. Carr uses many of these "ingredients" in writing his article. There are little things from pictures, to font size that make up this article and make it what it is. Every writer uses different things like that to catch the reader's eye while they are reading the article.

The picture in the article is more of a comic relief that Carr chose to include. This article is very lengthy and this gives the reader somewhat of a break while reading the article since he is trying to get across his opinion and a lot of facts. Writers often include this to keep their reader interested and want to keep reading and when they see a picture while flipping through before reading they will want to read it and not just give up and say its too long.

The font in this article is very small, and there are a lot of paragraphs included. In some paragraphs however, the first letter is bigger and bolder indicating that paragraph is going to be about a different topic, subject, fact, or just something different than what was in the previous one. This can almost be used as a checkpoint to the reader, and if they have to stop reading its easy for them to find where they left off, of if you are taking notes it's easy to take this article and split it into different sections.

Group 4

For our group we were suppose to say what had an affect on us while we read. For me the hardest thing was the amount of time we received to read the essay. When I'm timed for reading something, I rush myself. I feel like I have to read it all so I will skim some things so I might miss something important. We only had ten minutes to read and plus we were just handed the text and did not really know what it was about. It was hard for me to read it word for word and for me to truly understand it.

Secondly, the font for me was very small so it was hard for me to read it quickly without having to take a second glance to make sure i read it right the first time. With a bigger text it would have been a much easier read than with the text that was used on this essay.

Lastly, there was a picture right in the beginning of the essay so right away I was distracted by looking at the picture focusing more on that than the essay. Sometimes I doodle on the picture which takes time away from me reading the essay. This is bad because we were timed and because I took time to color I had to skim to catch up to where I should have been if I was not doodling. If that picture would not have been there I maybe would have understood the essay better because I would not have skimmed the essay.

group 1

In the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr analyzes the internet’s affect on our lives and the way we read and think today. He goes into great detail explaining how our process of thought is shaped, and cites many different sources within the article. He includes a lot captivating information to help the reader become more interested in the article, and want to continue reading. He also uses title of the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid” and the quote from the movie “A Space Odyssey” to draw the reader into the article and make them want to find out what the answer is.
Technologically Carr uses a lot of information and stories from other writers to back up his article and provide other point of views to the topic. He starts many of his thoughts or paragraphs with a quote or citation from another piece of work to get his idea rolling. He describes many situations comparing the way we interacted and thought before and after the arrival of the internet, which entices the reader and makes them become very involved in the topic.
It is obvious that Nicholas Carr did a lot of research for this article, to include the amount of information which he did. While the topics of the papers we had to do this semester were nothing like the internet’s effect on our brain, it is still safe to say that Carr’s included a lot more information and different materials than we would have to. He also goes into greater detail to entice the reader and make them interested in the topic.