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As I look back over this year, I’m amazed at the list of reading and writing strategies students have practiced. Here it is:
Writing Process:
- Prewriting strategies
- Drafting strategies: idea-generating drafts, architectural outlines, reverse outlining, slideshow/Pecha Kucha drafting
- Revision strategies (global)
- Editing strategies (local)
- Proofreading strategies
- Remediation strategies
- Introduction strategies
- Conclusion strategies / more conclusion strategies
- Paragraph coherence via transitions tags, conjunctions, subordinating words, pointing words, and keyword repetition
- Thesis-first and thesis-last organization patterns
Reading Process:
- Pre-reading strategies
- Annotation: gisting, asking questions, paraphrasing, “talking back”
- Segmenting/Chunking
- Reading faster with more understanding
- Connection-making: Text-to-text, text-to-self, text-to-world
- Strategies for coping with difficult or ambiguous texts
- Passage-based freewriting/looping
- Concept mapping
- Synthesis tables/diagrams
- What I Like/What I Don’t Like note taking strategy
- Reading for voices, concepts, examples, claims, evidence, naysayers, and implications
- How to play the Believing Game and the Doubting Game to think critically about sources
Integrating Ideas with Others’
- Using the ideas of other writers:
- Making claims about others’ ideas
- Using the ideas of other writers as support
- Using the ideas of other writers to open up new lines of inquiries via new concepts or questions
- Entering into conversation with other writers
- TRIAC paragraph structure
- Barclays paragraph structure
- How to choose among summary, paraphrase, direct quotation
- Signal phrasing
- Voice marking
- Forwarding
- Countering
- Connecting ideas with other ideas via transitions, coordinating conjunctions, subordinating words or complex/compound sentences
- MLA Citation practices
Peer Review/Critiquing Own Work and Others’
- Applying defined criteria to peers’ drafts
- Focus on global concerns throughout most of the process
- Address local concerns near the end of the process
- Recognizing successful moments in a text
- Diagnosing problematic passages
- Providing specific suggestions for improving problematic passages
- Offering suggestions for connections with other texts or examples
- Playing Devil’s Advocate or offering another viewpoint
Recognition of and Control Over Sentence-Level Errors
- Recognizing main/independent clauses
- Recognizing subordinate/dependent clauses
- Using compound and complex sentence structures
- Coordinating clauses with conjunctions
- Subordinating clauses for emphasis
- Comma splice
- Fused sentence/Run-on
- Sentence Fragments
- Compound subject-verb agreement
- Leading, embedded, and trailing subordinate (dependent) clauses
- Mixed sentence structure
- Signal phrasing
- Short quote formatting
- Long quote formatting
- Ellipses
- Brackets
- In-text citation
- Parenthetical citation
- Works Cited
Over the course of the ENG 122-123 year I have been reminded thoroughly of grammar. Stuff that I had learned before but forgotten. It amazed me what I remember from grammar. I like to compare grammar to math in a way, Math is a strength of mine, so comparing an equation with a sentence makes it easier for me.
My global revision strategies have improved so much over the course of my second semester in this course. Last semester I struggled greatly with revision, but I believe I really sunk into peer review and used the comments given to me to make global changes in my paper. Like I said the in my exit prompt I think that one the course of the semester we were revising the whole time in order to be able to teach a newcomer how to get into a discourse, using Gee, Brandt and Delpit
My strategy for getting through hard texts and essays is chunking. Reading a paragraph and then writing off in the margin exactly what that paragraph means. After you get through the paper you combine the main ideas of each paragraph and it will be a whole lot easier to get the message of the writing.
Something that I will learn from english 122 and 123 is more than just being able to write an essay. There has been so many things I have used and transferred over to other classes without even knowing. For example, intergrating ideas with others is something that has helped my writing drastically. I use to just tell my reader about personal experiences without backing them up with any other voice or evidence. Using others ideas has helped expand my writing; I use to just write essays on just the topic and used personal experiences to help the reader get a better understanding of what my point it. Now after reading article and getting a topic to write about; I find my paper to be more strong because I don’t just have my personal experience but I have others as well.
Moreover, my reading strategies have improved. Since I was pulling quotes from the reading it was important I had a good understanding of what the reading was about. I had a method of chucking the piece of writing and annotating it, and not just annotating but connecting to the reading and ask questions. I did not just do the reading to get it done but to help me.
Peer review in high school is nothing compared to peer review in college, and I strongly believe that is one of my most improves in this class. I never really cared about peer review because my rough draft was always turned into my final draft with changes in grammar. Now as the semester went on my rough draft looks nothing like the final. I did not just fix the grammar but my sentences and paragraphs. Some of my paragraphs from the top end up at the bottom, or I added in another two paragraphs, and I love that.
I think at the end of the semester what I have learned in english 122 and 123 has helped me. I think that this class was very hard and had a lot of work but at the end of the day, I am improving in my writing and more. Expanding my mind, and not accepting the first piece of work. That alone is a huge improvement for me. Thank you for all you have done.
One thing I’ve noticed to always do whenever I have some type of writing assignment is Prewriting. I think it just is a lot easier seeing my ideas out on paper before I write. It helps with my note taking, ideas and conclusions being drawn, and just the overall organization of my essay. The best example would be my Literacy Narrative Archive essay, we had to read 10 narratives and the only way for me to pull important, relevant facts would be for me to take the same notes for the different essays I read. That helped me try to figure out my topic and how I wanted things to be presented. I think this part is just very helpful in general to gather information and then can draw conclusions from that information.
Annotation is something that I have been practicing throughout my high school years and I think it has developed a lot more in these two past semesters. The reading process is always something I struggled with because I don’t enjoy reading, especially passages that are long. I might have to read something a couple times and then underline important pieces and write notes or questions in the margins to help me think. I can just improve my attention being higher. For example, for my first time reading Gee ever, I had to re-read and re-annotate multiple times because I miss points the first time I read. I would say my annotation skills are solid for the most part but I just need to pay closer attention to detail.
Conclusion paragraphs might be the hardest part of the essay for me that in some drafts I just don’t put one. But I learned new tricks to pull my ideas from body paragraphs and use them to make a conclusion. Most people say they cannot write an introduction without a conclusion but I think that the introduction must come first to know my ideas. My best conclusion paragraph might have been the most recent essay, Discourse entry because I didn’t have one at first. But when working with peers and other teachers, my ideas were drawn and with those could make a smooth exit to my paper. These strategies are going to be with me for most of my time because I found these to be the most helpful tools for writing.
When I initially started taking this class I was unsure how much it could really relate to the other classes that I was taking. Then slowly but surely almost every class needed something that I was doing in this class to help it. From lab reports to lengthy political science papers they all needed at least one of the skills that I had learned in this class. After changing my major from environmental studies to political science the change brought a lot of papers. Something that was huge for those papers was having the ability to integrate others ideas with your own so that it can better enhance the argument that one is trying to make. Another aspect that was huge with those papers was learning how to properly write transitions and have a better flow with it all. Overall this class with tremendously help me with my ability to write when it comes to political science.
In english 122 and 123 I have improved in many areas of my writing and reading skills. These improvements have already began to help me in other course works. Writing in this class I have come to learn to approach in a different and more effective way. How I revise my papers not only in this class but in others I think has improve. This will continue to improve the quality of the work I do because of the skills and methods of the revision process I have learned in the class. Now when I look at early drafts of essays for classes I know to look beyond the local errors and to find global errors. Integrating my work with others is another important skill that I know that I will use throughout my life. Learning signal phrases and how to properly introduce a quote or when to even quote or paraphrase someone else’s work in mine are skills that have improved my writing dramatically and I have used these skills in other classes. How I connect my Ideas with others in my writing has improved also and in other classes such as my economics or nature and literature courses when I have to write a reflection on a reading. All of these skills I have learned and improved on through english 122 and 123 I know will improve the quality of other works I do in the future.
Throughout the year I have learned a lot. English 122/123 has been a great experience. I feel like I have accomplished becoming a way better writer now than I was in high school and coming into college. I have already wrote several papers in college where I have used many of the skills listed above. The most important ones so far for me have been things that I didn’t already know how to do or didn’t focus a lot on or give time to. Revision (global) process has been huge. I did learn some revisoin tools in high school but not to this degree. We did not utilize the peer review and I think that is super important. For my oceanography final paper I passed it around to my family and friends so that they could look over it and edit it some or give tips and advice.
Another thing I found helpful to use more in depth is using the ideas of other writers. Not only should you do this when trying to find paper that agree with what you want to say but also to argue against your point. It makes your paper stronger if you can counter what you agree with and then give more examples to why what you think is best. I never really used alot of quotes and help from other authors before. It also doesn’t just have to be authors it can be movies and Youtube videos. For a paper I wrote in high school I tied in the movie “Blackfish” to discuss how places like Sea World aren’t really as good as we think they are. I feel I better approved that skill this year when using the Blindside in my second paper about discourses.
I know it sounds like something super simple that everyone has been doing since high school but I have much improved my drafting process. It’s not just writing the paper and calling it your first draft. It’s going over the sources you want to use. Making marks all over tha pages connecting ideas you want to use or questions that come up when you are reading the paper. It is making charts, concept maps, and chains to tie things together. Drafting was taught to me in high school as reading the article and just writing. There wasn’t a big deal made about going through and making marks and ideas you could use. Here thats what it was. I printed out my articles I wanted to use and marked them up and came to class or used email for questions I had.
Signal phrases was another thing I think I have learned to use way better. Instead of using “Gee says” all the time I learned to use different words and phrases like ” Gee declares” and “Gee writes”.
What have I learned over the course of this two semester year? This class has given me plenty opportunity to practice my writing skills, further develop my critiques, and look for better evidence to support my claims in papers. Still, looking over this year, I feel that rather than receiving new information or strategies, this year has been a sort of a refresher. Drafting strategies, one new claim could be from writing about one scene from my literacy narrative 7 times over. That forced you to look at that moment again and a again, telling the same tale over while trying to make it sound new. Every detail of that scene was recalled to the best of my ability. Doing that allowed me an ease in writing the final version that I would include in my essay.
The Pecha Kucha was another new thing that we learned about this year. It broke the ice in the beginning and reintroduced the idea of what a discourse was. There were the typical discourses that one could choose from but rather than do a safe one, I hoped to make it slightly weird and out of the box. The presentation gave someone the opportunity to really dig into a discourse and challenge them to explain it to a crowd.
This past year, we went over a bunch of different strategies that could be applied to all fields of study when it comes to writing. Looking at outlines, layering in different bodies of thought, working the introduction as well as the conclusion, and revising.
Never have I revised so many times or so thoroughly. Each paper was looked at, at least a half dozen times. From global revisions to the tiniest of local, the words were all repeatedly examined. This went on to show the merit in creating the final piece, the many steps that could be taken and how that would effect the final version.
This year has been interesting at the very least; it has managed to challenge our writing skills.
What I will take back and use for all of my courses are the various processes of reading. Yes, reading because within college it is very unlikely that you will make it out alive if you avoid reading for any of your courses. With these reading processes, I have been able to intake far more information that has been given to me than before with the processes of chunking, annotating and comparing examples that have happened to my very own life. By mastering and following these reading processes, I have been able to become far more successful in my spring semester courses of biology, psychology, sociology: deviance and crime, and of course my English course.
These processes have been critical for me within my many major projects. For psychology, I had to write my very first literacy review on autism spectrum disorder. This paper would have been far more challenging if it was not for these reading processes because I had to compare and/or question various scientific sources of what autism really was.
This year in English I have learned a lot. Becoming an education major made me really understand that everything we are learning is extremely important. Everything I have learned will directly help me in my remaining 3 years here. From proof reading to revisions I will use everything. All of this is important because in order to teach material you must first understand it. One of the biggest things I will take away from this is the use of grammar and sentence structure. The age group I am teaching is big on sentence structure and a little bit of grammar. Understanding how a sentence should be formed and what a run on sentence is will help me teach others not to do that. Also since I have to do a lot of research papers for education and reading. The annotating skills and note taking skills we learn will help me tremendously. The literacy narrative research paper set the stage and opened my eyes to a new way of annotating. Probably one of the most important skills I learned was the ability to peer review. This is important because it was a platform to offer constructive criticism just like the kind a teacher would give to their student. Some examples of this would be…
“Your sentences are broken up. Try to use commas and make them flow into one another. I like this sentence a lot but build off of it. Maybe introduce the idea of discourse so the reader knows what the rest of the essay will be about from the beginning.”
and…
“I like this ending sentence it really ties the idea of the whole paragraph together. However, no mention of discourse yet so maybe introduce it so the reader knows following this will help them get into the discourse.”
Overall this class opened my eyes to a lot of new methods. Some of these methods I have never even heard of, like reading a paragraph backward to revise. All of these new strategies will help me in all the education classes I have to take moving forward because of the reading and knowledge that must be known.
Some of the big things that will transfer over to my other writing assignments in other classes is the writing process, especially when it comes to editing and revising. Also the reading process because i’m going to have to be reading information and studies done by advanced members of my field of study. I’m also going to have to use citations, maybe in a bit of a different format, for my future research papers and lab write ups. I have already done some of these tasks this year when I did some lab write ups. I also have a paper in sociology that I have been using some of these tasks for. English 122 and 123 have definitely helped me improve my writing skills and I feel that I don’t have to stress as much from writing tasks because they seem a lot easier now.
There are many things from this class that I will be able to take to other classes. Some of these situations/ classes are say a chemistry lab report, I will be able to take Recognition of and Control Over Sentence-Level Errors, to make my writing better. Even though we do not use MLA format in bio or chem I can still use the overall concept of citations and apply it to the new format. Like using a previous discourse to help you in a new one. I will also be able to take what I learned from peer reviewing and apply it to other times in my life possibly out side of a class room setting but in a professional setting instead. One thing that will be extremely important is the knowledge that I have learned about integrating my work with others. This will be very important in my life when it comes to writing lab reports on experiments/ research that I do in labs.