Tag: writing

Weekly Write Up #6: 9/26 & 9/28

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by

Lena Levette and Erin Evans

Reading for class:

For class this Tuesday we were assigned to read Scenario 19 “Repurposing a Text” and take notes. This scenario asks the reader taking on the role of a writer who works for the online magazine, Perspex. You are asked to recreate the style and structure of an article for an audience that is not specialized on the topic. In order to accomplish this task you must be able to reorganize the text while still conveying the message. In addition to this you must avoid plagiarism or copyright. Coinciding with this reading, we were also asked to find a scholarly article and bring it into class. Scenario 19 goes along with our class discussion because we will have to use this example to help us take on the challenge of writing essay 2.  The first step in this process should be pretty clear, start off with a topic that interests you and find an article that correlates to it. Keep in mind that once you have found your article it is important to read between the lines and draw a deeper conclusion so that your new audience can be informed and entertained.

For Thursday we were asked by Dr. Crowther to read Chapter 1:  Introduction to Writing (SCC) –1.3. This section of the text discussed how to properly use a source and what it really is. In college a source is simply anything that is not your own work that you will use for your writing. Anything from a poem to an online editorial can be categorized as a source. Majority of the assignments you will and have been given require a source.  To briefly state why they are necessary in academic work, sources help the writer take part in a fundamental conversion of knowledge that has long preceded you and will long succeed you. The knowledge you will need to engage in academic dialogue must come from a certain understanding that can only be obtained from a higher viewpoint.

After using quotes, paraphrases, and summaries you must give credit to the original creator to avoid plagiarism. The first guideline for using a source is to first have permission to use the source. Next comes the citation of the source using MLA or APA format. This is a highly important step because it gives the reader a chance to locate the source. Lastly include the citations at the end of your work. Also remember to properly introduce your use of sources in your writing by explicating it. In order to do this you may use quotes such as, “In other words”, to signal a phrase and justify how it supports the argument being made. Overall good source usage is prevalent to your writing because it provides concrete evidence for your audience.

Class Lecture:

In English 1101 we were lectured to about better writing strategies and how to properly construct an essay. In order that you must first create an outline to better construct a paper, because it helps you organize your ideas and paper. We also talked more about outside sources and how to put it in your own writing. When using outside information it is important that you give the most accurate credit to wherever you got the sources from not only that but, it’s highly recommended that you use a scholarly/ peer reviewed document because the source is more accurate and stronger. While going through the source you want to highlight keys ideas or quotes except they must be in your own words, which falls back on the plagiarism side. At the end of your essay you want have a work cited page so that if your reader wanted to check you on your quotes, then they can find the quote exactly where you found it at.

For Tuesday’s lecture we started off with the Daily Grade number 7. We were asked to write about the process of writing essay 1. What went well? What strategies were helpful? What was challenging and why? What would you do the same or choose to do differently next time? Once our daily grades were completed Dr. Crowther then let us share and we all got feedback on our responses. Many students had trouble with their organization skills and Dr. Crowther went back to stress the importance of writing an outline, which are essential to any writing project.  Included in this discussion she also showed the class her dissertation to show us that when you write as long as you have organization, from writing an outline, you can always complete the assignment at hand no matter how long it is. Other answers and suggestions such as brainstorming and writing sloppy rough drafts came up in the discussion as well. After that we began the introduction on essay 2 which is all about how we use outside information when we are writing. For our editorial we mainly relied on our own opinion but moving forward, outside information will be necessary for majority of our writing. When you are trying to add knowledge to your writing you must do it responsibly. This means giving full credit to the place where you received your information. Dr. Crowther explained that scenario 19 models this very well. She then went on to explain the summary and paraphrase assignment we will do for the scholarly article we chose for our topic. But first we need to know if the article we choose is reliable or not because there is a plethora of access to information and not all of it is true. To test this she broke the class up into groups of three to think about the author, place of publication, date, and where they are getting their information from as well.

For Thursday’s class we started off again with the daily grade which was to write 2-3 sentences describing what happens about a movie or book without naming it. Then we were asked to pick a scene and describe it in detail. This daily grade assignment went along with our paraphrasing and summary discussion because it showed us that you should have already have a good understanding of the information instead of just simply changing a few words from your source and calling the work your own. To fully understand the text you must first read and annotate the text. Then what Dr. Crowther recommended was to read it again and take notes. It is important for your notes to be your own words because if you use another person’s words it makes it more difficult to avoid plagiarism in your writing. As you’re writing you should add your own ideas to the research you found. If you use a quotation you must use an in-text citation, which is the author’s last name and the page number in parenthesis, so you can reference your source. To make the lesson clearer, Dr. Crowther showed the class three summary examples from Purdue owl’s website and had the class work on them in groups of three. Each group chose an example to work on and completed their summaries individually. Once they were done everyone in the group came together to create one summary with all their ideas. This task helped the class get more practice on summarizing and collaborate on ways to make our work better.

WEEKLY WRITE-UP #5: 9/19 & 9/21

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Overview:

Dr. Crowther assigned us to read chapter 4 (pg. 75-87) and chapter 9 (pg. 225-239) in preparation for our first essay. In chapter 4, the author introduced the idea of not focusing too much on small detail during the earlier phase of writing. The metaphor that the book uses to express this idea is that “you don’t put your curtains before you’ve built walls of your house.” (pg. 75) Then, the book proceeds to the idea of different ways of forming your thesis statement. The first way is called: thesis-last. This is when you provide evidence to establish your argument. The second one is called: thesis-first. This is when you state your thesis with some logical points to support it. The third one is time-based, meaning that time plays an important role. Some application of this method can be found in narratives and biographies. The last one discussed is context-based structure. This relies on the situation, and it varies “according to the context and to what the writer wants to focus on.” (pg. 83) You can present your thesis in two different ways. One is when you use your weakness to start a counter-argument. The second one is by stating your strengths. This is especially effective when you know that your audience agrees with your idea. The last point the book stresses about is the transition. It is extremely imperative to have a smooth flow in your writing so that your audience can connect from one point to another.

The second part of the reading was mainly on revision. It highly stressed on the topic of going back through your text to fix any error, not just grammatical errors. The book examines the significance of reviewing your paper before you get feedbacks. Also, before asking someone for a feedback on your article, be sure to make questions to ask your reviewer. This will provide a guideline to follow. The book gives an example of two roommates: Rachel and Inez. Rachel wanted Inez to give feedback on her essay, but she was unhappy with the feedback she got. Inez told her that the article was good with some little typos. Later, she realizes that she should have given her a set of ideas to look for and few question. This helps us to understand the importance of asking questions to our reviewers. Lastly, the author tells us that not simply to follow the reviewer’s suggestion, but to go back and check what could you possibly do to fix it. This chapter stresses the importance of referring back to your assignment, notes, and your PACT before starting your revision.

Class Discussion/activities:

Dr. Crowther gave us a homework assignment at the end of the week 4. The assignment was to find the writing topic and start thinking about the topic that related to the social justice by doing PACT chart and some brainstorming. On Tuesday, we began our day by doing the daily grade number six. In our daily grade, we wrote about what topic did we choose to write your first essay and what are some problems that we face when you start writing the paper including what did we do before we start writing your paper.

We have begun our Tuesday class by talking about how to continue writing our paper even though we think we are not sure about the prior sentences is by giving the symbol or highlight to the sentences to come back later but never stop writing. When our writing is going off the topic, she recommended us to go back into our PACT chart and understand who are we writing for, the audience and the purpose; it will help us to continue our writing in track. We focused on how to write the excellent essay on Tuesday such as start writing the overview of the paper before we start writing the actual paper. Now, we know that the word I BELIEVE, IN MY OPINION, I THINK in the thesis statement can make the writing less attractive for the reader. We also discussed the counter argument in the paper will make writing more interesting, but the counter-argument is not necessary. Dr. Crowther gave us a very nice piece of tips for good writing like use the transition word to follow the sentences and start with the weakness first for the counter argument or strength first and later counter-argument. At the end of the class, she gave the idea of writing the conclusion by summing up all the evidence and open the big picture.

On Thursday, we started our class by talking about the next week assignment. We must get the article that is relevant to our own writing topic and summary of that article. We also needed to bring the copy of the article to the class on coming Tuesday. In class, we discussed the MLA format for our writing. Our paper should be 12-point font and double space including left and body text. She asked us to put the page number on the upper left and name, date, section, and professor name on the left. Please do cite your paper, if you get the information from outside sources and for direct quotation. It is not mandatory to research the essay one. When you do your work citation, use separate paper to show the work citation. Thursday was the big and busy day for everyone to do the essay one workshop. Our Thursday class went very well by trying to figuring out the peer paper and helping them to review their paper. But before we started reviewing the paper, we interviewed with the peer; asking them about their paper like what are you writing about, how did you figure out the topic and what is the abstraction you get when writing your draft.

At the end of the class, we gave some feedback to peer about his paper and some suggestion to revise his/her paper. We had to submit the peer review paper, interview answer, and rough draft paper. We had until 5.00 PM to send our paper via Dropbox in iCollege. We close out with getting the submission information for essay one. Do not forget to upload your final essay on your iCollege by 11:59 PM on Sunday.

 

Weekly write-up #4: 9/12 & 9/14

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By Katie Allison and Star Harris

Reading for class:

Our week started with Tuesday’s class getting canceled because of the weather conditions; however, we still had to read! (hopefully, that’s not a surprise to anyone) In chapter 3 of Changing Writing, it begins by telling you to take a look at your writing space. Yes, writing is supposed to be messy, but your writing space should have no distractions. The book provides images of two completely different areas, one showing a clean, organized desk, and the other a pile of papers and stuff everywhere. Personally, I need a clean space to focus, and I showed that in our assignment. The exercise was to take a photo, or sketch your writing space and label all of your necessary items. Also, to describe why you chose that space and why it works for you.

Following this, the book introduces Korrina and her assignment where she has to show children how advertisements impact their lives. They use this as an example of how to get started writing. The next topic is “ideas and how to have them,” and they reference Korrina’s process throughout this subject. One of the ideas they talk about is; making a PACT chart to organize your writing. We have learned how to make a PACT chart and how to use it in the previous chapters. This is a good starting point because it makes you think about all the necessary information before you start writing. Some of the other ideas are to go over the assignment instructions, read over your notes for the topic, discuss your thoughts with other people, use events that happened in your past, research your topic, and brainstorm.

The last writing process subject in this chapter is “moving ideas to a draft”. They advise creating a mind map and/or an outline. These steps are crucial to getting all of the ideas you just came up with organized. Creating a draft is a significant part of the writing process because your first copy is not the best copy. An excerpt from Anne Lamott’s book is included at the end of the chapter. This text is called “Shitty First Drafts.” (Dr. C’s favorite title) So many writers struggle with this problem. For us, now that we are starting to write essays, it is nice to know even if our rough draft is very, truly rough, we should not get discouraged and instead, just keep trying.

 

Class summary:

Although we didn’t get to attend class on Tuesday, we were able to catch up on a lot in our Thursday class. For our daily grade, we chose our social justice issue, why we decided on that particular one, and jotted down some main points to focus on with that issue. (Which is a great brainstorming technique btw)

We then pulled out our homework assignment assigned to us the week prior, so we could visualize where great minds come up with great ideas! We looked at some examples of a workspace, provided by a student, where you could see they had a single space to think and focus. They even had their scrunchies right by their side. Are scrunchies out of style…? We also looked at a sketch from another student of a spacious couch and total workload. Dr. C warned us that it was very easy to get distracted while you are working, because who doesn’t love a slice of pizza after you’ve worked so hard on that first sentence. You deserve a nice break. (Just kidding) In chapter 3 of our text CW, it discusses writing space, so we want to think about if there are any problems or things that are working. We thought of some ways to minimize distraction, like eating and using the restroom before getting started. Listening to music is also a great way!

After getting our writing spaces figured out, we read about our “Shitty first drafts.” It’s not uncommon that someone is so excited to get done with an essay, they just turn the assignment not really finished. Like it says in the book “everybody struggles to start to get writing.” We want to make sure that we thoroughly review our first draft before turning it in. A simple way to start is to just put your name, date, and as Dr. C recommends, a couple of Xs for the title. I mean at least it’s something right? Make sure you read the assignment multiple times and highlight as needed.

Now that you got that done, we went over ways to brainstorm so that you wouldn’t be caught in writer’s block. Such strategies included simply going on the internet for examples, writing a list of what you care about (looking at a focal point), having a conversation, and bullet pointing. The book suggests you free write (kind of like the free write from this morning. You can go into a free write and take a phrase and perform a loop, meaning you take that good idea and start the next free write with it. Dr.C said another useful technique is the good ole web. Simply put your main focus in the middle and subtopics extending from it and key points for those. Can’t go wrong with the web.

At the end of class, we went over useful ways to store your essay in google docs, Dropbox (Dr.C’s method), or just email it to yourself. It’s always good to have a copy. We closed out with a simple structure for outlining your essay and how to structure your body paragraphs. Make sure you have a good thesis statement (an argument, or “this is what we should do”).

*IMPORTANT* essay is due 9/24 , MLA FORMAT, 12 FONT, and ERROR FREE(DUE ON ICOLLEGE)

Weekly Write Up #3 (09/05 & 09/07)

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Weekly Write-up: Reading for Class

We started the week off by reading Approaching Writing Situations chapter one out of Changing Writing. Last week we read in chapter one about how to use PACT when reading a text to understand it. Now in chapter two, we learn about how to use PACT when writing or, to create new text. Well creating new text is something we do daily whether it’s: texting a friend, emailing your professor about how to do something, working on a resume or cover letter for a job, or creating an advertisement for something your protesting. When writing you must first under the citation before you can write and who are the individuals who are there. When writing we usually have on main problem that we need to answer.

During the end of the week we read about a scenario about voting registration on a college campus. Your aunt is running for congress and then asked you to get more college students to vote, by using some type of text convey your peers to register to vote. Finding a medium to put your text is the hard part. Putting a post on social media, a poster board around the school campus, a website, or putting it in your school’s paper

.

Class Notes/ Activities

Dr. Crowther started the class off on Tuesday by asking people how their Labor Day weekend was. She engaged the classroom with what she did over the weekend, which was going to Dragon-con and the book festival. Most people had nothing to say, so she went on to say what was we going to discuss today. During the past two weeks we have learned how to analyze a reader’s perspective of text, but now she is going to teach us how to analyze a writer’s perspective of text. However, to understand a writer’s perspective, we must understand how a writer can have different processes to writing. Now a writing process is basically what a writer does to help them find out how they want to write or what they want to writ e about. We went over a couple of writing processes in class as our daily grade. Some people like to brainstorm and take down notes before they write. Others like to ask for people input on the topic that they are writing about. I am the type of person that likes to free write and let the ideas flow fluently throughout the paper; while I go back and make corrections.
After this, Dr. Crowther brought up the topic of textbooks and gave advice to the students unable to receive it yet. She said that you can receive an online free trial of the class e-book on Amazon. She gave more advice by clarifying the different between context and text. Context is the time and place in which you use different vocabulary and formality. If you are applying for a job in the food industry and you have worked in the food industry, then you would prioritize that because that would be the type of formality. Text is the type of formatting and documenting you use based on the context. If you apply for a job and your resume is not formatted correctly, then they will most likely not hire you. This is where Dr. Crowther explained to us what are pathos, logos, and ethos. Pathos is the technique you use to persuade someone using emotional appeal. Logos is using logical appeal and ethos is using ethical appeal or credibility. We then move on to our next activity, which is to read scenarios with a partner and PACT them. One of the scenarios is complaining about a noisy neighbor and this is an example of how my partner and I did it.
Purpose: Is to stop neighbors from being so nosy. What need to happen is for the neighbors to respect their fellow neighbors’ wishes and quiet down. We need to know why they are being so nosy.
Audience: We expect the neighbors causing the commotion to see the text. We can find out more about our audience by directly talking to them and asking questions. If the neighbors resist change then this will cause a barrier and we will need help from an outside force, such as the police.
Context: It is unsettling and irritating to hear loud noises day and night. It is in a neighborhood. This needs to be solved as soon as possible.
Text: Produce a poster. Write a strong written letter. Physically have a conversation about this problem.

During Thursday’s class Dr.C asked us about our homework, The PACT assessment that was due at the beginning of class. Dr.C put us in groups of four and we talked about our PACT assessment about Advocating Voter Registration on Campus. In groups, we came together and talked about each part of the homework: the purpose, audience, context and text. After, the groups were done discussing the homework each group came together and made one PACT for the group to turn in. Now comes the best part each group will come up with how they present their ideas of how to get people to vote.

Each group came up with idea of how to get college students to vote, many of the groups came up with very good ideas. One group came up with the idea to come up with a rap to get people to start voting, another one came up with the idea to start a free food to get people to register.

 

 

Weekly Write-Up #1: 8/22 & 8/24

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Welcome to our course blog!  In this English 1101 class “Changing Writing, Changing the World” we will be recording the progress of our class, publishing our writing on social justice, and creating a resource for future students.  Every week we will include a “Write-Up” of what we’ve been doing.  Here is our first one.

Reading for Class:

We started the week by reading a very important document — the course syllabus!  Dr. Crowther impressed upon us the importance of the syllabus as both an informative text and a “contract” in which the expectations of the students and the professor are explained.  As a contract, we are all held to the syllabus which is why it is so important to understand and be familiar with all the policies and requirements it describes. In order to check that we all had read and understood the syllabus, Dr. C put a quiz on iCollege for all students to complete. Students were also asked to sign a contract declaring that they had read and understood the syllabus, and also granting or denying permission for the professor to use their work in other classes or publications.

The second reading assignment was taken from our course textbook, Changing Writing.  The introduction “How Writing is Changing” introduced several key concepts for the course.  The first was the idea that writing always does something.  Writing is usually “to convince others to think or act differently” (Johnson-Eilola 3). Although this idea of writing is always true, the way we write has been evolving and transforming over the centuries.  Not only the tools we use — from pen and paper to typewriter to computer — but also the kinds of texts we draft, write and publish.  Now we all have access to the internet with its overwhelming amount of information that requires us to search for the most relevant and reliable sources to support our ideas.  We also can work collaboratively on documents using online tools, and we can publish our work online to a worldwide audience. The next section in the chapter discusses how this book can help us become better writers.  The question it poses is “How can I learn a universal, flexible way to write any kind of text” (5). The book explains that students learn strategies and frameworks for understanding texts and creating their own.  It introduces the four key aspects of writing:

  • PURPOSE: the change you want to make in readers’ thinking, feeling, or acting
  • AUDIENCE:  people within a context who are making meaning
  • CONTEXT:   a location in a space and time or even an online space
  • TEXT:  a document or other designed object

Finally, the chapter discusses that writing is messy!  Although we like to think that writing is an easy, linear process, it actually requires lots of drafts, mistakes, revising, etc.  We have to be ready to get messy and learn!

Class lecture/discussion/activities:

In class on Tuesday, we spent time introducing ourselves and learning more about our professor and the class. Every student gave a short introduction and we learned an “interesting fact” about each other.  Dr. Crowther went over the syllabus and discussed some of the important policies covered in the syllabus.

On Thursday, we completed our first “Daily Grade” free-write in which we discussed how we feel about ourselves as writers.  Many students shared that they feel stressed or anxious about writing, while some enjoyed specific types of writing situations.  Dr. Crowther began talking about how we are all writers even if we don’t realize it.  She discussed how we take into consideration the four elements of composition and rhetoric — Purpose, Audience, Context, Text — every time we write an email or send a text.  Using a funny example of a text with emojis, Dr. C explained how important tone is when we consider how we want to communicate to our audience. We continued to discuss the writing process and how then we talked in groups about a “text” we had brought to class that represents something we read everyday. Some students discussed websites that they read and others brought books, magazines, text messages, and social media.  We noticed that there is usually a specific audience for a text but that now, with social media, articles can be shared and so might end up in a more general audience than the original context intended.

Additional Resources:

Here is a useful video on Rhetoric and the Rhetorical Triangle: