Showcase Writing-Technology essay
This last essay was about technology. In this essay I wrote about the fragmentation of human interactions caused by technology. Within this essay, I felt like I was able to express my writing is much better than the previous assignment, because due to the issues in my previous essay I tried to take more time in trying to explain my thoughts. Doing this allowed me to be able to write in a way that the reader could connect the thoughts the same way I had imagined. For my first draft, I think that this essay was messy. The sentences were lengthy, but it didn’t really make sense. Compared to this, my final essay was more organized and it seemed to have flowed better than the first draft. In my opinion, I think that I improved on making sure the essay flows well and that the points that I want to make are clear. Overall, I have been improving since the first essay written and I believe that I will continue to improve as I continue to write.
Learning Outcome 2
One of our writing assignments in ENG110 was a piece about technology. In this essay, I wrote about the fragmentation between human interactions, due to the time we spend on technology. The quotes chosen for the assignment was meant to support the thesis of my essay. My problem when I added quotes to my essay is my inability to elaborate it well, therefore caused some of my peers to be confused.
FIRST DRAFT: For example “‘I’ll be reading a book for homework and I’ll get a text message and pause my reading and put down the book, pick up the phone to reply to the text message, and then realize ‘Oh, I forgot to do my homework’ (Richtel). Sometimes, when our screens light up telling us that we have a text, causes us to lose focus on the task and get on our phones. However, I do think that this problem is common for many students.
FINAL DRAFT: For example, “‘I’ll be reading a book for homework and I’ll get a text message and pause my reading and put down the book, pick up the phone to reply to the text message, and then realize ‘Oh, I forgot to do my homework’”(Richtel). The notifications of our phones distract us from the task at hand. When our screens light up telling us that we have a text, it causes us to lose focus on the task and get on our phones.
Compared to the first version, the second elaboration of this quote is better, because it was elaborated clearly and got the point across to the reader. The draft version was long and I felt like it had no flow to it. However, with the aid of the books They say, I say and Barclay’s formula from the book Emerging, I think that I will be able to integrate and explain my quotes better.
Learning outcome 3
Before going into college, active reading was one of my weaknesses, because in high school, we were always told not to write in the books. Therefore, when I was annotating one of the first reading assignments, I felt uncomfortable writing and highlighting in the books. However as time went by, I got more comfortable taking notes in the margins of the books. At first, many of the annotations were for understanding, but later on, I began to take more notes that I questioned, related to, or challenged. An example of my annotations are from “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. The annotations taken, then become an aid into my informal writing assignments. Integrating my notes into paragraphs help me connect the points together, which help my understand the reading better. As Susan Gilroy writes in “Interrogating Texts: 6 Reading Habits to Develop in Your First Year at Harvard” she states, “Summarizing accomplishes something similar, but in sentence and paragraph form, and with the connections between ideas made explicit.”. The annotations written on the text allows me to be able to understand the reading better. The aid of active reading has helped me in other stand difficult readings.
Learning outcome 4
Peer review comments (Sydney’s tech essay)
When I first did peer reviews in class, I felt uncomfortable critiquing someone else’s work. However, I got better at this skill. In the beginning of the course, I thought that the writer might get offended or upset about something that I said. Therefore, as I stop being cautious about this, I began to give better comments to the writing. An example of this is my classmate Sydney’s writing. In this essay, she talks about how technology causes students to lose focus. In my opinion, I think that she did well introducing her argument. Although, I did make a comment about how the author’s for the quotes were incorrect. I also found that some concerned that she mentions did not show much urgency. I know that I am improving on this skill, but I still have to learn to be more comfortable making these comments. Overall, I know that I am improving since the first peer review, but I also know that I have lots to learn.
Learning outcome 5/6
Coming into college, I think that I had a bit of struggle with the MLA format and punctuation, especially with citations. When I was in highschool, citations were easy because of Easybib or we had just included the links to our sources. However since taking this course, I am now able to cite things on my own in MLA format. An example of this can be shown on my Technology essay. A struggle that I had when citing my sources, was how. Within the essay I had 2 sources from the same author, which caused me to become confused. For my first essay, I feel like there were a lot of punctuation errors, especially with quotation. The quotation had always confused me overall. It confuses me when I am quoting a speaker within the text. Although I struggled, I had help from my professor and peers to help me cite the sources and some of my punctuation errors.
