D#15, WP#4 Final Draft

To Professor Rodrigo, and the rest of the English 102 class,

In this class I learned a lot of new aspects of writing. Some of them were refreshers of what I learned in past classes. On the other hand some things were entirely new concepts to me. While in the past I have had to do research for various classes, this is the first time that I have written a research paper of this type. I also think that I have accomplished my goal, and those goals outlined in the course outcomes and will now show where I accomplished each of those.

The First course outcome, “write for specific rhetorical contexts, including circumstance, purpose, topic, audience and writer, as well as the writing's ethical, political, and cultural implications.” In my blog I feel I best show that I have learned this in my deadline nine, homework assignment number six. Where I did an outline of what information will be shown in my writing project number three. I also think that I best demonstrated that I learned this in my writing project number three when I discus suicide. I found good information on both sides of the topic, which was also from reliable sources. I am not sure where I will use this in the future but I am sure that in some job I will have to give reports and my skills have improved here.

The second course outcome, “organize writing to support a central idea through unity, coherence and logical development appropriate to a specific writing context.” On this course outcome I believe I demonstrated it best in my deadline number six, homework assignment number four. All the articles I found for this annotated bibliography were on the topic of suicide that is caused by stress. In my writing project number one I also demonstrate organization when I relayed my research question that I wanted to do my project on. While there was many branches to the one topic they did revolve the around a central idea. As almost everything in life is research I will be able to use this in the future to better organize everything from shopping lists to vacation plans.

The third course outcome, “use appropriate conventions in writing, including consistent voice, tone, diction, grammar, and mechanics.” The best example that I can give of this outcome from my blog is in deadline ten, homework number seven that was a grammar assignment. In this assignment I corrected a paragraph that I had misused some punctuation. In my writing project number two I had to carefully arrange my bibliographies into correct APA format making sure they were grammatically correct. This has never been my strong point in writing and it will continue to be something I have to struggle with in the future.

The fourth course outcomes, “find, evaluate, select, and synthesize both online and print sources that examine a topic from multiple perspectives.” In my various posts that I put in my blog I think the best example of this is deadline number five, homework assignment four. This was particularly hard to do as it was evaluating books that I only had a limited amount of access to, so evaluating them for their usefulness was even more difficult. Even with the limited information that I was able to finish the evaluation and write a good summary of how the source could be helpful. In my writing I again look at my writing project number two as this entire project was an annotated bibliography that demonstrated I was able to find sources and evaluate them, and shows how I could use them in a writing project. This will be one of the most useful new skills I have learned for the future, as I am now better able to use the technologies at hand to find what I need.

The fifth course outcome, “integrate sources through summarizing, paraphrasing, and quotation from sources to develop and support one's own ideas.” In deadline six the class had to work on summarizing and paraphrasing for homework assignments six and seven. I think that I demonstrated well with both assignments that I learned how to appropriately rephrase or summarize the source to use in my paper. Also in writing project three I used direct quotes with the appropriate APA style citations, as well as paraphrasing sources to work in my project. This in another outcome I will continue to struggle with in the future. I need to watch out in any formal writing so I do not plagiaries other peoples work.

The sixth course outcomes, “identify, select and use an appropriate documentation style to maintain academic integrity.” I had a few problems with my bibliographies in the beginning, as almost every guide you look at has different information on exactly how they should look but in my deadline nine homework number four I think I finally got it correct, or at least the best example that I can think of. In my writing project number three I had multiple occasions where I had to cite one source or another, at first I had problems with this but with the help of my peer reviews I think I got them correct in the end. I am not sure where I will ever need to use this skill in the future but it is good to know that I can if need be.

The seventh course outcome, “use feedback obtained through peer review, instructor comments, and/or other sources to revise writing.” This is the part of the class that I thought I would have the most problems with. I know my writing skills are not the greatest, nor are my skills at evaluating others writing. I do on the other hand think I used the information obtained from others as demonstrated in my deadline eleven homework one. I used not only the guidelines set by the assignment but the suggestions of my peers and professor to revise my paper and was much happier with the results. The first peer review was the most helpful for me though in my writing project number one. The suggestions by others helped round out my topic and form it into a more manageable subject. I would be apprehensive of using this in the future because my writing skills are not all that great it is hard to judge if the suggestions are ok to follow or not.

The eight course outcome, “assess one's own writing strengths and identify strategies for improvement through instructor conference, portfolio review, written evaluation, and/or other methods.” This is another area I have problems with, assessing myself, not only in writing but in all aspects. I think with this class that has improved, and with the multiple rewrites on papers it became easier to evaluate myself with each. This shows best in my blog in deadline number ten, homework number four and five where I had to evaluate and correct my own paragraphs. Also in my writing project one I had to assess and review my topic many times before refining it to a narrow enough scope to write on.

The last course outcome, “generate, format, and edit writing using appropriate technologies.” As I said in the beginning of class I am not the biggest fan of these types of things (blogs) but as class went on and I got more used to the writing I did find it got easier to use. I also liked the use of Google documents for a way others can evaluate work, as it was a convenient way to do it so everyone could see what others were doing. Turnitin.com was also a very helpful site as it let us know if we maintained the integrity of our writing, as not to be plagiarizing anyone else’s work.

In conclusion I think I met all the course outcomes and learned something new with every assignment. While it was a little difficult to make some of the deadlines as life got in the way, I always managed to catch up in the end. The writing assignments I submitted through this class show more than anything how much I have learned as I have incorporated almost every lesson into at least one of each of the assignments. Lastly the blog I have created in the progression of the class is what I am most proud of as I put a lot of effort into it and many hours were spent on that site reading others blogs learning from and commenting with my peers.

Shawn Ivanovitch