Evaluation

1. What was most helpful to your development as a writer, reader, and thinker? Why?

I found the writing workshops most helpful for writing, reading, and thinking. It is hard to see your own mistakes when you write. I was able to get new ideas and new perspectives that helped improve my paper. I went through my papers again and revised them based on what my audience (my peers) thought was best. It involved thinking because I still had a choice whether to make the changes my classmates suggested or not. This made me analyze my choices and ask, “Why did they make that comment?” and “How can I change my writing to fit the suggestions they made while at the same time maintain the ideas and originality that I had?” It made me accept constructive criticism. Workshops helped me as a reader because I had to read closely to catch punctuation and grammar mistakes. I learned that reading a paper aloud allows one to comprehend sentence fluidity and clarity better.

2. What can you do to continue/improve this development? To continue with my development as a write, reader, and thinker I can always revise my work. There are many ways to revise. I will read my own paper aloud to hear things I need to change. I can ask my roommate to read my paper, similar to workshop, and give her opinions. I think the best thing to do is ask questions about the paper. Instead of confronting a friend or roommate and asking them to just read your paper and give their opinion, it is more useful to ask them specific questions about certain parts of the paper. When you ask specific questions they will usually give more specific answers.

3. What did you learn from the reading in this course? Which essay(s) did you enjoy the most? Why? What did it teach you about good writing? What I learned from the reading is that essays come in many different forms and use different styles but can be equally well written. I loved the essay about the moth because the writing was so detailed about an object, a moth, that people usually don’t notice. The author not only described the death of the moth but also universalized some of the ideas about death in general. I learned from this essay that you could write on almost any topic and be insightful. The other essay I enjoyed was “This is the Disturbing Part” by Stephen Church. It was humorous at the beginning and ended on a more serious and though-provoking note. I learned that I could be personal when I write and transition between different moods (such as humorous to serious) and still have my essay be well written.

4. Describe the writing process that you find most beneficial for you. Why does it work? How can it be improved? My favorite step of the writing process is workshop. But workshop is a subcategory of what writing process I find ore beneficial: revision. It is impossible to write a great essay the first time. An essay can always be revised more. It works because there are many different strategies to revise and each brings new insight and improves the essay. I could read it aloud and hear my mistakes, I write a conclusion to my essay again without looking at the original conclusion and then compare the two, or I could read the essay and take out all the passive tense words and see if the essay works. Revising can always be improved by more revising. It is a continual process.

5. How has the blog been beneficial to you as a writer and as a person? How? Why? I think the blog made me write to the best of my ability because I knew that my classmates would be reading it. This makes me want to improve my writing so that I can be proud to show it to other people and think of it as good writing and not just another assignment. So I reread my blog and revised it multiple times.

6. What was your favorite assignment of the semester? Why? My favorite assignment was analyzing an advertisement. I enjoyed looking for the advertisement. I am a logical thinker rather than a creative thinker. I thought this assignment allowed me to research, organize, and analyze in a coherent matter. It required skilled writing but not too much creativity.

7. What was your favorite part of class? Why? My favorite part of class was always the rush-writes because they were always very unique questions that made me think deeply. I enjoyed sharing what I wrote with the class and listening to what other people wrote. The rush-writes allowed me to write about anything I want and not have to worry about getting graded about it.

8. How is the final portfolio beneficial to you? How do you think differently about your writing because of it? I think I wrote a few good pieces of work that I want to keep. I am very proud of some of my work and by revising it and binding it nicely I can always have it. I thought about my writing differently because I can see me giving this to my mom possibly and I want to show her to be impressed and see how well I can write.

9. Why is submitting your work to a public audience (on the blog and to journals, etc.) beneficial? Submitting my work made me revise my work multiple times because I knew that if it were published many people would read it and judge it. I wanted my best work to be submitted because my name is attached to it. My work is a testament of my writing and ability.

10. If you were to take this class again, what would you want to change and what would you want to keep? I would not have library tutorials. They seemed like a waste of time and more of burden to get done on time. I did like the librarians coming in and showing us how to find sources. I would have the library tutorials in person, like a field trip. There can still be a quiz but it would not be as boring.

11. What did you learn in this class that you will apply to other situations? How? I thought that because I signed up as a Chemistry major that I would not need to know how to write well. But I have found myself needing to write formal letters to staff about questions I had. This required good punctuation and a certain professional tone. I think that everyone needs to learn the basics of grammar. I will use it every time I write an essay for a class or write a formal letter to an authority figure.

12. What makes good writing? Why? Give examples. How can you contribute to that sphere of good writing? My top five values that define good writing include personal, clarity, sentence variety, engaging, and memorable. I found that all of the readings we had for class included at least four of these values. It is important to uphold these because it benefits the audience. They are able to understand the ideas you wish to convey and they can enjoy it at the same time. I try to follow these values and am currently working to make my writing more person so it is engaging to the reader.

13. Anything else you need to get out about the class. I liked the class but I didn’t like the tardy policy because I often went to the wrong building and had to rush over to the computer lab or the classroom and was late. Other than that, the calss really strengthened my writing skills.