Assignment 15

To be honest, I feel like I have not achieved the goals that I wanted to succeed in. I still see no improvements in the way I write because the same corrections are seen on my essays. Now that I am familiar with college level work I can probably find other ways on helping myself improve my skills

I still need to work on creating a strong thesis and being specific. Seeing my grades for all the essays, I feel like I am farther than what I thought to achieve the goal I wanted to succeed in. I feel like having more "hands on training" will do me good.

Assignment 14

• For my final portfolio, I chose to revise my ad analysis essay. I chose to revise this because I thought that it would be easier to rewrite. The strengths of my ad analysis would be describing the image that I am trying to show my audience. However I lacked enough specifications and elaborating more on a subject that I mention. Another weakness that I tend to repeat every time is my thesis statement.
• To effectively revise my essay, I am going work on my thesis statement and elaborating more on my essay. Being specific is what I am not good at. Even if though that I was pretty clear and specific, it turns out to be the opposite of what I expect. 

Assignment 13

 The essay that I liked writing the most would probably be the fourth assignment that the class had to do. the topic was a much easier and it was easy for me to be more organized. To prepare writing I can use a chart and have a list of evidences and supporting ideas and divide each ideas into paragraphs to create the essay. It was almost as easy as a high school essay where you don't really have to think and be very critical about what you should have explaining a specific topic just like the advertisement analysis essay.

 Writing the fourth assignment was the one I liked most because I am familiar with the structure of the whole essay. It is basically just seeing both sides of the argument and giving supporting ideas to each main idea. there was no research to be done. There was also no specific item that was needed to base the essay on such as an article, image, or a story about an essay you wrote. it is almost like a freestyle writing with a topic.

Assignment 11

• For the third assignment, I had to analyze "Should the Obama Generation Drop Out?" In that essay, The writer lacked in trustworthiness. There was no sources that was mentioned for the facts that he states. This taught me to not state anything examples that may require proof or resources to show my readers where I got the information from such as, "10 to 20% of students drop out in their high school senior year." (Just an example)
•  The writer used words that was judgmental and made him seem biased and unprofessional. The writer used terms such as, "Except for the freakishly gifted," or "too dumb." On my argument essay, I tried to not use such words so I don't come out as judgmental.
• He also rarely discussed the other side of the argument and focused on explaining his position. He didn't consider both sides of the argument. On my essay, I considered both sides. I gave equal amounts of evidence on both positions. 

Assignment 10

• The peer review that we do in class is good enough in my opinion. It's quick, simple and easy. Nothing to complain about.
• Strengths - My strengths as a peer reviewer would probably be on the spelling and where to put comas or periods or quotation marks. Weaknesses - I just quickly review the essay instead of reading carefully and finding unnoticeable mistakes and that I don't really put a lot of input into the peer review process.
• My ideal peer review process would be a one-on-one kind of thing. I prefer to have my essay reviewed by my teacher/professor and edit the essay paragraph by paragraph. Obviously I would prefer a smaller group to be more helpful because a larger group is a bit distracting. I do feel that we have more than enough time for peer reviews.  

Assignment 9

-In my writing, I tend to repeat information several times. On the recent paper that I did for my Communications class, I wrote the same information in two different paragraphs but it was rephrased. This causes the length of my essay to be shorter and it unable me to explain other points that would be worth writing about.

-Another error that I notice is that I am not very specific about a point that I state in my essay. Another example from my Communication essay was that I noticed that my professor wrote, "needs development/be more specific" twice. I often do not explain enough about the subject I am talking about. This causes confusion for my readers

-My last error that I often see on my writing is that I explain and say too much information without getting straight to the point. This error is combined with repeating information because I write the same thing over and over again and still I would be unable to get to the point. The sentences are just supporting the main idea of the paragraph but I would not state the main idea. This can also cause confusion and it can affect the audiences' lack of interest on the essay.

Assignment 8

  For the next writing assignment, I chose to write my essay on the article, "Should the Obama Generation Drop Out?" I chose this article because this was probably the most appealing topic for me. On the news there was always some news about related topics to this article. However I did a really bad thing of just picking one out of the five articles that was provided. I did read the first 3 paragraphs at least of each article to get an idea of what the article is about (I did not have much time to really go through all the articles).
  
  The debate on whether children should go to college can be endless. One side of this argument is that when applying for a job, it really depends on what the person can contribute to their work. The other side of the argument would be children still needs to attend post-secondary education to gain knowledge and to learn more about the field that they chose to major in and it is very helpful.






(Unfinished)

Assignment 7

• I am not sure if I made any progress for the goals that I set since my first blog assignment. Although I do see very little improvement because I am learning more about proper grammar and the information that we went through in class. 
• I feel like analyzing through essays are helpful because as a writer, we need to proofread all of our work. As we edit any essays, we can analyze what parts of the essay needs improvement or what did we do that was right or wrong.
• Less homework!! Haha just kidding. Like it was said in class, I think we need more interesting topics to write about. I am not really not into this current writing assignment we have. I also think that instead of reading essays or articles for home, we should read then during class so that EVERYONE would be able to participate, instead of having those awkward moments. When they are assigned as homework, most likely students would forget or just completely refuse to do the homework.
• I feel that my writing process has not changed because I still do the same things that I do whenever I write any of my papers. I still feel that I am not that great in writing any essays.

Assignment 6

• Purpose - The purpose of my ad analysis essay is different to the literacy narrative essay because they contain a different strategy to tell information or a story. On the ad analysis essay, the class elaborates in a very detailed manner and observing an image to create a vision for the audience who have not seen the image themselves. Unlike the literacy narrative, the ad analysis essay are more of an explanation instead of telling a story about your life history/story. However, like I mention on the second sentence, both essays are trying to create a vision for the audience of what the event or object looked like. 
• Audience - I think that both essays targets similar audiences.
• Tone - The tone of the essays are different because the ad analysis is an informational essay to kind of "sell" the product, while the literacy narrative essay is more of an emotional type of writing. On the literacy narrative, you try to give the audience the kind of empathy of how you felt then as you write one of your essays and how you felt at the time. On the ad analysis essay you try to (let's just say) persuade the readers (my essay for example) how the ad you analyzed is different from the other ads. 
• Genre - The genre of the essays are obviously different because one is a literacy narrative while the other is an ad analysis. (do I really need any further explanations?)

Assignment 5

• Purpose- The purpose of this as is to attract individuals to create a profile and a source of a communication through the web. the argument that this ad made is that creating a Facebook can be convenient at any time weather it is for leisure or labor (although it is spelled differently on the add).

• Audience- The targeted audience for this add would be anyone who owns a computer. The ad is trying to appeal to teens or mainly the adults because the picture demonstrates a woman viewing her or someone else's Facebook account while looking at a picture of a man that can be her significant other or a relative.
• Genre- The genre of this ad would fall into the modern type of its style in the 60's. Comparing this ad to the other ads of the same product, I did not expect it to be of this style. This is because Facebook was created in 2004, and this ad is designed as if it was created in the 60's. The technology shown in this ad is fairly advanced. The other ads of Facebook is extremely simple and contain very little words. 
• Tone- The very detailed, faint, and modern look of the 60's with the rustic old look creates a chic and stylish tone of the decade it portrays. 

Assignment 4

• Specifically, my rough draft does not look very different compared to my final paper when looking at it at a glance. The title of my rough draft is different from my final draft. 
• I did one major revisions to my paper. My rough draft was not a Literacy Narrative and was only a Narrative, therefore, I had to rewrite my whole paper. 
• While I revised my paper, I noticed my own pattern of errors. My final paper would most likely have this pattern also. I tend to be wordy to fill my paper to the required length. I Also noticed a lot of sentences that needed to be revised, since Microsoft Word would underline it with a green line.
• Rereading my paper guided me to make the revisions. As I read aloud, it was easier for me to identify the errors that I made. Also I asked my mom to proofread, although she was not much of a help because she is not very fluent in English and she just agreed that my paper was good and not making a single correction. 
• I am not sure what the strongest aspect of my paper is so I think that there isn't one. The weakest aspect of my paper would probably my the grammar and the story that I chose. I know this through my past papers because in general I am not very good writing any essays. 

Assignment 3

Differences between an A and a C paper: 

• One difference is that an average paper can have few run-on sentences. This can confuse the readers as to why sentences have two different points but they are still made as one sentence. You can see an obvious run-on sentence right away because the sentence extremely odd and it can put someone's focus on the writer's mistakes instead of focusing in the story of the paper. An example would be, "It was a beautiful day the was shining so brightly I needed my sunglasses."
• Another difference would be that an average paper can mostly have punctuation mistakes. Some examples of this would be, "This whole outfit is free!!!!!!!" or "Before leaving for school Sarah bought her lunch at a grocery store." Readers of an essay with multiple punctuation mistakes may not take the paper seriously because the paper may look unprofessional. 
• Another difference would be the constant use of big word that might not fit in that same sentence. This can also harm the grade of a paper because when a reader or professor/teacher is reading your essay and they know what the meaning of the word is and its not used correctly, the reader would definitely know that you didn't know what the word means and just used Thesaurus to look for the word and make you look smart. 

Assignment 2

One topic that can be effective for my paper is writing about what I did for my summer vacation. This topic can be a little too common and simple as a topic for a literacy narrative essay. This topic can have its pros and cons. For example, some would say that it would be a hard topic to write about because they did not do anything that was interesting or fun on their summer vacation. A pro can be someone being to write a whole lot about their summer vacation because they traveled and other interesting events that they did like I did during during my summer vacation. 

A second topic that can be used as a topic for a literacy narrative paper is "What would you do if you had 10 million dollars?" Many would have a lot of ideas of what to do with a large amount of money, but it would be interesting to know how they would spend and use that money. I think the pros over powers the cons on this topic because there are many ways to use this kind of money.

A third topic for this essay could be your first job. Having your very first job can be very exciting for most of us. Some can say that they remember all the details and their experience. They can also write about what they learned, and what they like or dislike about their job. Some cons about writing an essay on this topic can be that it is very simple and that it cannot be a very strong topic.

Assignment 1

I am taking this class because it is a requirement. However I do I would like to learn how to become a better writer because I am not a very good writer knowing this from my previous papers that I wrote. I also want to improve my communication skills and become a better reader as well.