Cole Kennedy
Dr. deGravelles
Block 4
4/30/12
This
year, I have written so much more than I expected. I thought that high school
was going to be very easy, that was until I got about a month into Dr.D’s
class. We wrote so many papers compared to previous years that it was
ridiculous. But I thought that doing this really has helped me become a better
writer and has helped me identify my problems I have in writing. I have learned
that my main problem in writing is just conventions. Overall I think that I
have improved very much over the year.
Ninety-five
percent of the time the feedback that I have received has been regarding
conventions and other grammatical mistakes. So far, the ideas that I have
written down have been fine and the reason that I have been missing points, I
think is because the way that I put them on paper is incorrect. The conclusions
that I can make from these different papers’ feedback are that I have a need to
read my paper over several times just looking for grammatical mistakes and I
need to read it out loud so that I can make sure that it makes sense. Another
conclusion that I can make from the feedback that I have received is that I
need to pay more attention to the details of what Dr.deGravelles teaches in
class because the details are the main things that have been missing in my
papers.
During the year on
papers that I have had to write I have not had any problems with them being too
short. An influential part of my grading on the Wrap was that it wasn’t long
enough. The reason for this is because I had felt very cramped. I hadn’t had time to really think my ideas
through and develop them into fluently put together phrases that would result
in me getting a higher mark. On the first day, I started off with prewriting.
In 7th grade I learned a skill that has still helped me today.
Instead of just throwing down ideas I make a chart. With 2 boxes plus however
many other topics you have each getting one box. You write down the main idea
and then however many supporting details as you can and then it is much easier
to write. I did this and it took up all of the first day. The second day I wrote till we had to stop
and I found myself leaving out pieces of information that wouldn’t matter all
that much. So overall I think that timed essays don’t really work with me
because I feel pressured and think that I need just cut my losses and move on.
That is not a good plan.
My experience with
writing over this year has progressively gotten better because with the writing
of more than just two major papers in a year I have learned many things about
myself as a writer. Over this year I have learned that I have no problem coming
up with ideas or organization or sentence fluency, the thing I have a problem
with is the punctuation, grammar, and conventions that are involved in actually
getting these ideas into an organized document.
The way that I know this is that almost all of the feedback that I have
received on my papers was about comma splices or wrong use of a semicolon or a
misplaced comma. I swear if I had just read over all of my papers twice just
correcting the grammatical mistakes my grade on all of them would have been so
much higher. One of the main things that I learned is how lazy I am. How hard
is it to read over a paper?
The feedback that
I received surprised me honestly; I thought that the least of my worries was
going to be conventions. Turns out that
convention should now be one of my main concerns. I do think that my feedback
has matched my understanding of my work this year though. I think that it
matched the most in the sense that ideas are not a problem for me. The only
thing that is, is getting them down. The way that I evaluate my work is by how
much time I spent on in and how much effort that I really put into it and no;
it has not changed throughout the year.
A goal that I want to achieve throughout this
next year is that I want to have no more than three grammar problems on any
given paper. Another is to not get lower than a B on any paper that I have in
English next year. A plan that I have to
achieve these goals is that I am going to read each of my papers over three
times before I finish writing it so that I can minimize the grammatical
mistakes. For the B that I need on the papers I am going to make sure that I
have developed my ideas completely and I am going to focus while writing the
papers.
During the course
of this year I have learned many things about writing and about myself as a
writer. One of those things is that I am a very lazy writer. I need to make
sure that I read and develop my paper before I turn it in so that I can get the
highest mark that I can in English. One of the things that I have learned also
that has helped me is that the details count. In response to this I am going to
pay much more attention to the little details that come along with the class
that helps you learn how to be a better literate person. I need to make sure
that during class whenever the teacher is going over material that I am not I
another world mentally. I need to make sure that I do not lose focus and that I
only focus on what is going on in the class.
Dr.deGravelles
Block 4
4/26/12
Common Errors List
Missing Comma – Ex. When his
parents asked him about his day,
he just smiled and said “just an average day”.
Run-on- Ex.After they were
brought back they were forced to work as a slave labor force, Haitian farmers
thought of them as a cheap, effective slave labor that really do not know any
better and really could not do anything about it unless they were fed salt or
spices because if they taste salt or any kind of spice they would suddenly
realize that they were dead and have a strong sensation that would make their
bodies return to their graves and they could not become slaves again after
that. Run-on sentence.
Comma Splice- Ex. He nods, a
starting gun is shot with a loud “bang” his heart starts to race and then he cringes, he is feeling fatigue from
lunch because he ate too much.
Misspelled- word- Rampageous-
I spelled that word wrong
Quotation marks- “Bu
Bu Bu.”
Wrong page citing - . (56)
Word Choice- Global warming
is a very bad thing and
needs to be stopped.
Repetition- There is also a spread of tropical disease that will be an issue also.
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