Journal V

Journal V

                  For Journal V we read Revision Strategies by Sommers. This reading focused heavily on the difference between student writers and experienced writers. One can consider student writers, writers that focus on editing their papers after their first draft. They use simplified vocabulary, not complex structure, and quite linear progression through their paper. The way I see student writers, they write to complete, not to inform or promote their topic. Its a very simple and easy way to write, but there is rarely any substance. Experienced writers on the other hand focus their after draft thoughts on revising. They tend to like pronounced vocabulary to show their point with a little more elegant tongue. Their witting is a little easier to read off fluently, because it flows. The structure of their paper may be complex but it is followed the whole way. 

                  Throughout my life i have been both type of writers. I fell anywhere between student and experiences, mainly it was based on my interest in my topic given. Whether I was revising or editing, I would try to do a little of both. In school we attempted to do some peer editing, but it never worked out. The other students never really found any interest, benefit, whatever you want to call it out of doing the peer editing. Truthfully I might not have done any my self because of how pointless it seemed to me. These people would not take my paper seriously so why should I take theirs? Reading this "little" reading I was able to put a name with a concept I have seen but have never been able to call it something. There has always been the person who skated by, the student writer, and someone who had a perfect paper, experienced writer. They have both existed throughout high school but i just could never put a exact name to them.

Journal IV

Journal IV

             Let me start by say this was a long reading. This entire section by Sommers was a battle against teachers, and how they criticized their students papers. It stated how the students would write a first draft for their teacher, turn it in for comments, and receive a paper back with with comments and corrections to which the student could not understand. Whether the comments were poorly written or contradicting with other comments they wrote the, students would either ignore them, in their next draft, or use the comments to please their teacher. The students paper however, would usually suffer while trying to please the teacher because they lose focus on their main topic and start to drift away.

           I see where this paper was coming from. I had teachers in the past who would write this and that, but they would write it in a way where you were stuck asking yourself, "how the hell does she want it!" In my grade school years, especially, I had trouble writing, and my paper would have more writing from the teacher then myself. I despised seeing the red lines crossing out words and adding commas, but it was a necessary part in learning how to write effectively. In all I believe that I was taught well in the area of writing, and all of those squiggles on my paper I learned from. Teachers do their best most time to help and to point you in the right direction with your paper, but it is after all your paper. If you think those red lines do not make sense in part of your paper, or if the comment is a bad one, then do what you please to fix it. They try to help but in most cases you are not the first paper they have graded, and if you go by the reading they could have already been grading papers for days.

Journal III

Journal III

             The topic I chose for my proposal is one that I always had feelings towards. This topic was one i did not even know existed until i moved here to Texas in 2009. Now without giving it away i wanted to ask, is there anything in high school that bothered you? No, I am not talking about bullies, grades, or even trying to fit in; but how about the teaching itself? Did it ever feel like the curriculum here in Texas challenged or expanded the knowledge one wanted? I did not think so. I thought the curriculum was a joke. They taught A, B, and maybe C if they had time, but what about the rest? I love learning new things, especially if they made me a better person. Throughout high school I was bored, and I blame this on the Texas way of "Teaching for the Test."

            I lived in Illinois since the second grade. Learning there was fun. It was challenging and also very rewarding. When you left for the day, you brain ached from all the knowledge that was shoved into it that day; and the next day you were ready for more. There were still state test that we had to take. But the difference, between Illinois' way of teaching and Texas, was we learned A, B, C, and so on. Illinois could do this because they did not have the rigorous hand holding that Texas does. They had the idea that students should know "x" by the time your done teaching for the year, and how they got there was up to the teachers creative ability. That there is another point against "Teaching for the Test" but i will discuss that in my paper.

Journal II

Journal II

           In Writing From The Heart, the author, tells of how her mother was dying. She uses this story to explain a writing concept. This was the authors mother, she loved her, and she would do all she can to help her mother the last eleven months that she was alive. Besides just her mother, she also had a family to take care of. When she was with one, she felt guilty about not being with the other. There were a lot of emotions flying around and the author goes on to tell how these emotions would lead to good writing. One tends to write better when there is a emotional attachment to the subject. Love, hate, curiosity, whatever gets the heart moving in the writer. These are the emotions that will allow the writer to construct a good writing. Borders showed how a grey area between two subjects could hold ideas and connections that can be used to vamp up your writing. The two could be, two different subjects or a injection of ones own knowledge, experiences, or history.

            I did not find these readings too interesting. They seemed closer to a reminder for a writer, instead of a lesson for one. But none the less, it carried some useful information. If there was a time i had to write from the heart, it was probably when i had to write my science fair paper my junior year. I had so much pride in my project, and i knew everything inside and out. This lead me to write a phenomenal paper that lead me all the ways to state. One of the questions asked if writing form the heart would be appropriate to do in a scholarly area? Personally i would say yes. Why, because without pride or some sort of emotion within the writing, the writing becomes drab and in certain instances may take away from the message.