Evidence of Learning 123-Midterm
Integrating Ideas with Others
During this course, I have learned about different terms that can help improve my writing when introducing another source or bringing in evidence to support a claim. These terms include pivotal words, signal phrases, and signal verbs. These terms have helped me better my writing instead of using the same three simple words when introducing a text. I also was introduced to Barclay’s formula paragraphs and TRIAC paragraphs to help integrate my ideas with those of others within a systematic paragraph. Before, I never would really use other sources well, even when they are given to me. Integrating the ideas of others while also providing evidence from other writing has really helped me to improve my argument and claim throughout my paper. I have learned how to be able to refer back to a text all throughout my paper, not just in the introduction, conclusion, and here and there in the body.
Writing as a Recursive Process
During this course, I have learned many new ways to process my writing and go through the different steps to improve it as well. Before taking this course, I always would type up a paper the night before it was due, and pass it in as is without even looking it back over because I knew it was bad. Even when I had chances to revise, I simply just would not. I have learned that you obviously cannot do that, it is a multistep process. Adding paragraphs can add to the claim that is proposed, and can help solidify my argument. Reorganizing my paragraphs can help the flow of my paper, making it sound more professional as well. Before, when I would just pass in my papers as is, they were very difficult to follow. The paragraphs and overall structure of my paper would just seem like a chicken scratch note to use before writing the actual paper. Now, you can see a visual different before and after between my multiple drafts.
I never had a real process to anything, I would just go ahead and write it. But with this project, I had individual paragraphs in a single document and found areas where I could build upon certain thoughts. Then brought those into another document where I rearranged them into an order that may make sense. I then brought those into a draft document for myself where I made some comments on it for where I can edit things structurally. Once we had to have a draft, I then added everything into a document that could be shared and then added in an introduction and conclusion with some connecting sentences here and there. This next document was where I made most, if not all, of my edits and revision throughout many days. Finally, I made a document for my final draft.
Many different reconstruction edits can be found in THIS document under the version history. Clicking on the different days can show you all the edits that were made throughout the revision process.
Active, Critical, and Informal Reading Response
Normally, I would never go out of my way to annotate unless it was absolutely necessary and asked of me. I never really enjoyed it and never saw that point in it, even though I got to a point where I would not remember anything from assigned readings. But now, I will go out of my way to annotate to try to understand readings, both in and outside of this course. I have learned that asking and answering questions about a text will really help me understand what the text is trying to convey to me as the reader. I do realize, though, that I am not always trying to challenge the ideas of a text. Mainly, I am asking questions and defining terms and sentences for me to understand the text better. I have plenty of annotations as well as good quality. Now that I have gotten to this stage, I feel as though going forward I can try to go beyond this by trying to challenge the text in front of me.
Critique Own and Others’ Work
The document that has my edits/ revisions as comments on how to improve my paper can be found:
You can look at the version history to see the different edits that were made at different times.