Assignment #10- Thinking About Peer Review

The new peer review process we recently tried was something interesting. I enjoyed it because its always good to get different peoples opinions on your paper instead of one. This process was very effective because when we read our papers out loud we can catch our own mistakes such as spelling errors. Also the people in our group can comment on what they feel should be improved and how they feel about the paper. The way it can be improved is that we should do peer reviews on more than one person's paper in the group, by doing two peer reviews instead of one it helps us get more feedback. 

My specific strengths in peer reviewing is finding misspelled words and pointing out where the writer should elaborate their ideas more. My specific weakness while doing peer review is that I'm too nice when it comes down to commenting on what they are doing wrong. This is bad for me and the writer because I can't help him/her improve their weaknesses. I can't be mean on pointing out mistakes if the writer is my friend especially because come on...thats my buddy haha I don't want to be tough on their paper.

Peer review is always helpful. It's the most effective and best process when it comes down to fixing your papers. It is helpful to do peer review for earlier stages of the writing process. I feel that doing peer review in larger groups are better and more helpful because you get more opinion from other people. Everyone has different point of views. I feel that we don't have enough time to complete our peer review if we do it one day because it makes us rush through the questions and therefore we can't take our time to finish it. But I feel that we should take two days to finish our reviews so we can focus and make sure we can help improve the writer's paper. 

Overall, peer review is very useful regardless if we do it in a small group or large! :)

Assignment #9- Patterns of Writing

Errors are something every human being makes. Especially when it comes to writing papers. Its a common mistake everyone makes. Unless your a robot who writes non-error stories their first time! But sadly your not, your only a human being. As I look through my first two graded essays I have wrote for this class, I caught a couple of mistakes I make often.

1. In my writing I tend to repeat certain words over and over and OVER AGAIN! As I read them out loud and notice this error it just makes my paper sound soooo STUPID. I repeat the key terms often and this causes my writing so sound dull. It also causes my writing to fall downhill because it shows that I cant get my point across. The way I plan to avoid this error in the future is that I'm going to use different words that are similar to what the point is about because when you repeat the same word over it just makes you want to stop reading the paper.

2. The second error I caught why writing and revising my two papers is that I have a comma problem. Unfortunately this is a big problem when it comes down to my papers. I have trouble with putting the comma where it should. This causes my writing to have no pause in it for the reader. Also it crumbles my sentences all together. The way I plan to avoid this error is make sure that I use commas in a series for example when you list certain things you need to break it up with a comma. I'm going to use commas after certain words like: and, but, or, for, so yer and nor. Also I'm going to make sure to uses commas after introductory phrases.

3. The third error I notice that I tend to make in my writing is by not having an arguable thesis. This causes my writing to not have reason why I'm writing the paper in the first place. At times my thesis is not strong and it causes my paper to have nothing for a person to argue about. In the future I plan to avoid this problem by making sure I have a purpose of writing my paper and I have to make sure that my thesis can be arguable. I plan to make sure I get much of peer review as possible so I can have somebody help me improve it.

There you have it I make mistakes but I always try to fix it because that's how your writing will improve. Nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes but it's normal. You can't become a better writer until you learn and improve your mistakes.

Assignment #8- Thinking About Arguments

The article I chose was "The $78 Million Dollar Bag." This article is about how the city and county specifically Chicago spend $78 million every year just to arrest and jail people for possession of marijuana. Certain people like John Fritchey is considering legalizing marijuana due to the money. Marijuana arrests are made to all different kinds of people but mainly focused on African Americans. Police are locking up people for a dime bag and letting people with guns slide. There has been 23,000 arrests per year for pot by Chicago police. These arrests take up to 84,000 police work hours every single year. Larry Suffredin feels that these arrests are wasting people's money when their dollars should be used for more serious charges. All arrests are made into a criminal case which costs money. Cook county residents are paying every single year $70 million dollars to arrest people carrying marijuana. These people who are arrested usually get released after post bond. That's money going down the drain. After all the math is done the article states that $78 million is spent a year to arrest and jail "a bunch of black guys-only to throw away their case." Also added to that $10 million taxpayers spend to jail the ones who grow and sell pot. Although taxpayers want a change in the policy, certain elected officials such as Emanuel haven't discussed it. Other officials have been informed about the problem but nobody has discussed anything. There are certain ares of the county where people are getting a ticket for marijuana possession. But theses laws are confusing people and make it harder to follow.

This article was the most interesting one out of the rest. It had some information that I never thought would happen. It introduced me to the marijuana game and what's happening with the arrests with it. I somewhat agree with the article because I do feel like police are wasting their time on making arrests on little bags of marijuana when they can catch real criminals. We are wasting so much money on these stupid arrests. I also chose this one off the list because I wasn't in the mood to read the rest of the articles, the title was catchy so it was the first to catch my eyes. It has interesting view points but I feel that it lacks a counter argument. Overall it has good evidence and proves it's point.

Assignment #7- Reflecting Back..

Boy oh boy it's time to reflect back on my writing...shockers it feels like it was just yesterday that I wrote and posted my very 1st blog. It's crazy how time goes by so quickly! But as the days go by we are getting closer to the midterm and class is starting to really kick in on my writing skills. Looking back at my first blog, I'm starting to realize that my writing has improved as I write more and more blogs and attend class. I feel that I am making progress on my goals that I wanted to achieve. So far writing 101 has showed me how to communicate on paper with my audience. There are specific aspects of this class that helped me as a writer. For example, the peer review we do is extremely helpful. It's great having somebody else open your eyes on mistakes that you didn't notice you made while writing your paper. Also having discussions on different writing techniques helps me realize how to improve my papers. Everything we are doing so far in class is useful but what I would like to change about the class in order to better facilitate my learning process is that I feel that we should have more peer reviews on a paper with different people. Like for instance we should do two peer reviews then one from two different people. This is helps because everyone has different opinions on what they feel can help make your paper better. Another thing we should do is work in groups together so we can discuss topics on writing and its always better learning different techniques from other people. It helps improve your writing skills. Any-who Ms. Spencer is doing a great job on teaching us how to get better in writing by making us do the blog posts and assigning the chapters from the book to read because the book contains lots of information about writing that I didn't know about. Now as for my writing, it has changed somewhat since the beginning of the semester. I started to consider what the tone, purpose, audience and genre is before I continue writing my papers because it really helps you break down what you're trying to say in your paper. I feel that my writing has improved since the semester started. The blogs help the most because it explores different prompts. In other words writing 101 is a helpful class to take.

Assignment #6 Compare & Contrast

Purpose: The purpose for writing my literacy narrative is to tell a story about my past on how I became a better writer. As for my ad analysis the purpose was to inform people what the ad represents, I had to study every detail the ad people are trying to describe and had to break down what the message was behind it.

Audience: The audience for my literacy narrative was basically anybody there was no specific age group, it was meant to be read by anybody who enjoyed narratives. But for my ad analysis the audience was targeted for anybody that smokes, especially for smoking parents; in a way it could have been targeted for the public to show how serious smoking is.

Tone: My literacy narrative had a humor tone in it. I told my story in a funny way in order to show my audience that my experience taught me a lesson and was something to look forward to in the future in case something like that happened to me again. My ad analysis had a very serious and sad tone. It was a wake-up call to anyone well mainly targeted to smoking parents what can happen to their child if they continue to smoke.

Genre: The genre for my literacy narrative was very informal because it told a story about my past. When you tell a story to an audience about your life it's suppose to be told in the way you talk not given in a speech. And as for my ad analysis the genre was formal because it was informing the audience in a professional manner.

Similar: Both papers have a purpose, tone, genre and audience.

Difference between papers:The different rhetorical situations between these two papers will strongly affect the way I write my papers because I'm telling my story for my narrative so its based on what I want it to target. As for my ad anaysis it is written from my point on what i feel like the ad people are trying to show. For example if i wrote my narrative essay more like a speech then telling a story it will change everything about it like the audience and tone of it. Same goes for my ad analysis.