What are the problems with the thesis, both specifically and how it guides the paper broadly? – There are a few things wrong with this thesis. It is a reflective essay, so the thesis should talk about what you have learned through the course and how you became a better writer. However, this writer, despite his recognition of the fact that the thesis is not his forte, he simply states that he is not good at thesis statements. That is not a reflection, but instead just an observation. This makes it so that the rest of the essay will not have the necessary focus on the reflection.
Activity 2: Pretend that you are rating the paper. What rating would you give the paper and why? – This paper should be given a 3 because it is not very well organized, the points the writer tries to make are not in line with the purpose of the essay, and the writer doesn’t talk about any development or reflection of the material learned in class.
Why is this paper a 3? Do you agree with the ranking? Why or why not? – This prompt got a 3 because the whole time the writer is saying stuff like: “I didn’t know English 102 would be harder than English 101.” Instead of focusing on his development and the skills the writer has gathered over the semester, he writes about how he didn’t do well because he was surprised by the difficulty of the class. I do agree with the ranking, because he is too focused on how well he does in the class and he generalizes the things taught in the class. On another note, the writer states that he has never used the writing center to seek help, so he doesn’t really show any personal determination to improve his writing.
What does this sample essay tell us about the “problem of writing” and what the student has learned in this class? How does it interpret the prompt? – His problem of writing is just a general apathy toward writing essays. With just the block of the essay on the slide, the student has only learned that he needs to work harder to perform well in the class, which is an obvious observation. This portion of the essay leads me to believe that the essay will only talk about how the writer needed to put more effort into writing his papers, with no reflection on development.
What have you learned about writing your reflective essay from this lecture and the activities you completed? – The main thing that I learned is that in the essay, specifically the thesis, there needs to be actual discussion of how the class helped me to become another writer. This assignment also enlightened me on what not to do for my essay. For instance, I should not talk about the quality of my essays, but more specifically what I did throughout the course that wasn’t as good as it should have been, how I discovered the solution to my problem, and how I fixed it in the following paper and assignments.
Write a blog post that’s a journal entry. A journal entry is simply a reflection of your day or some time period to yourself. That’s it. Reflect on your writing this semester. What did you expect from ERH 102? What didn’t you expect? If your parents asked you about what you learned in ERH 102, what would you say? My writing has greatly improved since I first started ERH 102. Since I was in high school, my fundamental teaching of drafting an essay did not give me all the tools necessary to be competent in this class. However, the point of taking classes in college is to learn, so I was able to learn many skills in writing an essay that had never crossed my mind before.
Look over your papers, all of the drafts and revisions, the graded copies, and the final revisions. What do you remember struggling with as you wrote each draft? The issues I had with my drafts were developing a coherent thesis that accurately described what I intended to discuss, and I felt myself changing my thesis the more I wrote my essay because my opinion would change halfway through, which resulted in a confusing essay.
Look at the peer reviews and the feedback from your instructor. What did they have to say about your writing? The general sense of their advice was that my thesis did not connect with all aspects of the content of my paper, making the intent of the essay confusing. Also, as I did my research for my papers, I had a terrible habit of summarizing what I read instead of developing my argument and having it be complemented with just the right amount of outside sources.
Revise your thesis now that you’ve done your research. This class has developed me into a much better writer through teaching me how to better develop my thesis and how to make the argument my own before I do research.
Find pieces of evidence from each of these that supports your thesis. 1) At the conclusion of my first essay, MAJ Garriott asked, “So what’s the argument, after all this?.” This signifies that the whole essay was confusing in nature and my thesis was not concrete enough. 2) In the first body paragraph of my first essay, MAJ Garriott commented, “Also, by this point, you haven’t made any of your own arguments. You’ve been summarizing Sharmilla.” This comment highlights the weakness of my essays in that I am used to analyzing text and writing about it rather than having an argument already in place and simply putting it in to enhance my thesis and ethos. 3) In the peer review of my second essay, Cadet Szczepanik noted the issue with my thesis in the way that it connected with the rest of my essay: “Your thesis is pretty clear. The only thing I can think is that at first I questioned if you wanted to get rid of all gun regulation legislation or if you simply wanted to modify what is already there.” As I developed my essay, I came to the opinion that there should be national legislation and licensure of guns for the best possible solution to reducing gun control. However, I failed to return to my thesis to include my new ideas.