Activity 1: Dear Journal,
I came into ERH 102 thinking I could slip by like I had in 101. In 101 I could still use the five paragraph format I had learned in high School. In 102 that was not the case. This semester was about crafting arguments and a paper to fit them. A five paragraph essay might have worked for the arguments I wrote in 101, but 102 widened the scope of the arguments, asking more complex questions and focusing on more complex topics.
Activity 2: The main thing I struggled with was not generalizing the ideas for my argument. In five paragraph essays, the length allows for more general ideas but the complex ideas we covered in 102 forced me to bring in more evidence from different sources.
Activity 3: Many of the peer reviews focused on the generalization of my papers while also pointing out that my conclusion and topic sentences tended only to state facts and not debatable points.
Activity 4: Throughout my English curriculum this year, I have grown to better understand what makes an argument based paper so powerful.