Learning Outcomes – Julia’s Site

Learning Outcome 1:

Paper 2 Self-Assess

My second paper had some ups and downs In the writing process and in the finished product. For my writing process, I like to make an outline and plan what each paragraph is going to be about. To me, having that plan makes it easier to write more effectively and have a good flow to my writing. In the first draft of this paper, there were no Barclays or naysayer paragraph. This unfortunately was the same for my final draft. The easiest thing to edit in my paper was expanding on the ideas I already had and coming up with new ones. The subject of this paper was interesting to me and therefore made it easy to want to expand. The feedback I gained from my peers helped me come up with new ideas for my paper and helped me see things from another perspective. Editing other peoples papers also gave me ideas and helped me come up with new arguments. Doing peer editing was the best thing for improving my paper.

Learning Outcome 2:

The evidence in my paper was carefully picked out to help get across each point I was making. One specific example in my paper is when I used a quote to show that scientists working on gene editing still tried to follow a set of ethics. “He adds that, “he has permission from a local review board to do his research, but that this does not allow transfer of gene-edited eggs into the womb and subsequent pregnancy” (Cryanoski).” This quote was chosen because of how it related to the main idea of the paragraph.

At the start of the semester, I was hesitant about using so many quotes in a paper because I didn’t have enough experience with it. I thought that finding the right quote was hard and didn’t help my writing. After this semester, I am much more confident in my ability to find good evidence for my papers. I now also see how quotes support a paper and how it can help you expand on your ideas. I now prefer to use quotes in all my papers, not just for English, to make a stronger paper with lots of evidence to support any claim I make.

Learning Outcome 3:

When I come to a reading, I do not usually do any prior planning, I just jump headfirst into it. I like to highlight lots of things when I am reading something important. Anything that stands out or seems interesting to me gets highlighted. I do not usually write things in the margins of the paragraph because I find myself not knowing what to write most of the time. But if there is a word, I’m not familiar with I always look it up and write what it means in the margin. I also highlight anything that I think could be used for a future quote in my writing.

The two papers you gave us, Categories for Active, Critical response and 7 Active Reading Strategies for Students, gave some good techniques for active and critical reading. One of the things on the handouts said to keep track of the things you do and do not understand. This is a good way for me to better understand difficult readings. Lots of times I must end up reading a section of a difficult reading repeatedly to be able to understand it. This was advice I also obtained from one of your handouts. These tools of annotation can help me in many other subjects rather than just English. It will help me better actively read for all my classes and help me pick out the important information I need. Learning how to better annotate has a great benefit for the rest of a person college career ad even beyond that.

Learning Outcome 4:

Peer review is something that was very helpful throughout the semester. At the beginning of the semester I was a little bit hesitant on giving a peer review because I did not want to hurt people’s feelings. But now I know that peer reviewing is just meant to help better everyone’s writing. Global revision was a little but new for me because in high school my teachers were more concerned about the local revision. At first, coming up with global revisions seems a bit difficult but by the second paper, I was able to easily pick things out that could be edited. The class designed Peer Review Glossary was a big help in being able to find things to edit and to word them in a constructive way. My efforts in peer reviewing got stronger throughout the semester. Seeing how my classmates peer reviewed my own papers also helped me better understand the most effective way to peer review.

Learning Outcomes 5 and 6:

My ability to cite sources on my paper grew stronger throughout the semester. Usually on the first draft I am not too concerned with getting my citations correct as I am with the quality of the paper overall. In the first drafts of my papers I often miss I citation completely of I mark that I need put one in a certain place later. In my final paper, I always make sure to carefully look over all my citations to make sure they are all present and done correctly. For my local revisions I used the spellcheck that automatically comes with word and I also used Grammarly. Grammarly is a really good tool to use for local edits and helped catch things in my paper that I would not have myself. The handouts from Professor Spain about how to correctly cite things in text and for the work cited page was also a very big help.