Straying away from our more normal route of  work in English 123a, these texts gave the students in the class something unique to analyze and understand. The first text being an article about Feminism and its different forms and along with section in one of our books that helps with understanding elements of Literature. Bringing in two very different types of articles this gave us room to develop and apply ideas that go along with what we as writers think about the text. This new kind of thinking that these new missions introduced made it easier to come up with more complex ideas with more room to develop them.  The second mission project involved us directly as writers. This first text were about the revision techniques and the layers that authors can do to improve their writing.  The next text addresses the different forms revision has taken on over time, Modernism, Romanticism, and connecting this with technological advances. Having us, the student, question our own revision habits and how we compare to these two points of view given by the texts. Looking over the multiple drafts of my essays I have challenged, understood, connected, questioned, and developed my the ideas of authors and my own.

Active Reading, Critical Reading, and Informal Reading Response

Roxanne Gay’s “Bad Feminist” (1)

(2)

(3)

Craig Fehrman’s “Revising your Writing again? Blame the Modernists”   (4)

Miller and Jurecic’s “Habits of a Creative Mind”  (5)

Annotations play a very important role in reading and writing. It helps the author both understand, and analyze the relationships within the text. Helping the reader draw connections and form an opinion on what they are reading. When looking through my annotations I found myself challenging, connecting, and understanding the text. This made me realize how much annotations help a reader form and strengthen their ideas. In my first annotations above I question whether most people are what Gay describes as a “Bad Feminist”. Since mostly everyone believes in different forms of equality with different things, wouldn’t everyone be a bad feminist according to her definition. In the 2nd and 3rd annotation I challenge Gay’s position as well as her continuous argument throughout her article.  In the paragraph in question she contradicts her previous points about the labels and implications of feminism. I convey these ideas with my annotation, questioning her argument. In my 5th annotation on Miller and Jurecic’s text I compare their idea of first layer revision to what they say untrue form of revision, copy-editing.

Critique Own and Others’ Work

When looking at and comparing my first draft to my final draft, there are newly introduced ideas, sentence structure, and organization. In the first Project assigned, Mission 11a,My final draft highlight some new ideas as well as quotations to support it.

This a new paragraph developed to be in the final draft in mission 11a, introduces the other text by the way of direct quotation. This is so the reader can be grounded to the quotations while reading my concepts and ideas. Using Miller and Jurecic’s texts I try and expand my ideas involving my stance on Roxanne Gay’s ideas. With the new addition of this paragraph the reader is now connected to two texts, bringing forward my claim that Gay uses the way of And thinking, described by Miller and Jurecic.

In my second project, Mission 11b , I also include a new developed paragraph. This newly introduced set of sentences brings in the concept of Romanticism. This provides a contrast in writing style, ideas, and revision, to what the concept of  Modernism is.

By including this contrast in revision styles, it further expresses my claim, as well as bringing in more evidence to help to reader understand what I am trying to say in my essay. This is done by including the definition and the information about Romanticism right after the explanation. This is to give the reader the important distinctions before I dive  into the evidence and ideas that I  give in the essay. By having this new paragraph it led me to develop my claim that I purposed that Technology fuels change in revision. This was made more detailed by including the old way of Romanticism with revision and how it has been influenced by technology.

Control Individualized Error Patterns

My individual errors are exactly what the title suggests, they are a pattern. I have developed a recent bad habit of using a comma as a way to extend my sentences. While this by itself is not a bad thing to do, I happen to use it almost every other sentence at its worst. I try and stop stop the pattern of putting commas in most of my sentences, but I believe that the way that I write promotes this bad pattern. Because of the way that I write I have a lot of information that I want to present and by putting into one sentence, that information can be link. This is because the normal information is too small of a sentence or the sentence would have a greater weight and might be awkward if it were by itself. This method then became a template in which I unknowingly have been using very frequently in my writing. Because of this bad habit I have begun to disregard what I would normally use, complex and compound sentences . By not incorporating these types of sentences, I have left out linking most of my individual clauses. Effectively reducing the amount of signal phrasing I do throughout my essay. This ironically made my writing more awkward and less interesting to the reader.

While this image shows the amount of commas in my essay, the amount that I use to connect two sentences together was almost half the amount of times used.

This is a very big problem that has become a recent problem for me. It came to my attention after the received comments on my mission essay. Comparing this amount of commas to another essay that is also 3 pages there could be some difference.

Document Work with Appropriate Conventions

In my my two mission essays, including the first drafts I tried to bring in the use of multiple forms of text quotations. The use of these quotations require that it be properly introduced, and cited within their essay. When I used  block quotations and embedded quotations in my essays I correctly included them, but did not cite them correctly.

In the Mission 11a essay I bring in a quotation from Roxanne Gay. This is to really bring down the point that people with these certain qualities that Gay is describing, categorizes her with And thinking. 

But yet I incorrectly cite this quotation by not moving the period on the outside.           .”(Gay 8)      –     “(Gay 8).  I mix up the where the period is placed with block quotations.

In this example I use the phrasing “while” to put in place a signal to the reader that revision also has multiple versions. This sentence leads into my explanation of revision that then leads into a reference from the text itself. By doing this I give the reader a taste of what is appearing in my essay later. This puts the idea into the reader early in order to fully understand what I am trying to say.

 

 

 

Writing as a Recursive Process

In the introduction of my first and final drafts of my essays I bring forward the texts I am going to quote and talk about in my essay. This also include the authors and a small explanation that talks about the text itself. By doing this I show the reader what texts I am talking about as well as what the in text I will be talking about.

In the first Mission essay I introduce Miller and Jurecic by explaining what I will do with their text, and giving the name of the other text by Gay. This then leads into the sentence where I can then talk about Gay’s ideas and introduce the article in which I am getting it from.

Mission 11b Final draft

This newly introduced paragraph in my essay brings more insight into how revision can different with age and technology. By including this I allow the reader to get more knowledge about the subject. Which they can use to understand the points I am making throughout my essay. Introducing the opposite of Modernism, Romanticism gives the reader what revision was like when there was minimum technology.

Integrating Ideas with Those of Others

In the final version of the mission essays, and annotations I often challenge and or question the text to bring out some deeper meanings on the subject.

In this annotation I question Gay’s multiple pointed argument that she carries throughout her article. I challenge her argument by stating that she is being a hypocrite about what she dislikes about powerful women who don’t like to associates with the label of feminist. When she then says later in her article that they should not be afraid to label themselves. This males no sense for the people that she is talking about since she is giving the best possible scenario for feminism. Even though she pokes at the bad things about feminism.

In this excerpt of my mission IIa essay I connect Miller and Jurecic’s ideas of And, But, Or and make them into an idea that Gay is bringing forth this type of thinking. I give evidence for this with a quotation from Miller and Jurecic to tie in my idea that Gay is And thinking. She does this be supplying more of the same ideas and thinking.