Learning Outcome 1:

My recursive writing process and revision practice for the significant writing process was remarkably noticeable. My first draft of my first essay was highly critiqued from my professor and three of my peers. They all kept saying that my voice in the conversation was lacking. They said that I needed to stray away from the traditional five paragraph essay of summary, summary, thoughts. This is when I knew I would have to revise my whole essay drastically for the content and organization of it. I then read my essay again and realized that my peers and my professor were correct, my voice was lacking. I then decided that I needed to re-write my first two body paragraphs because it was all summarizing. I needed to include my voice and have the text just as supporting evidence and that’s exactly what I did for the global revisions. After I did my global revisions, I read my essay again in order to capture any local revisions that needed to be done which included punctuation and reading for sentence fluency. As for my “philosophy” of the recursive writing process, I’d say Sommers was right about how students think of it. Somers said that students saw the revision process as a rewording activity and that’s exactly what I thought it was before I entered into this class. Know I know that the revision process is to help identify the “something larger” that Nancy Somers talks about in her short essay called “Revision Strategies of Student Writer and Experienced Adult Writers”.

Learning Outcome 2:

In my chosen significant writing project, I used two distinct techniques of how I used sources as evidence in my paper and not just summarizing a text and then stating what I thought about the text. The first technique that I used was talking about my thoughts and then having the text state something different. I did this so I could later say how I disagree with this certain opinion and gave reasons of why I disagreed. I find this method very useful because it gives the reader an opposing voice/argument and then I could make valid points of why I think that argument is wrong. It gets the reader thinking about other opinions, and if your opinion about it is backed by valid points, it makes your argument stronger. This is due because the reader will agree with you which in turn would have them agreeing with your thesis and your essay. For example, in my significant paper that I chose, I talked about how painting brought joy to the world and to individuals every day. Then I went on to quote an Effective Altruism group that believes artists are in a whole other world just “paint[ing] beautiful landscapes in front of them while the rest of the world burns” (Southan 437). I then went on about how I disagreed with the quote because paintings and landscapes help bring joy to the world which is slowly burning. I additionally said that the world would look more like hell and less like heaven if the artists were non existent. The second technique I used was having a quote as supporting evidence that is related to my thoughts and ideas. This is also a very useful technique because it can confirm your beliefs and thoughts with actual evidence. When a reader sees supporting evidence, it makes them believe that what I am trying to say is more correct because someone else had the same beliefs.

Learning Outcomes 5 and 6:

My chosen significant writing project definitely showcases my ability to cite sources using MLA guidelines and to make local revisions. The ability to effectively showcase my ability to cite sources using MLA guidelines was mainly due to the book The Little Seagull by Richard Bullock. This handbook effectively tells you how to cite everything you would possibly need to cite. It also gives you examples of how to cite too which was truly amazing. This little handbook has helped me possess the knowledge of how to effectively cite a source using MLA guidelines. My chosen significant writing project also showcases that like most people, I too make typical surface errors. For example, when talking about a poor community giving their money to Haas and Hahn, I mistakenly used the wrong their. I originally had the word there instead of using the correct terminology which is their. This is just one example that I had out of many possibilities.

Learning Outcome 4:Revision of Peers Paper

The marked first draft of my peers paper clearly demonstrates my ability to critique others work by emphasizing local and global revisions. One clear example of a local revision that I made for my peer was that he kept on misspelling the author of one of his main pieces of literature. I commented on his essay saying that this is misspelled, its spelt Lehrer. This is a clear example of a local revision because it’s just a simple fix and misunderstanding that I caught. Local revisions are revisions that just fix punctuation, grammar, etc. This comment shows my achievement of this learning outcome because it clearly demonstrates my knowledge of how to use local revisions to critique a paper. The marked first draft of my peers paper also shows my ability to critique ones paper using globing revisions. One clear example of this is when I comment, “I think you should think about removing this because you go into saying that kids should learn the STEAM model then you say that kids should be able to choose their own schedule which might not even include art. These are two conflicting ideas”. Global revisions include deleting sections of paragraphs which this comment is clearly suggesting. This is a great suggestion because although my peer might have been thinking about the text differently, the reader will catch that they are going against his main thesis by using conflicting ideas. My peer might not have caught that when he was going over his essay again which is why it demonstrates my knowledge of how to critique a paper using global revisions.