Monday, December 1, 2014

when i started my first semester of college english, i had different skills i wanted to improve on.  these skills were: knowing the difference between composing,editing, and proofreading, curing writers block, and be able to use descriptive writing in my text.  I gained many writing skills in my first semester of English at the university of memphis.  One of the most important skill I learned was knowing the difference between writing,editing, and proof reading.  composing is usually the simplest step in writing.  when I write in the first step, I tend to write down everything I can think of.  After i finish that, I go back over my work and edit my work.  I do that by rereading what I wrote and try to replace the current sentences with stronger ones.  I also try to replace vague words with stronger ones.  the final step is proofreading, which checking for grammatical punctuating errors.  I have made improvement in curing writers block while writing.  The best way for me to get out of writers block is to leave the work alone and come back to it another time.  another skill i learned in my english course is descriptive writing.  Descriptive writing allows a reader to imagine a setting that he/she can feel.  I will be using descriptive writing in my writing assignments in my english courses in the future.  Descriptive writing make topics more interested in the topic and will be very detailed about it.  
 I developed a lot of different skills that will benefit me in my writing future.  English 1010 taught me a variety of ways to start, edit, and finish assignments covering the main purpose and requirements for each assignment.  I never though I would be able to compose long papers such as fifteen hundred or seventeen hundred words.  Each assignment taught me a different skill, along with grammatical practice that occurred as I wrote all of my papers.

Monday, November 3, 2014

Revisualising Composition

       There was a lot of different sections discussed in the article Revisualizing Composition.  The author talked about different genres that teens use the most in their everyday lives.  Some say that texting is a form of writing, while others say it is not an academic way to describe writing.  The research method the author used was effective in getting clear and logical answers.  He used the most common method, which was the Survey.  I think this was the best way authors are able to get true answers based on experiences the participants go through in their daily lives.  Another method the author used was Methodology, which was trying to find the similarities of the participants to the demographic or file of College students.  The author concluded that the majority of the participants were 19 years old, meaning that they enrolled n college right after high school.  This was similar to the US institutions for higher education. Although SMS Texts is the most frequently written by teens outside of school, I think this is still not an official type of composing.  The fact that it is writing down letters on smart phone is where many people say it is composing, but writing in my opinion is what professional writers write, or famous authors of some sort. The second most frequently used genre is Email and the third frequently used was Lecture notes.  The organization of the article was very unique and easy for the readers to understand.  I think the most important section in the article was " Participants are most often motivated by the need of school assignments."  This section states that ninety three percent of the participants say that this genre is frequently used because it is for a school assignment and they 'Must" do it.  I think this applies to a lot of college teens, especially the freshman students.  You will not find a lot of people write just for fun, many write because they have major grades associated with a certain assignment they must complete.  The article overall was great in my opinion.  A lot of important topics were discussed.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Writing and Technology   

The author discussed different teens' and their parent's thoughts towards writing technology such as texting, email, and social media.  Some people said that this is better way to enrich teens' writing skill while many others oppose the idea.  Many teens and their parents believe that technology is a major issue and as time goes by, teens' skill become weakened as a result of using technology features such as texting in their daily life.  I think one important feature that the author mentioned was teens' writing quality does not improve just because they write with computers.  This statement is true in a lot of ways.  The skill of writing does not change due to weather you use paper or computer to write.  To the have the skill, you just have to practice writing in your daily life until you become good at it.  The author used a very good research method, he included teens and their parents as well.  He had a lot of different answers from different people, even from different races as well.  This was the best way the author was going to get such answers.  This article was very organized, points were made clear and a lot of the answers were precise percentages.  One feature the author pointed out was " Teens are motivated to write by relevant topics, high expectations, an interested audience, and opportunities to write creatively."  I think that is very true to a lot of teens.  you will not find many teens write for fun, it is mostly known that teens write because they have to, for example if it is a writing assignment or it might be a topic that is highly interesting to a teenager.  On the other hand, there are those who do write for fun, you often find them interested in writing because that was the way they were raised, or they may find their future in writing.  The author had very good points listed in the article.  I think this research method was the best way to show how different people deal with writing and technology in this world today.  The best think I liked is that the author used not only teens but also parents in the research method.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014


  1. There is not a big difference between my writing process and Emily's.  I think the major difference is that she listens to music while writing.  She also likes to be around people as well.  She said by her listening to music, she gets more focused into what she is writing.  Meanwhile on the other hand, I can not have any distractions around me what so ever.  No music, people, or any thing that could distract me while I am writing.  Another difference is she usually has a variety of snacks next to her while writing. Her favorite part of the writing is just the actually writing she thinks that editing and proofreading only waists her time.  She waits to the last minute which is what I do sometimes.  She and I both do not enjoy writing.  She uses post-it notes for her brainstorming process, she writes thoughts down on the post-it notes as she they come to her head.  I basically do the same thing only I write mine down on paper.  We both prefer to use a computer of some sort and use Microsoft word while writing.

Monday, October 6, 2014

1,3,4
1
Murray writing process I think is different not only from mine, but from a lot of people.  I have never seen someone use a tape recorder to gather thoughts.  I also think that writing 8 drafts before turning a final in is unnecessary for me.  I do not have to write 8 drafts.

3 Berkenkotter learned that murray spends a lot of time on gathering thoughts and planning but he does not spend much on revising the text. Writers usually revise their final draft but after it has ben revised that draft is not a final anymore.

4. Time management with the revising and editing.  Berkenkotter talks about the difficulties people face while composing.  He believes a writer should edit the paper more than actually writing it and weakness still remain.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

My writing process I believe starts with gathering thoughts and ideas, just writing them down.  I write down every thought that comes to my head on a sheet of notebook paper.  After I have done that I start outlining my text based on the ideas that I wrote down on my paper.  I have to be in a very quite, cool place where there is no noise to be heard or any thing that can distract me from writing.   After I outline I start my free writing which is putting the ideas and concepts into paragraph or text form.  After I finish writing I leave my paper alone and close out what ever I was writing on and leave the whole thing alone. The next time I start back writing is maybe like 5 hours later.  As I get back in my writing mode, I first edit any mistakes I have previously made when I wrote the paper the first time, Then I edit mistakes that I find.  After I have finished editing, I proofread and try to come up with more grammatical structured sentences then the ones already written.  After I do that, I let someone else proofread my paper for any other mistakes I have in the text .

Monday, September 29, 2014

1,2,4 pg. 545


1.  a.The Beginning is everything, a writer should immediately get a readers attention in the text.
     b. Sentences should be written grammatically correct. 
      c. three or more points should be included in an essay.
      d. do not make an outline complex because it can make your composing harder.
      e. if the first paragraph is good, then the rest of the essay should be good.
 I think some times I have a hard time writing correct grammatical sentences but it does not happen much often.


2. non blockers are expressed less absolutely,  they use more ideas in their thesis paragraph.
They do not focus on getting someones attention from start. They get to know their audience, and also brig unfinished wok for evaluation.

4. what makes a rule good for writers is the amount of interest the writer has in this specific rule.
what makes a bad rule for writers is they do not actually understand what is saying and have a problem following this rule.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Ernest Hemingway.

what makes Ernest's writing process so different is that he writes every morning as soon as the sun rises.  You will never catch him writing no other time of the day other than the morning time.  when time finishes he just leaves it alone and can not wait to the next day so he can do it again.
Page 587
 1. Students use the process of revising as finding better vocabulary words that can be placed instead of the ones thats already written.  They do this to make their text becomes more valuable.

3. I think all four of these describe the way I write.  I always write down ideas as I do my daily routines.  After I write my thoughts, I always compose my text after I get my thoughts together.  By me gathering thoughts, composing the text becomes real easy.

5. Experienced writers tend to have that advantage that student writers do not have.  Experienced writers already have a thought of how their text is going to be and they do not need to pre write.

7. A revised paper is always better than an unrevised paper because the more the paper is revised the better sentences and words will be in the text.  Some  people do what they learn while others tend to have that in them from start.

Monday, September 22, 2014

2,3,4,5,7

2. There is a lot of ways a reader can trace a text.  Prior used many different skills of tracing a single text.  He relates text to source text meaning that any texts he reads is not a source of its own, some of the text had to come from another text that was previously written.  A text must have multiple drafts before having  a final one, it can be related to talk or discussion.  he also used thinking aloud a certain text, look for hidden writing, use natural resources in a text, retrospective accounts of writing.  He used different types of interviewing such as stimulated, semi-structerd, or text-based.  Observation of writing as well as side notes in writing.  Using data from different sources, conclusion and finally references.  All of these aspects can be used to trace writing.

  3. Inscription is a little different, Inscription is the act of writing out what a writer is writing, while composing is what a writer does to edit what he/she is writing. Inscription seems to come first not by much because composing follows along right after it.

4. It is important to distinguish different kinds of authorship because when tracing a text because more than one skill can be involved.  For example, inscription and composing can both be present in a text at one time.

5. one major skill that must be done while tracing writing is being able to identify the participants in a certain text.  Knowing who did what and what does the text mean to certain participants is also important.

7. Concurrent makes looking at a writer inscription and writing alone difficult to see what is going on in the text.  Retrospective rely on someone's memory which I think that is not a good way to write a text because sometimes a writer does not remember everything that happened.  Naturalistic account deals with a lot of image use.  Semi-structured interviewing is a series of questions that can be looked bak into after the interview is over.  Stimulated Elicitation interviewing wants a response based on a person memory, I think both of the interview process I find my favorite but with the semi-structured being the prior one.

Changes to my paper and writing process.

I would change the way I use descriptive writing.  I will try to make it as more descriptive and more entertaining as possible.  I learned descriptive writing was a major cause to have a better paper along with other basic writing skills a writer should have.  I would use grammar correctly, use correct persuasive appeals, and rhetorical concepts.  

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Page 75
2. Writing is an autobiography beacasue it shows readers the personal feeling and experience the writer feels.  Writing an autobiography can be written in any category, from poetry to narrative.  It shows the reader everything the writer goes through as he experience what he is writing about.

 5. I agree with Murray.  Everyone writes his papers different.

6. some stories I wrote have been autobiography in the sense that Murray describes while other stories are not.

page  205

1. By expressing feelings and emotions, a writer does not use the same skills in writing as if he/she is writing research paper or such thing.  I agree because a writer uses different skills when writing different stories or papers.


2. Strasser is right but at the same time he is wrong.  Having good writing skills lead to meaningless writing, but what is more important than that is how much interest does the writer have in the topic he is writing about.

3. I think school has a major role in creating ones mind, but not to much about body and spirits because there are many different kinds of schools and the creation of body and spirits in learning depends on what type of school a student attends in his life.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

I do not remember a specific name of a book I liked.  I read a lot of sport articles online about soccer and wrestling. I did not have a computer at home so I did not have access to the internet all the time.  So every time I get free time for example at school inside classrooms or sometimes in the library, I would go to websites like WWE.com or Realmadrid.com and read articles and posts that follow up the weekly Tv shows.   I also used to read a lot of WWE magazines; Every time I used to go to certain markets I would go to the magazine aisle and start looking at sports magazines and read certain articles while I wait for my cousin or anyone while He/She shopped.  I do not remember the exact age I was when I began reading.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Q D G 1-4
1. The shifting creates a confusion for the readers.  It makes it hard to distinguish weather the story is from a first person or third person point of view.  I have learned that a writer should always keep the story from one point of view so it would be easier for the reader to follow along the story and does not get confused about who is the writer talking about.

2.Villanueva defines rhetoric as the way people use language in their everyday lives.  The way people think,talk, and interact with one another.  He says that learning is very vital in someones life and rhetoric was the way people talk to each other, read and write.
3. I have always tried to imitate good writer's books.  I look at the sentence structure, grammar use, vocabulary, and all the other skills good writers use in their writing.  By using this process, I try to make my writing as most accurate as I can.
4. A lot of these elements apply to my writing process, I gather thoughts and ideas as I do a lot of other stuff.  For example, I start writing a paper, then once I get stuck, I might get up and go get a drink of water or something.  As I am drinking my water, an idea might come up where I am stuck in my writing, then I start typing until I get stuck again and so on.  I continue this process until I get my whole thoughts together and Finish my paper.

Monday, September 1, 2014

Skills To Be Learned

     There are a few skills that I am familiar with while many I need to improve upon.  I am familiar with MLA Formatting, understanding plagiarism, and properly use in-text citations.  As I was growing up, I learned MLA formatting multiple times, from different literacy sponsors and teachers.  While I was in school ( specifically High School) , I learned that plagiarism is one of the most common way people get kicked out of college.  I would like to improve as many skills as I can because I know that a perfect paper is written by good reading and writing skills.  I would like to improve on writing better papers, a better paper is written with more vocabulary, correct in-text citations, correct use of grammar, no plagiarism and so on.  I understand the longer your paper is the better your professor is more likely to credit your paper, the longer your paper is (without redundance) the more value it has.  I would also like to improve on knowing the difference between editing and proofreading, and how to be able to use them and to know what to do when getting stuck while writing as well because I get stuck sometimes in my own thinking while writing.  Getting stuck while writing could be one of the major reasons on finishing papers late and not on time which is why I want to never get stuck while writing.  Knowing the difference between editing and proofreading is very important because a writer can often misunderstand the correct usage of these two skills and might consider them the same.


     Another skill I would like to have as a good writer is using writing as a brainstorming process, that way I can collect general ideas about what i am going to write and go in detail following that.  This process will make what ever I have to write easier because my ideas and thoughts will already be written down and organized.  I want to also learn adapt appropriate voice, tone, and and level of formality as well as the ability to understand how tutoring is different than peer review.  After practicing these skills I will become a better writer and reader.  I think after taking this course I would learn a lot of skills for writing that I do not have or currently weak in.