Week 10- Transformative Learning

Part 1: Two Examples of Transformative Learning

As for this course, WR 37 Intensive writing focused on the primary elements of rhetorical devices upon genre based essays to develop a message and gain an audience appeal. As we completed several assignments along the timeframe of ten weeks to help us develop and transform our GA Essays and IP Multimodal Essays into well structured pieces as academic writers. The two most transformative moments that come to mind when I think about my journey through this class and the progress I’ve made through the development of my writing skills pertaining to essays, are the Metacognitive reading assignments.

First, “Beyond The Five Paragraph Essay” by Kimberly Hill Campbell and Kristi Latmer, shaped my understanding about not using the five paragraph method and going beyond with more than just three body paragraphs. Since using this method didn’t help me construct my own fundamental learning about a topic nor developing well thought ideas by thinking outside the box. As I saw it as an instructional path to finish and not the aspect of creating a connection between myself and possibly the intended audience. Once I broke from that path of following the 5 paragraphs and starting to use the hamburger method with regards to adding additional paragraphs with well rounded information, it gave me more room to analyze my thoughts and ideas. Giving me the capability of making further connections with the outside world and becoming a credible writer while persuading my audience with the use of genre conventions in a descriptive manner that didn’t limit my knowledge and importance.

“Beyond The Five Paragraph Essay” by Kimberly Hill Campbell and Kristi Latmer,

Second, “ Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott from Bird by Bird, shaped my understanding on the use of drafts, prior to doing a step by step process to finalize my writing pieces, with regards to practice and revision to elaborate on ideas in an unstructured outline. Like a practice tool to construct an essay as it allows me to make errors until I finalize my writing piece. I have always been a person to construct an essay in one sitting by establishing all of my ideas in an unorganized way due to no sketch. This resulted in a badly structured essay, where my ideas are all over the place making it significantly difficult for my audience to understand, react or engage with my writing. I incorporated this development of learning to the GA Essay and IP Multimodal Essay by writing drafts and not just any drafts but “shitty first drafts” ; practice writing pieces to put down relevant information and details as references. As it helped me establish my final revisions on my essay’s that resulted in a great outcome of following the rubrics elements and the overall organization within the information I conveyed. When I look back at this class, I will remember about the accurate ways to structure and organize an essay pertaining to its genre and rhetorical devices/choices, prior to making drafts and not following the five paragraph method but adding more to expand my knowledge.

"Shitty First Drafts" by Anne Lamott from Bird by Bird

Part 2: Two Problems and A Plan for the future

The most difficult course objectives that were difficult for me to reach were :Developing arguable claims based on textual analysis of appropriate evidence from primary sources and thoughtful engagement with competing viewpoints in secondary sources and Situating a text within its generic context by identifying its key genre conventions, discourse communities, and purpose(s). First I had issues on constructing a thesis statement since it lacked an arguable claim that can be supported and referred back to my body paragraphs. Like for example, in my GA Essay I had to change my thesis multiple times to include the right elements. I didn’t know how to incorporate the genre conventions and their functions in regards to making it debatable in an attempt to convince my audience, change their views and urge them to think in a new way regarding my own views. The plan I took to work on this issue was to identify who my readers are first then establish a hook to grab their attention. Second, I had issues with using accurate conventions prior to it’s genre to support the message of my writing piece because I didn’t know how to relate the story elements to character archetypes, key events and the overall settings that are commonly found in a specific genre that help with the expectations of the readers regarding the story in that genre. The plan I took to work on this issue was to look at sources provided by my professor and examine each characteristics and identify its differences regarding different genres.

Thank you for reading all my blog post!

Week 9- The connect assignments

Learn smart achieve (LSA)

On the Learn smart achieve (LSA) assignment, pertaining to organizing and writing strong paragraphs. You answered multiple choice questions with an unlimited timeframe but if you're consistant with answering those questions correctly, the faster that you move onto finishing the assignment. In addition, if you answer the questions incorrectly then you don't advanced to the next question, instead you answer another question related to that topic until you get the accurate answer, so the timeframe to finish takes longer. Overall, The data/results from my assignment indicates that I have a strong yet unstainable knowledge among identifying the qualities of effective topic sentences, determining the appropriate length for a paragraph given its purpose and context, differentiating paragraphs in which the details support the topic sentence from a paragraph that lacks unity, and differentiate effective topic sentences from ineffective topic sentences. As there is a consistent pattern with a 50% accuracy on each section topic. In addition, with a 40% accuracy upon the development of word choice and repetition, I still need more practice with identifying the effective use of repetition apon sentence structures to achieve the quality of being logical and consistent and identifying common transitional words and phrases with the relationships they show among one another. Prior to my confidence level of having high confidence within 72% and only 28% of it being incorrect, means that I have partial knowledge on the basis of these sections, in which I can establish these techniques to further improve my critical writing skills and establish those course objectives among other assignments like my essays. Basing these results and connecting it to my previous assignments to help me develop a well written genre based essay is important to creating my ethos and being a part of the discourse community.

The visual representation above shows my confidence level precentage and the amount of time I took doing the assignment.

The visual representation above shows the accuracy among the questions I answered in each section.

According to my Rhetorical Analysis Essay, I’ve established a fundamental improvement among not using any repetition phrases throughout my final draft compared to my first draft. For example, in my introduction paragraph I stated the author's background information prior to formulating the relationship between the article being used and introducing it’s author but with repetition, I also stated that information in the thesis statement which is located at the end of the introduction paragraph. In my final draft, I was able to learn from my previous mistakes by not including any repetition upon the authors information and their article into my thesis statement. Inorder to keep improving on the sections that I lacked the most knowledge pertaining to repetition and including transitional words, I can refer back to connect by accessing the quizzes and seeing my progress through each activity with my confidence and accuracy level.

Power of process

The Power of Process assignment is the reading assignment that helped me evaluate my own essay with the use of specific strategies to break down every paragraph and determine my strengths and weaknesses by using the metacognitive method (annotating). Those strategies were broken down into sections by acknowledging the author's writing to help build my credibility/argument , adding textual analysis with the use of genre conventions, analyzing thesis for focus, analyzing introductory paragraphs and overall organization. The after strategy among this skim reading practice was to develop critical thinking among the critics that my peers showed on their evaluations and what techniques I can utilize to improve on those weaknesses. By doing this assignment, I learned how to properly present a coherent argument in response to a question that can be both debatable/arguable , that persuades my intended audience by being a credible writer with an organizational structure that's followed throughout my entire essay. As I include my expertise on the topic of rhetoric (genre and genre conventions) to make my argument more effective.

The visual representation shown above is the process circle strategy where I analyzed my essay with a step by step evaulation. that developed my critical thinking.

Thank you and stay tune for the final blog post next week!

Week 8- Description Writing using the Five Senses

The five senses are included in academic writing for further description among events spoken through experiences by including: Taste, smell, touch, hear and see.

1st writing exercise

“The shadowy bench-lined inner pathways that connected the twenty-seven six-story buildings of Marcy Houses were like tunnels we kids burrowed through. Housing projects can seem like labyrinths to outsiders, as complicated and intimidating as a Moroccan bazaar.”

Imitation: I can see the trash that hasn't been picked up in days as bacteria forms, creating worms that slithered through the open cans of food, that gushes out beans soup and left over pork. Creating germs that enter the residents hall making everyone vomit uncontrollably. “ I think the trash is making everyone sick (in a worried tone), as my body rolls back and forward creating a gag reflex sound; manger: “ This seems more like a stomach flu” he breathes heavily, “This isn’t going to look good with the health department checkup, that occurring tonight at 4:00”. I gasp as my eyebrows lift up, “ You’re more scared about some checkup than the residents' health?”

As the class starts to prepare for the IP Multimodal Memoir Essay, we have been working on many activities throughout the course of week 7 and 8 to help us develop ideas pertaining to the essay. The IP Writing Practice: Description activity was one of those assignments I find the most helpful and with a major purpose to my overall learning. I imitated at least two sentences of the excerpt Decoded (2010) by Jay-Z, where I encountered a scenario and described it to make a broader commentary about an issue by using the five senses: Taste, smell, hear, see and touch. Connecting this assignment to the course objectives, it has improved my “Habits of mind” by incorporating creativity to my critical ideas by adding detailed descriptions for more vivid imagery. This taught me to be more detailed with talking about my past experiences to keep my audience engaged with a realistic feel of the event, where they can relive the moment of the rhetor past life experiences to make broader connections. This demonstrates that I’m strengthening a key skill in my writing because I’m learning how to expand my word choices to describe certain events to make it more vivid in context and show more significance among my own experiences.This moment of learning gave me insight on how to use the five senses and when to use it in my writing as it’s used to identify moments in events to declare the setting and the things that revolve around it.

The mastery of this skill is important to my ethos because it’s a way of expressing my emotions to persuade my intended audience and gain their perspective.

Thank you and stay tuned for next weeks blog!