Assignment #10- Thinking Critically About Peer Review

I personally find peer review really helpful because you receive feedback from other classmates and not only from your teacher. Also, what I like about peer review is that you don’t necessarily have go to the teacher every time you have a question. You can simply ask your partner and he gladly would help you. The strongest part about peer review is that other classmates are able to notice your mistakes when you can’t. This is a great advantage in order to receive a high grade for your essay. Peer review has a great amount of strengths, but it also has a weakness. This weakness is created when students don’t take peer review seriously. If you don’t take peer review seriously you won’t be able to help your classmate because you are not correcting the essay in appropriate way. My ideal peer review would be where students only work in groups of two for peer review and with the right amount of time for them to complete the peer review process. I think a class day would be enough time for them to get finish, but this also depends on how long is the paper. 

Assignment #15- Final Reflection

Looking back at the beginning of the semester I have noticed that I have made a lot of progress in my writing skills. At first it was difficult to write a decent essay. However, now I can do a much better job than before. I gain a lot of knowledge this semester which is going to help me in the future. For example, I learned how to write different kinds of essays. Now, I tend to use more complex vocabulary than before which gives my essay a more professional tone. I still struggle to write long essays because I simply run out of ideas. But, I know that with time I would get over that obstacle. Overall, I think that I have made a great advancement in my writing skills over the course of this semester. I expect to continue growing as a writer in my futures classes to the point where writing an essay would be no problem at all.

For my final portfolio I still haven’t pick an essay yet. I have some ideas, but I’m not sure. One essay that I want to use for my portfolio is the ad analysis. I really enjoy writing that essay because I was surprise with all the details that you can come up with just a single ad. The strengths of my paper were that I did a good job describing the ad itself. Also, in describing who was the target audience for this specific advertisement was. However, the paper has a lot of weaknesses too. For example, I noticed that I got out of focus because I was trying to make the paper longer. Also, I failed in supporting my arguments with specific details from the ad. This time I’m going to take my time to revise the whole essay and find any mistakes that I might have. I’m going to check if my ideas are well organize in a way that is not confusing to the reader. I hope that at the end the final paper will be much better than the last one.

I analyzed the essay “Free Speech off Campus Should be Protected”. In this essay the writer starts with good support for his argument. From beginning to end the argument was well defended with good evidence to back up everything he was saying. I realized that by having a well-organized argument and good evidence to support it will create credibility towards the author of the essay. Also, the tone was really something else. It was strong and confident which gave the reader the impression that the author knew exactly what he was talking about. Allowing him to persuade the reader to agree with him in his statement he was making. Lastly, the way he presented his evidence was fabulous. He connected all his points with evidence in order to back them up. I notice that if you have credible evidence you will have strong points. This taught me that I need to have strong evidence in my essay in order to have strong points. With all these points combine it would allow me to have a strong concrete essay as the final product.

Question: Should the minimum wage be higher than $8.25?

Thesis: The minimum wage should be higher than $8.25 because it would benefit a great amount of people.

• Compelling evidence: After examining my chart I noticed that my strongest evidence was that raising the minimum wage would be a great benefit for the average person. This is my strongest evidence because is something logical that if you get pay more at your job the better life you would have. Getting pay only $8.25 an hour is not enough to support yourself or a family due to the high market prices. Not only that, but it would also benefit the economy because people would have more money to waste giving the economy a little boost.

•  Weakest evidence: My weakest evidence is that not all states have a minimum wage of $8.25 an hour. Other states have higher hourly rate compare to Illinois. However, I argue that not all the states pay a decent wage others pay more and others pay less. Therefore, an exact amount should be established for all states, but this amount should be a fair one where both the state and the worker can benefit from it. Also, others may argue that this will affect small parties who don’t have the capital to pay more to their workers. This may be true in a way, but keep in mind that most places who pay the minimum wage are large corporations who have the capital to pay more and they are still giving out the minimum wage to their workers.

Assignment #11- Patterns of Error

I have many patterns of errors when I write. For example, I tend to use low vocabulary words, I don’t really use high elevated words. First, I’m not use to that. Second, because sometimes I’m not sure if it would make sense if I change a word for another. Another, pattern is that I repeat myself too much. I use the same idea, but I just rewrite it differently. However, it’s still the same point or I tend to use the same words almost in every sentence. Also, when I writing I put extra words or information in a sentences making it more difficult for the reader to understand the point of the sentences. Most of the time the point can be projected it without extra information and in a much concrete way. I have discovered several patterns when I write and I’m working on correcting them. However, it’s not too easy to accomplish that. Once you get use to a way of writing it’s difficult to change that habit and it’s also, very difficult to pick up you own writing errors. Yet, with time and practice I will be able to write much better and hopefully my writing pattern errors would have disappeared by then. 

My college experience has been awesome so far. I have enjoyed it a lot and I have learned a lot from it too. At first I thought that it would be hard or boring because I wouldn’t have my friends from high school to talk too. However, it has turned out to be great after all. I have met new people and new professors who are really nice and interesting. Sometimes I do miss my high school days when I had a lot of fun during some classes. Also, I miss the days when my friends and I used to hang out to watch the soccer games from my school.

Yet, I know that I have to forget about that and move on. The only aspect of college that I don’t like is that it’s much harder than high school. Here you are expected to do high level work in time without any excuses. Aside from that, my college experience has been great, time goes much quicker than in high school. I still can’t believe that I’m almost done with a whole semester. I’m looking forward to the next years to come, I know they are going to be harder, but I’m going to be ready for them. Overall, my college experience is great; it’s something that I’m going to remember my whole lifetime. 

The essay “Don’t Presume to know a Pig’s mind” talks how pigs suffer when they are in farmers getting ready to be kill to be sell as meat. The essay starts by describing an ad with a farmer and his pigs living a happy life. Also, according to Chipotle’s web site they only use happy pigs, but how can you be sure about that. Many pigs suffer in farmers because they live in crowded places, but that’s the only way to maintain order. If other methods were used they will be really expensive and this will cost meat prices to go up. So at the end farmers need to decide whether on continuing like this or taking the side of the entertainment industry.

I pick this article to write about because it sounded interested for me. Also, I found it a little easier to summarize this article than the others. Another reason because why I wrote about this article is because I like to read about animals suffering which at the end we just eat. Many people don’t know about this, so in my case I particularly find it interesting to read these kinds of stories.

I personally feel that I have advance a lot in my writing skills. Before, I used to struggle to write an essay, but it’s much easier for me now. I won’t lie, sometimes I still get stuck at some points throughout my essay, but in comparison from before I do much better. Also, I have notice that my syntax and vocabulary are getting much stronger. Before, I used too many so called “baby words” because my vocabulary skills were limited. The parts of the class that have helped me are that we do long papers, but we have time to finish them. We are not rush to accomplish the assignments and this reliefs us from pressure, allowing us to work more efficiently.

For example, if we get a lot of assignments, at the end we would get overwhelm by them. Causing stress in the student and reduce the student’s potential. My writing process has changed since the beginning of the semester. Before, I always used to do my assignments at the last minute, it’s a habit I have, but it has changed a little. Now, I do my work ahead of time. its better, you don’t get stress out because you have plenty of time to finish the assignment. Overall, I do really think my writing has improved vastly since the semester started. Hopefully, it would continue improving for the rest of the semester.

My ad analysis essay and my narrative essay are similar and different in many ways. For example, in my narrative essay I talked about my experiences with writing and how they influenced me overtime. There my audience was my professor and classmates. Also, the tone might be a little different; it can go from serious to non-serious. The genre is a completely different thing.

In comparison, the ad analysis essay has to be deeper. You need to go outside of the box in order to be successful in this assignment. You need to connect other topics or issues with the ad you are analyzing. In this essay you critical thinking skills are necessary. The audience for this essay is neither my professor nor my classmates but a specific group of people. The tone and genre are different as well along with the purpose. In this essay the purpose is not to describe my writing experiences throughout my life, but to examine why the ad is set up the way it is and to decipher the meaning of it.

Purpose: By using bright joyful colors and no words at all, this ad projects a strong attention grabber towards the public. This ad, is trying to convey the message to the public of all the possible things they might be able to do if they had an iPhone.

Audience: Even though, the ad doesn’t states to who the ad is purposely intended too. We can interpret that this ad is aim at young joyful people. We can deduce this by looking at the picture of a woman in her 20’s wearing colorful clothes. By wearing those colors she is able to project a feeling of happiness and joy to the public. However, this ad might also be intended for the general public as well.

Genre: There are many similar ads like this one out there. This is just one of many ads Apple has created over the years in order to persuade the public to buy their products. Mostly all the ads created by Apple use flashy colors to attract attention.

Tone: With the help of bright, joyful, cheerful colors and no words in the entire ad, helps to produce a positive tone. This then, transfers to the audience.

My final draft looks almost the same as my rough draft I didn’t made any big changes. I just corrected some grammar mistakes that were pointed during peer review. Also, I did add some extra sentences because I was missing one paragraph. No major changes were made to that paper. My focus still remains that same and my organization. Some errors that I identify are that I tend to repeat myself throughout the essay. I also notice that sometimes I leave the ED out of some words.

I noticed some mistakes I had with the help of peer review. They highlighted the mistakes I had and gave some advice on how to correct them. Also, when I was reading my paper out loud I caught them too, but not all of them. In my opinion peer review was real helpful in my case. It allowed me to get someone else’s opinion before handing it in for grading. I think the weakest aspects of my paper are my grammar mistakes like, run-ons and fragments. The strong aspects of my essay in my opinion are that I make myself clear throughout the essay. Also, the essay doesn’t sound too boring for the reader to read.

There are many factors that contribute to an A paper and a C paper. For example, a good paper is distinguished by the syntax it has. Many writers use short sentences for their papers, also, their word choice is very poor, in order words they use so call “baby words.” I think the use of elevated words have a big impact on the paper because in a way that paper might sound kind of professional. Another quality is the detail it contains. A paper is much better when it has detail, that way the reader can imagine himself in the story, giving a more realistic view of the paper. Creating a paper which is not boring is a good advantage for receiving a good grade. That can only be achieved by giving details throughout the paper. Finally, the last quality is if the paper has minor errors. By not having a lot of mistakes a good grade can be receive. This way the reader can read the paper much better and the story is more understandable. In conclusion, I believe this are some qualities an A paper needs to have, in comparison of a C paper.

For me it’s difficult to use elevated words in a paper because I’m used to using simple words. If I use more complex words, it’s harder from me to know whether the story makes sense or not. In the contrary, I can write a lot of detail in a paper if I want too. However, I can only do this when it’s a personal paper not in the usual papers I’m ask to write. When I write papers I always stay with my usual writing styles because it’s harder for me to change to a different style. Also, I don’t want to risk myself of getting a low grade in the assignment.

I haven’t quite decided what my narrative essay is going to be about, but I have some ideas in mind. However, I don’t know yet if I’m going to use them for my essay. I may write about the time when I wrote a paper for my English class last semester, about how technology is making life easy and better but at the same time is taking away jobs from people, leading to high unemployment rate and people becoming lazier. For me it was a great opportunity to show my writings skills and my critical thinking skills as well because I had to support my thesis, if not, my whole argument would have crumbled down. I had to try my best even though it was my first paper where I had to defend my thesis to the very last detail.

Also, I might write about the time when I did a paper topic for my philosophy class. So far that’s the best paper I have ever written in my whole life, in my opinion. For my paper topic I had to write about whether I would follow the Ten Commandments even though I don’t know god exists. It was a challenging task for me because I had to show the good things and bad things and the reasons why I would have follow them, plus it was an 8 page paper. It was hard for me to make long enough without repeating myself over and over again. Despite all the challenges I was able to complete it, but it did help me a lot. Thanks to that, I now have the confidence to write a paper several pages long, not only that but I also have the confidence in my writing skills and my ideas.

I’m taking English 101 for two reasons. First of all, because it’s a required course at NEIU and because I personally would like to sharpen my writing skills to their highest point. As we all know society is progressing at an astonishing rate, leaving not room behind for people with poor writing skills. Someone with a poor level of writing will not be successful in life, simply because writing is a constant in this society. I personally would like to learn how to write professional sounding papers with deep thoughts. I admire people who have the ability to write amazing papers. One of my favorite speeches of all time, is called Death Sentence – 1881 to Jose Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales many are not familiar with this speech because is not famous like others.

However, for me is one of the best out there, even though it is a speech for me it counts as a piece of writing because you need to write it in order to deliver it. By the end of this class I would like to be able to write more at a college level not like a high school student. Who still uses small words and whose ideas aren’t deep enough to send a message to someone. Hopefully at the end of this semester I will be able to write more complex papers with deeper thoughts, more complex vocabulary, and with little or no errors at all. This will only be possible with the help of my teacher and my own effort.