Midterm Assignment: 3/1/12

Dear Kyle,

College is great. I am loving the friends I have made and not only that but my classes. I am taking English 1102 with Ms. Ingram this semester and so far it is going very well. I just wanted to let you know that English has never been my strong suite but so far this semester, I am enjoying it and have actually been able to improve my writing. I gained the confidence I have needed to write, learned who my audience is and how to write to them and finally I have been able to improve my drafting skills when writing different pieces.
In high school, I just wrote because I had to. I never had the desire to free write or write in general. It was never fun nor did I have the time to do it. This semester after writing my first assignment, What is it like to be you, I had gained a ton of confidence. I had Ms. Ingram last semester and I enjoyed her class and teaching style and I felt I gained the most out of her lessons that I decided to take her again. After she read my second draft, she had stated, "This has been your best writing piece yet." Not only that but she also gave me great feedback stating that I am now understanding and writing like a writer should. This just gave me a boost of confidence that has allowed me to improve my writing and engage in my writing rather than just put words on paper.
When writing a paper, do you consider who your audience is? I didn't, well not at first. While writing our second assignment, the research paper, we had to initially find sources and write annotated bibliographies. In high school we were told to take quotes from your sources and put it in the essay. Because our teachers made us use hundreds of quotes, basically the quotes wrote our paper for us. That is definitely the wrong way on how to write and cite a source in your essay. Because of that, we didn't know how to write or who we were writing to.We just didn't put two and two together. I have fixed that by going in through each source, reading it, taking notes on it and from that I am able to see what side or viewpoint of my topic I would write about. It also made me change my inquiery question a few times as well. This gives me supporting details and has enabled me to see who I am writing to. Writing annotated bibliographies has helped me better understand each source in detail. I have to actually read it, rather than skim and pick out like we did in high school, and it gives you more detail that you can include in your essays.
Finally, writing multiple drafts have helped me with writing my papers. Not only that but peer editing has helped as well. Remember back to high school when we just wrote a rough draft and a final draft? Well, that was wrong. Here in our class, though it sounds like too much work, we write multiple drafts. So far, I have written 2 drafts for my What is it like to be you essay and I feel that I still could use more drafting. I have learned to write cover letters which helps you take apart your draft as a whole and help you realize what you might need improvement on. Peer editing has given me the support I need to better my writing. Jamaal and Krishna have both helped me gain different perspectives and where to put in more detail. Because of this, I am getting multiple opinions rather than just the teachers thoughts and advice. We are all in the same boat and have learned a lot through this.
Ms. Ingram's 1102 English class is a fantastic way for you to improve your writing skills. Whether you hate writing or not, by the end of the semester you are going to love it and be a professional writer. It is fun and engaging and it works. I just sounded like a work out commercial. But really, take this class and you too can work on your weaknesses. Don't let the weaknesses eat you up, but rather fight them and over come them and you will write like a pro.

Anthony

What is it like to be you essay was definitely a broad topic and because of that, it made it a little tricky and difficult. There were so many avenues I could have explored about who I am. I could have wrote about my personalities, my past, or anything else for that matter. When we got the assignment, I initially though, this is crazy, why am I going to tell a stranger about my life. This essay turned out to be fun. I was writing to those who wanted to know more about me and my background and from that I was able to brainstorm and pick which avenue I wanted to write about. I thought it would be a little difficult to talk and write about my past history to strangers, my peer group that I knew nothing about, but after writing it, we began to know each other a little better and brought us together and made us friends. This paper we had to write our first draft by hand and I didn't like it that much. I felt that I had left off a number of points that I included in my second draft mainly because I was tired of writing. When typing my second draft I was able to go back and include points that my editing group had made and was able to tweak parts to make it sound more professional rather than just a kid writing about his past. My greatest accomplishment about writing this was the cover letter. Starting English 1101 I had no idea who to write one and after starting 1102 I still didn't know what I was doing. Soon to find out, after my feedback from Ms. Ingram, I do! I do know how to write a cover letter and talk about what I did and didn't do and how to improve it and ask questions to my group. For my final piece I will improve my grammar and sentence structure along with increasing my vocabulary a little and try to make it a little more older sounding. My vocabulary range isn't very broad so I need to expand on my horizon and try to explore new words. I think this piece made me learn who I really am and how I became that way. It made me appreciate the young man I have become and know that it was all because of my loving and supporting parents. I think my classmates learned that I have a drive to be better than something I'm not and see how determined I am.

Peace, Butter and Jelly was a very different book. I liked it because it gave me a history of David's background, talked about recipes that he has made, and he had wrote a ton of poems. I really liked the poem part because they made you think and some of them were funny. I think it is a good way to start the semester but in my opinion, one who doesn't read a lot, please don't assign as many pages due so soon. I know we are in college but because of my other classes and homework, I was always cram reading and wasn't getting the best out of the book. Maybe that was partly my fault for not breaking up the reading and also us knowing from the syllabus what is due ahead of time but just a thought.

Haiku:

Reading and Writing
has made me grow grey hairs but
I love the challenge.

Fourth Blog

I would like to first start off this blog by saying this is the second time I have ever used Blogger and so far, I actually understand how to use it. It is a lot easier to maneuver and move around and locate things on. I like that you had us follow you and answer questions and for each blog post you made us write something different that made me get an outlook on my project. I think I am also able to focus on the project more and able to talk to you as if we were in class. I like this style of teaching because I had a Virtual High School class last year in high school and this is like the style of learning I am learning. I would continue to keep this exercise for future classes.

Using Blogger, I have learned how to keep my thoughts organized and really have understood various different ways on how to research and approach writing a research paper. I think that the annotated bibliographies gave me a great opportunity to sit down, read each source, pick out the most important points and write an overview of the source. This made me interact with the reading more because I focused more on the information rather than skimming me.

Third Blog

I believe I will be writing my research essay toward those you are avid drinkers of tap water. I know this is pretty much everyone but just to show how much healthier filtered water in your fridge rather than the sink. I think this is a great topic dealing with our current time because a lot of studies are being performed on it and it has become a major health issue today. I care a lot about this topic well one because, I care about my health and my mom's health and I'd like to see what the effects of drinking tap water are in the long run. Is that why so many people have cancer? I think high school teachers were more focused on us getting to the point with our writing and being able to make a piece, well it was more like our citations write our essays, rather than us just use the sources as supporting details. I think college teachers are having us more focus on the content of our writing and just using our sources as examples and not having us write our piece. I am not really seeing any other viewpoints at this time because I am focusing more on the health effects on the bad side rather than it helping our health. I am planning on researching as we discussed before about how healthy is tap water verses bottled. One new interesting thing I learned was that one of the studies I have found actually was done not too far from my house and that was probably the same water I was drinking where they found that many people have been diagnosed with liver problems and some even having cancer. That is very concerning to me because I have enough family history of cancer and health issues and I don't need another. Finally, I am going to be following Collette's Blog about sleep deprivation and health.

Second Blog

I'm very sorry about this blog being late. I slipped my mind. My online source that I found was extremely interesting and has made me chose the side of how bad drinking Tap water is rather than it being good. I found out that 24 states, which is almost half of the states in our country, had drinking outbreaks of harmful chemicals in the water. What things that were found in the water were: viruses, chemicals, parasites, and bacteria. Some of the effects of this were gastrointestinal illnesses, respiratory illnesses, skin irritations, and even an outbreak of hepatitis. I think this is absolutely appalling and we should have better regulations in monitoring such diseases that can really affect our health. I know my mom and I drink a ton of tap water and this, quite frankly, has turned me against it now. I am going to change my inquiry question from "Is tap water good or bad for you?" to "How does drinking tap water effect your health?" I think the major problem for me will be dealing with knowing what I have been drinking over the past 18 years has been potentially dangerous to my health. I know that I picked a good topic that interests me and that there is a ton of information on this topic. I can't wait to read up more on it and begin writing my essay. I plan on going to the library today and picking up two books that I found when we were work shoping online in the library last Thursday.

First Blog

My research topic and inquiry question that I will be researching about is, Is tap water good or bad for you. When watching that short video in class about health a few weeks they listed that down under health issues. I grew up knowing tap water was better for you than regular bottled water but that video said otherwise. I didn't finish watching the rest of the video but I really just wanted to learn more about tap water. I think this is very important to my health because I drink a lot of water and when I'm home I drink a lot of tap water while at school I drink only bottled. I would really like to learn more about it and where it comes from and what is in it that makes it bad. I am wondering if when I research that keeping the water clean will be a problem because of rain run off of the roads into the water will contaminate it or boating on it or fish being in it. I think it will be hard to research before because I am supposed to pick one side not both. I think it would be easier to write about both. Could I do that or do I need to persuade you as if it was a persuasive essay?