Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Ongoing drafting and revision plans ...
To help you focus effectively on completing our current assignment, I’d like you to reflect on Monday’s writing workshop. How do you feel about this assignment? What’s working well for you? What remains challenging? Based on your discussion with your peers and their feedback, what are the top three issues that you think you should prioritize as you continue to draft and revise?
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15 comments:
Monday's writing workshop was not a huge help to me. This was not a reflection on my peers and how they assisted me but rather the way in which i approached this draft. Because of my misinformation from the first essay and how it was incorrectly done, I wanted to get a little more feedback from Professor Bateman before writing an entire draft. They did give me some good feedback for where I was in my draft however. I found that much of my discussion was smoothly and clearly done which is something that I tried to focus on during the early part of the assignment. I knew going into it that I needed to use more sources and change the format to APA style. This draft was a rough start to the assignment but I feel that what I did have was done well. Three main things I need to focus on are adding more sources, changing the format, and making sure that I am not longwinded but clear and concise.
For me having the variety of ways to go about this essay helps a lot. I actually started writing an academic essay, got about a paragraph into it, and decided to delete it and do the letter to next year's freshmen prompt. The hardest part for me is finding sources that are qualitative instead of quantitative and are still related to my essay. Incorporating good sources tends to be the hardest part about essays for me, so this is nothing new. To finish the essay I had it layed out completely, but since i now know that my source is too quantitative, I might have to do some re-arranging of my paper to incorporate a different source. Other than that I pretty much know where I'm going with my paper and just need to finish off my ideas and come up with a good conclusion. Assuming I can get a good source in there, I think the paper will come together pretty well.
Monday’s workshop provided me with some great feedback on this upcoming paper. Going into it I knew that I would have a lot of work ahead of me as the assignment did not really appear clear to me. However, listening to the other student’s papers and reading what they had to say about my piece greatly helped to point me in the right direction. I know now that I need to work on examining the qualities of my second source in much more detail. Also I should be giving more examples from the Erenreich book as I only had one. I think these first two should be easy fixes. There were also some issues with the citation format of my sources and this is something that I should be able to correct during revision. Having received our first paper back now, I understand how the grading process works and I will do my best to revise more thoroughly this time around. In general I think that the workshops are a crucial component to the writing process and they certainly help to improve my writing.
About Mondays workshop, well I believe it helped me allot to understand exactly what the paper was about. I had about 2 pages which was below the requirement for the task, this was because I did not know exactly what I was doing. Besides my misfortune of not having my draft done and not having so much to get feed back on, I believe it was another successful workshop and even better than the first one. The feed back we got back from you was very helpful on how to make our comments even more helpful to our peers.
What they have commented about in my draft was about my introduction they advised me to make it stronger and explain more about how the paper became to be. They have also commented on correcting my grammar and also about using a bit more sources, this is because I only had one outside source.
Overall i think this is a pretty good way of helping one another improve their writing skills.
Even though I was not at able to be at the writing workshop, I did however still participate in reading and reflecting on other people’s drafts. I thought the writing workshop was helpful yet maybe at a later date could have been more effective. Because this is only the first draft for this essay, I and possibly other people have not completed a lot of it. I know I was missing a few sources and extra information that was needed in my essay, which may have made it a little difficult for the person reflecting on my essay to understand it completely. I found this assignment to be difficult to get started because of having to find an outside source to compare the Ehrenreich book to. This essay is also supposed to be targeted toward an academic and more scholarly audience, making it difficult for me to get started. I found that I had to get my notes and thoughts on the table I think it will be good to come back later and revise my essay to make sure it targets the right audience. I think the next step I need to take is fully getting all of my sources quoted and explained into my essay. Since this was only my first draft, I am lacking a lot of things, of which I need to edit my essay for grammar and punctuation, add quoted sources, and overall make sure I prove my thesis.
Monday’s writing workshop was helpful. I was able to get some critical and constructive feedback from my peers that really gave me a sense of what I needed to work on as well as the strengths of my paper. I feel positive about this essay. I understand the concept and have a good grasp on how qualitative research can be presented in different rhetorical situations. However, I am concerned about the structure and flow of my paper. I am not sure as to whether or not I summarized Barbara Ehrenreich’s work too much. It may or may not take away from the cohesiveness of the paper. I am also concerned about organization. I was not sure how I should have presented the information of the two researches. For example, I think I jump back and forth with Ehrenreich’s work. However, I think that I am contrasting the two well, and am very task oriented. As far as the discussion with my peers, I think I need to work on cutting down the summary of Barbara Ehrenreich’s piece and try to focus more wholly on how she approached her work and presented her findings. I also need to organize my paper better, and not intertwine ideas. I should talk maybe briefly in a couple sentences or so about her work/the chapter, then talk about how she went about things. I introduce Dodson and Dickert well, but the contrast would be more precise if my writing about Ehrenreich’s work was crisper.
I was not here for Monday's writing workshop. However, I have met with you and discussed my struggles with your paper. I am having a hard time with this essay. I find it hard to focus and reflect on how the paper is being written and what qualitative research really is, rather than the issues that are being discussed in the sources themselves. Also, I am finding it hard to focus my paper to specifics. Right now, my paper is very broad based and does not have a specific point that it is making. Therefore the top three things that I feel I need to prioritize as I continue are, development of my discussion by narrowing my topic, more thoroughly discussing how the research and data were obtained, and the basic stylistic flow of the essay. I think that as I continue to develop my ideas, my paper will come together, I just need more time to think it through.
This writing workshop was as helpful or more helpful than the last.
The biggest problem I am facing is that my essay seems to be morphing into more of a comparison of qualitative vs. quantitative then a comparison of the diffrent types of qualitative research. Reading Aimee's paper gave me a good idea of what my paper shoudl look like as she focused very well on comparing qualitative research. Althoguh I did not have 5 or 6 pages written I think the amount that I did write lays a good framework for me to build on, and will help keep me on topic. The article I picked seems to be the perfect one for this assignment as it includes the author's perception of what qualitative research is, it also compares qualitative research to quantitative and gives the reader a shallow understanding of the diffrence between the two. I am also having a hard time choosing which Ehrenreich chapter I want to use as they all provide text which I would like to cite and use in my essay, choosing one will probably involve rereading much of the book so I can decide which chapter will be most useful to me.
In my last essay I did not expand my analysis enoguh to completely expalin the ideas and concepts whcih I wanted to include in the paper, so on this essay I want to make sure that put everything I want 'in ink' so that the reader can understand my thesis and its evidence. I also have to focus on writing the essay ahead of time so I have a chance to rvise it and rework my diction, I noticed in my last essay that my vocabulary appeard very weak and did not aid in helping the reader understand my points.
In general I am hoping to spend more time on this essay so that I can improve my preformance over the last one.
Writing workshops always help me a lot. Other people are able to see different sides of things that I normally wouldn't see if it were just me. I've gotten lots of positive feedback and constuctive criticism which has helped me think of new strategies to improve and lengthen my paper. Lengthening is certainly what I need to work on most. The people in my group helped me come up with a few more paragraph ideas. Having sources in my paper is probably a good idea as well.
This assignment seems a little more difficult than the last one. Although, this essay is closer to the final draft than my rough draft of “Ragged Dick”, I feel like I am struggling to come up with the most efficient way of presenting this information. I feel like my organization is alright and my points are being made fairly clearly. I just feel like I’m floundering a little bit. It always seems hard to find useful quotes and then being able to analyze them, especially in this case when we are analyzing someone’s analysis. I understand what qualitative research is and having an anthropology class under my belt has allowed for some deeper insight. My understanding of ethnographies has really helped me gather some useful insight. I think that having a general understanding of the types of research has helped me significantly. I think that I’m struggling on this paper simply because I feel as if I’m forcing in the second source. I need to find another way to incorporate my source and discuss the “how” and “why” rather than the where and when. I think that I need to work on my introduction and make it more grabbing, while with the rest of the paper, there needs some word revision as well as tying it all together with my concluding paragraph.
This assignment is interesting and I found it relatively easy to write. The differences between strictly scholarly and more popular qualitative works seem pretty clear so I have plenty to write about. Supplying three different prompts was really helpful. In my workshop group we all addressed a different one and each prompt worked well for the person who chose it. I am still struggling a bit with APA style and need to revise my in-text citations. I also think my paper lacks consistency in parts. I chose to write to the incoming freshman class. The introduction and conclusion are informal but I feel I lost that tone in my body while I was discussing the differences. It could potentially be a paper written to a professor, which it obviously shouldn’t resemble. With some editing I think I can easily change this though. Lastly, and most importantly, I need to add in a paragraph comparing and contrasting the rhetoric of the two pieces. The author’s use very different word choice and I don’t feel that in my rough draft I went in-depth enough covering that.
I'm struggling to understand this paper. I don't really know what qualitative research is, and if I do then I didn't know it was called that. I'm guessing its DOING the field work vs learning about it through some other way like reading about it. I have lots of questions about this paper and I do need to talk to you about it soon. The point is I'm not feeling so hot about this assignment. I decided its better to meet with you before I write my paper, so I can get a clear understanding on what you're looking for. So my top three issues are: 1. I need to talk to you2.Understand what it is that I need to be going 3. Get the RIGHT research done(I think I got the wrong research in mind)
thats what I believe needs to be done in order for me to have a great paper.
The hardest thing that I found with this assignment was the research aspect. I went through a lot of different sources and a few different ideas before I finally found one that seemed to make sense and a source that did relate. Really the only thing that I think was truly hard was finding qualitative research. Now that I do have a source I think it really helps that a lot of the same key points are made by both Ehrenreich and the other author which document similar experiences which helps reinforce the argument to keep qualitative research around. The three things I need to work on are drawing clearer parallels between my sources, (when I had written it I had finally found a decent source this past Sunday) and making sure that my points are strong by adding in quotes and citations. I also need to make sure that I’m addressing the prompt, I feel that I am but there’s also a lot more that I could do to make it fit an argument to DU to defend qualitative research. Other than that I just need to polish a lot of my sentences which are run-ons or clear up phrases that don’t make sense which is my most common problem.
I would agree with Joe in saying that the open-ended nature of the assignment in terms of the options provided really helped me out with this assignment. I at this point still have not decided whether or not I'm doing the first or second audience option, however the arguments and research I've compiled could really be utilized effectively in either. The feedback that kelsey gave me on my assignment so far was very valuable and informative, because I got to see things from her perspective. She noted what I thought my strengths were, and at the same time was able to analyze my ideas and give me great feedback on where she thought things could be improved and built upon. The three things I'm most concerned with "write" now (lol, it's a blog) are going to be elaborating on the distinctions between qualitative and academic writing, use more quotes, and offer stronger and more copious amounts of support for my arguments. At this point, I still have not yet reached the page requirement, so I know adding material will be a big portion of the work left necessary.
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