Blog # 4

  The synthesis essay was really easy because when reading I could already get the concept of how I wanted to combine the articles. I think the TS/CD concept helped a whole lot in this essay as well.  When I used TS/CD I felt my paper made sense and was good on displaying good details. TS/CD is good to use when writing an organized paper that flows well.  The articles I picked for my synthesis paper were the Malcom X, Penod and Mother Tan articles. It was not hard at all to combine these articles because they all focused on the English language.  Since they were on the same subject it was easy to form paragraphs that flowed and talked about each article. These articles focused more on the English language and how it may be difficult for others to speak it as well as learn it.  I learned in this essay that the English language can be difficult if a person is just learning it or if it is a second language.  The essay helped me on combining articles into a summarized paper.
  When citing the paragraphs I had some difficultly.  When I was writing about the Malcom X article I did not know whether to cite his full name nor whether to use a comma before the date.  There was also some confusion as to how many cites  I needed. The paper seemed like there were too many cites. I did not want my paper to have a lot of cites. Is there as such thing as having too many cites in a paper? I would definitely like to know because I was just about citing every 2 to 3 sentence.  Once I was able to correct my cites in my sentences it was easier for me to cite later on in the paper.

Blog # 1 (backwards, sorry)

  For the first assignment we were asked to read the Norton Field Guide on rhetoric and genres.  I already knew that when writing a paper, book, journal, etc it has to appeal to a certain reader.  For example, if I were writing a children's book I wouldn't include adult contact.  I also learned from reading the section that when writing to make sure that my paper stays in the tense it was originally in.  When writing a paper there was difficulty in that area for me. Some of my paragraphs started off in past tense and later in the paper I switched over to present tense without even paying attention. So, that is pretty much something I need to work on when writing.
   These sections were very easy and understandable to read and I felt it would help me when writing assinments in the future.  In the beginning I had no idea what a stance was when it came to writing and now I do.  The book help me to understand that a stance was a point of view.  Reading the Norton Field Guild book also help me to understand how important it is to have information that stands out to the reader and catches their attention.  I also learned that paragraphs should have a nice flow and full of important details.

Blog #2

Our first week of class we were asked to write a diagnostic.  I feel that writing on spot is not very difficult. I actually think it would improve my writing skills by allowing me to quickly come up with ideas when writing.  If there was more time given for me to write, the paper would have came out better.  Having a longer time to prep a paper would help me be able to go over it and make sure it is good. A lot times when I wrote papers in little time they were not very good papers. For example, my spelling and grammar was not correct in some places and points were taken off my papers.
I do enjoy writing papers because it gives me a chance to be creative and taps into my thinking skills. My strengths when writing papers are organization. It also is my weakness. Sometimes, I have a difficult time with my assignments flowing together in a papagraph. At times it would not make sense when starting a new paragraph and it may leave the reader puzzled.  In other parts of the paper the reader understood.  I feel another strength is I make good points and have good details throughout the paper. Also, I tend to have a pretty good topic sentence and introduction. I aim toward grabbing the readers attention in my introductions.