Well known for her research and publications on student writing, Nancy Sommers—now Harvard’s Expository Writing Program Director—discusses the student’s revision strategies on her journal College Composition and Communication: a compilation of some of her articles. Throughout this essay, I will be focusing on three articles from Nancy 's journal: Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers (1980) with Laura Saltz as cowriter, Between the Drafts (1992), and the Novice as Expert (2004). Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers (1980) juxtaposes through a case study the revision strategies of first-year college students and experienced writers. Between the Drafts (1992) narrates her personal experience with revision strategies. The Novice as Expert: Writing the freshmen (2004) examines how first-year college students—Sommers believes— should approach writing.…
Have you ever just thought about how you would take college life? Today a class had to read an article on preparing for college. The transition to college life, dorm life, can be awfully difficult at times. But once one's use to the dorm life he/ she will not have to worry anymore. On a college campus, all individuals are held responsible for their own actions.…
One of the most important thing I have learned in this course that has positively affected my confidence in my writing skills is the concept of writing a “shitty first draft”. In my midterm self-assessment, I discussed how I thought I was among one of the unlucky ones that was not blessed with natural writing skills. However, through class discussions, I’ve learned that one of the most important competent of professional writing is the need for constant revision. Contrary to popular believe, writing does not come easy to anyone. In order to successfully produce professional writing, it is important that one plan, draft, revise, and edit his or her work.…
Therefore, I knew that I needed to improve my writing, since it is an important tool in academic and professional field. First, I learned the process of writing a clear, effective essay. For example, the brainstorm process was an important tool that I learned in this English class. It helped me gather and organize my ideas about the topic making a lot easier to write my essays. Second, I learned how to write the different types of essays.…
He showed me that with every argument comes a counter argument; adding a counter argument reinforced my argument greatly. Another technique I applied to my essays with Professor Castro’s instruction was planning. In high school, planning an essay seemed like a waste of time because the assignments were always just five paragraph, five sentence essays. Since we had to write these essays in such a short amount of time for tests, I was able to produce the work the night before. On the other hand, Professor Castro has shown the divergence between high school and college; planning and editing are two essential steps in writing.…
I started my journey through writing this year a bundle of nerves and a stomach full of coffee. This is my first year taking an advanced English course, but I was determined to do well. There has been no sleeping in class or slacking off this year, I’m lucky enough to take a college course a year early and at a better price, and I’m not going to waste it. I’ve learned a lot this semester, including but not limited to: identifying how exactly the author’s purpose and audience determines effective writing, developing pieces of writing though a process of planning, revising, and drafting, compose an organized essay with clear points and main ideas, used appropriate tone and formality, critiqued writing, and finally how to grasp the MLA format. My writing has improved through the concepts I have learned this semester.…
Throughout the first semester of College Composition, I wrestled with three essays, all differing in format and content. The first was a narrative that reflected our educational experience. After this came an analysis of a visual text, followed by a research paper. The narrative was the easiest to write; however, I acquired important skills for writing the other two, which were in a less familiar format. With the three essays, I learned about my own writing skills and habits concerning development and critical thinking, time management, and organization.…
As time ticks by, my hands rush to scribble down letters to form the first essay of the first semester, then the second, and finally the last. Throughout the first semester, students in Honors English experienced writing essays in a short amount of time while trying to maintain the essay’s quality. I believe that although I did well in some parts of my Summer Reading Essay, The Odyssey Essay, and Character showing Empathy Essay, there were pieces of the essays that could be improved and in the future, I aim to achieve the goals I have set up to enhance my work.…
Viewing the past four essays shows the progress and decline of my writing style, and structure. The four essays that were required by the class varied from the best to the worst, both having their similarities and differences. Choosing two out of the four essays, I came to a conclusion that the “process analysis” essay was the best, and the worst essay was the “descriptive” essay. Although it varied from their definitions and structure, the essay’s showed how much the writer, put their work into it. The certain characteristics that made it the worst to the best defined how well the essay would turn out to be.…
My writing process coming into junior year was quite flawed and would go moderately like this: I would try and start with some hook that at least sounded like it related to the topic I was assigned. I then added a thesis that did not sound like total trash that included exactly what I planned to discuss. As I wrote the rest of my essays, I would sometimes realize there was something I felt added to the argument’s appeal, and after adding it to the body paragraphs, I summed it up in a couple words and squeezed it into my thesis. That was about the maximum amount of revising I would do for my essays. My decently crafted essays contained simple diction with a few SAT words I remembered while writing thrown in awkwardly.…
As I have been typing this essay though I have come to realize that I don’t like writing in the slightest other than for practice, it is too time consuming and it bores me. The part of writing that I seem to struggle with is writing itself. This is due to the fact that I don’t have much to say and once I have finished what I actually have to say I have trouble with coming up with more. The only part of writing that I would say that I excel at is the revision process. I have one writing goal, that being to have better grammar, other goals are financial.…
When I began this English course I was not the writer I am today. I wrote with several errors. I always thought I was an okay writer, but I did not realize I was not good enough to get the grades I wanted in college. I feel like I can say my writing has improved because of this class. For one I now know how to correctly do MLA format.…
Making a transition in life is tough no matter what it is, especially going from high school to college. It 's almost like trial and error. You know what to do and what not to do. But once you get adjusted to everything that college has to offer then you 're pretty much set. .…
The writing process is different and unique to all individuals; many people follow the ideal steps of prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing as opposed to others taking shortcuts, skipping steps, and going straight to editing. The writing process is the course one takes to get from prewriting to the publication of their essay; since everyone is a different, their writing process will also be different. For me, I believe that following the ideal writing process steps are a tremendous help to organizing my essay and spacing out the work throughout the time the assignment is assigned. To begin writing an essay I must first prewrite; to prewrite is to brainstorm ideas from the prompt by outlining, diagramming, clusterings, or…
After each paper I write, I notice the progress I have made with my writing. I am able to continue improving on many aspects of my writing, but each time I finish an essay, I realize how much more efficient the process has become for me. In this analysis, I will explain my assertions and assess the things I have done well, along with the aspects I can continue to improve on for the next time. The National Anthem is a very powerful song, and like many other Americans, I have heard it being played before sporting events on television and at my school for my entire life.…