How I Enhanced My Citation Skills

Bullock, Richard, and Goggin, Maureen D, and Weinberg, Francine, editors. The Norton Field Guide to writing with readings and handbook. W.W. Norton & Company, 2016.

In this chapter, Lunsford details the planning and drafting process for a writer to organize their ideas with either a formal outline or a rough plan. Lunsford reminds writers to be flexible during the drafting process and not to think twice about changing elements of the essay at this point in the process. Lunsford goes on to explain the qualities academic paragraphs must have these include unity, development and coherence. To obtain unity within a paragraph all sentences should relate to the topic sentence of the paragraph. When developing a paragraph it is important to switch between general and specific ideas in the paragraph, while supporting those ideas with details, evidence and examples as required. Ensuring a paragraph is coherent is crucial when developing an academic paragraph. Because readers need to be able to follow a writers ideas easily, Lunsford gives her readers a method to follow to achieve this goal. This method includes using the general to specific ideas, repetition, parallel structures, and using transition words. The author notes that this method should also be used to link paragraphs

A writer can influence a reader in many ways using many different strategies. They may be influenced with emotion, logic, and experience. A main way of influencing your reader is to support your claims thoroughly. At the beginning of the semester, and through part of the semester, I would come up with a good main point, but I would lack Good supporting detail to my claims. After being in this class, I realize more that I need to come up with good supporting evidence to back up my claims.

The art of writing is a complex and difficult process. Proper writing requires careful planning, revision, and proofreading. Throughout the past semester, the quality of my writing has evolved significantly. At first, I struggled with the separation of different types of paragraphs, and I found writing them laborious. Constant practice, however, has eliminated many of my original difficulties, and helped to inspire confidence in my skills. As a collegiate writer, my strength lies in my clear understanding of the fundamentals of writing, while my primary weakness is proofreading my own work.

Some of the principles I learned were to write up my research in a standard form that is recognized by the community, such as writing for the general public, or lawmakers. Wording and use of terms is therefore matched to the audience educational level. Another technique I learned was to summarize my research paper into three main points “1) What you are writing about 2) What you don’t know about it 3) why you want your reader to know and care about it” (p46). Additionally, I found this last technique helpful in creating my thesis statement.

Which brings me to the next brainstorming strategy I used, I listed all the questions I could relate to that body paragraph and answered all of them. I found both of these strategies to be quite helpful and were very productive. The biggest problem I had writing this paper was the verbosity, I was trying to get to the point and ended up just confusing myself and those who read it for me. To fix my problem I read allowed the essay many times until I could find the perfect medium that sounded right. A strength within my essay would be how in depth the understanding of the text is while the weakness is the length of the text. I learned that I can write a longer essay without trying to drag it on. In most texts there is enough information to fill up the pages, you just need to dig deeper and find the information.

Generally speaking, I can convey my message and demonstrate my thesis more effectively and precisely with a strong evidence now. In my first draft of critical reading response paper, I had a very vague and unarguable thesis, which made the reader confused. For example, my topic sentence in the first draft was “The frame narrative makes this book be more attractive.” I should explain who these readers are specifically and makes it more arguable. In my final draft, I point out that these readers are “cynical and realistic adult readers,” and provide strong textual evidence to support my viewpoint. Moreover, the biggest

I did not have a firm writing philosophy before this semester, but I to some degree I understood the importance writing can have on a situation. Now I understand that writing has two outcomes: gaining support or losing support. When writing an essay it is best if the writing is as specific as possible. This way the audience is hopefully not left with a confused opinion about the topic. Since the beginning of the semester I have put a conscious effort to change my writing style. Instead of the box format that is learned in high school I try to use a more graceful approach while still being organized. Also, I evaluate the credibility of a source before I use the information to support my thesis and understand the roles of using ethos,

Students are assigned a variety of writing tasks throughout college. Whether it is an assignment in an orientation class or a term paper, students will need to include information from scholarly peers to help prove their point and make a credible stance. Thankfully students can include data from scholarly articles as long as they give proper credit to the author(s) from whom they received the information. Among the many issues that a student could potentially face is overusing resources. By not including enough of their thought on a subject, the work could become a collage of other writer’s work that a student merely puts his name on. To help avoid such an issue, one must remember that no more than 15% percent of a paper should include quotes

Among all the research paragraphs of my peers, the paragraphs with the most detail and effect were The KKK, by Greta Schreiber, Eleanor Roosevelt, by Leah Burton, and The Civil Rights Bill of 1964, by Kayla Foulke. The KKK paragraph written by Greta S. was very high quality because it had the following things: A starting sentence that captured the attention of the reader, an order to her facts that made sense, answers to all the journalism questions except the “where” and the “how”, correct citations to all of her sources, and a conclusion that relates what she wrote about, to present day. Greta’s conclusion, “The Klan fell out of power again shortly after. It still exists today, but is not powerful in the least” (Schreiber 2), gave insight

Another error of my writing process was not having a clear and specific thesis statement. I would often combined to many thoughts and ideas all in one sentence, which made it very difficult for readers to understand my main argument. For example, in my fourth essay about performance-enhancing drugs, my thesis “Athletes are constantly recognizable to the public eye; their actions can affect the children and adults for whom they serve as role models, which is why many athletes depend on the use of performance-enhancing drugs to better their performance,” was very vague and was not the main focal point of the essay which it should have been. In recent years prior, I never had any problems trying to convey my message or point. College was entirely a different league. My professor suggested that I read other research papers to better understand how my thesis should sound and be constructed. My professor then told me that I needed to add that explanation into the paragraph so the reader can understand exactly what I am trying to get across with

In writing an essay I also struggle with incorporating clear topic sentences and connecting my paragraphs ideas back to my thesis statement. This struggle is based on last years’ experience with writing essays. This struggle can be improved upon by concentrating on what exactly my thesis is stating and building my sentences to relate and explain the thesis further. Improving on this will allow my writing ability to increase and help me become a more successful writer.

The reason I am writing to you is to explain my development throughout the semester in the Advanced Composition course at Washburn University. The semester consisted of critically analyzing my selected story “Barbie-Q” by Sandra Cisneros through four assignments, the exploration paper, the reading and writing paper, the annotated bibliography, and the academic research paper. The semester began with basic lessons on general writing rules during class and progressed into a much more complex course, including lessons on expansion and development of evidence and supporting details, as well as the argument of the paper as a whole. Although each assignment taught something new, each built onto the last and helped transition my progress through each paper.

I have always enjoyed writing, and I believed writing was a subject I was naturally good at. I turned in papers that were still rough drafts, I did not evaluate my sources, nor did I ever take the time to fully understand the prompt. It was not until my first semester of college, in my writing composition course, I realized that I had a lot of work ahead of me to be as good a writer as I thought I was. In the writing course, the students were required to compose several essays using different methods to help progress on the course objectives. The work in this portfolio demonstrates that I have used the methods of synthesis and evaluation of sources to advance my critical thinking skills and develop personal responsibility. Though I have

A writer can accomplish composing a “good” piece of writing by making sure he has logical reasoning behind their statements, by making it noticeable when they transition into explaining another point, and when by not letting their personal feelings be put ahead of their logical reasons, and by making the reader question them. These are not only important for the author but it is also important for the reader. If a author does not have a logical reasoning behind his statements than the reader can not take it as a credible source and they will most likely not believe it. Transitions are a huge part of good writing also because if a reader can not tell when your last point ends and the next one starts