First Half Reflection

During the first half of this semester, I have not only improved in my writing skills, but also in my grammar skills. At the beginning of this course, my writing was boring and repetitive. It still might be some, but I think I have improved greatly in creating a hook to pull the reader in and in decreasing the repetitiveness of words throughout my papers. I feel that I still repeat words too often, and my papers lack something that attracts interest in the middle of my papers. The grammar sentences at the beginning of class have helped improve my sentence structure so there aren't nearly as many mistakes in my papers. I still have to improve with my misuse of commas though. I have half-way met all of the goals that I set for myself at the beginning of the semester, but I haven't fully completed them. For the rest of the semester, I hope to continue my improvement in all of these areas. I also hope to relearn how to use MLA format correctly. That mainly includes the citation and bibliography part of the format. By the end of this class, I want my writing voice to be loud and heard.

Arguement Freewrite

I've narrowed down my topics to two choices. Either an argument against online classes, or an argument against the current Bowl Championship Series system, and for a playoff system instead. My reasons for the argument against online classes would be the impersonal relationship between the teacher and student, how easy it is to cheat on assignments, resulting in the student not learning anything, and the distractions that can influence the student's participation. These can all give an unfair advantage or disadvantage to the student, and it shouldn't be allowed because of it. For my other argument, the current BCS system gives an unfair advantage to the larger conferences. A playoff system would also bring in a lot more money to the NCAA, which is what its really all about. But I've had trouble finding many other reasons against it, and I also don't think I could find many credible websites on this topic. This freewrite has helped me figure out my topic. It will be an argument against the online classes.

Wordle for Compare/Contrast Paper

Using this program has helped me realize the words that I repeat over and over again. It will help me cut down on repetitiveness. Some of the larger words in the image were control, fire, smoke, setting, and picture. I could have easily substituted a large variety of words for any one of these. For fire I could have said blaze or many other types of words. There aren't nearly as many words for smoke. It can't be described in many other ways. Picture is the word that is most easily substituted for. Photograph, photo, anything is better than repeating that word continuously. Setting is just like smoke, in the way that it is tough to describe without saying the word. Last of all is control. This was one of the words in the title of a picture so of course it is going to be used often. But I could have possibly used the exact title less than I did. This program can be very helpful for me in future papers. It will assist me in cutting down on repetition of words, so I will continue to use Wordle.

Paragraph Revision

2nd Paragraph
One day, she went to the seashore to find some seashells that could be picked up and put into a basket. She ended up with a whole basketful. Later at home, she took the shells out and put them onto the dinette table. With some jeweler's tools, she pierced holes in the shells and put them on small gold and silver chains. She ended up making twenty of them that she sold for ten dollars apiece. Her profit added up to one hundred and seventy five dollars. She used the money to go to the shore again, but now she could afford to stay for a whole week.