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.

Merchants of Cool Questions

I consume media in the form of television commercials, magazine ads, and radio ads most often.
I enjoy sports talk television shows, sketch comedies, and many other types of funny shows. Like Sportscenter, Saturday Night Live, and Friends. The bands I like are Nickelback and We the Kings, mostly rock bands. Web sites I enjoy are Facebook and Myspace. I am not a large fan of video games, but Rock Band is good. If I hear that other people like a certain trend, then I am much more likely to like it as well. That also applies vice versa. Commercials don't affect me as much because most teenagers don't respond to them.
"Cool Hunting" is targeted directly at people just like me, but I don't respond to it most of the time. Most of the items I buy aren't publicly advertised. I don't buy stuff based on commercials for it, I buy it based on how good I think the item is going to be. There are many ads that are directed toward teenagers, but I don't believe that many do a very good job. We as a whole don't respond to ads, we respond to what we like and don't like, and nothing is going to change our opinion of the product. "Cool Hunting" supposedly works on people like us, but I don't believe it does.

Illustration Reflection

There were many things on which I could improve on in my illustration essay. My word choice and diction were very poor. I repeated the same word or phrase in the same sentence many times. I also used a lot of slang terms and cliches. Another weakness was my attention to detail. I was vague in many places in my paper. I needed to be more specific about many explanations. My overall wording was very poor. I think that I did well with my topic sentences. They described exactly what was going to be in the paragraph. I also liked my title. It was not boring, but it caught the reader's eye. My main goal going into the comparison and contrast essay is not to be repetitive and to have much better word choice. I'm going to try to avoid slang terms and use more technical and proper wording. The first essay was definitely a wake up call to what I must start to do with my writing, and I hope that my next essay will reflect my ability much more.

Comparing and Contrasting Writings

These two writings argue over the restriction of immigrants allowed into the United States. Both make good points, but the first essay, Close the Borders to All Newcomers, makes many better points. They both give many their opinions on what they think should be done with immigration, but Give us Your Best, Your Brightest makes many points that don't apply to what the author is actually talking about. Only the first essay gives solutions to what should be done. The author thinks that a law should be made to completely halt all legal immigration. The other author thinks nothing needs to be done. That the laws should stay just the way they are. The first author uses pathos and ethos as his persuading strategies to get the audience on his side, while the second uses only ethos to get his point across. Maybe that is the reason why most people would side with the first writing instead of the second. Both use studies to try to prove their point, but the first goes more in depth in the study while the second uses multiple ones but doesn't say much about them. It has a less personal feel with the audience than the first because of that and many other reasons. The two author's pieces have some points in common, but their opinions could not be more different.