Explain How My Writing Changes Essay

MLA format is something I have always kind of needed help with. Until this semester for some reason I could never really cite my sources that well. Its something I knew how to do, but when it came time to do it my mind went blank. When you went over everything on the bored that helped me so much (also because I took notes), but only because you told us to take them. With MLA format I learned that when quoting, if its more than three lines you have to use block quote. I didn’t know that till I got to this class.

Ballenger an accurate statement when he said that “Most of us have lurking in our past some high priest of good grammar whose angry scribbling occupied the margins of our paper.” Most teachers overlooked what we had written and just looked for grammatical errors. This always made me feel like my writing was never good enough. This discouraged when it came to writing papers because I always felt like I was just writing to have my essay covered in errors that I needed to fix. After getting so many red markings on my essays I always questioned my writing. In my head I could not figure out what I was doing wrong and I did not know how to fix my writing. It became really stressful to write essays and I always dreaded when

Without having someone else to look over your work, it is hard to realize what you are doing wrong. When someone else reads your paper, especially having not read it before, they can easily identify your mistakes, whether it be punctuation or spelling errors. I strongly believe that when peer review is taken advantage of and used correctly, peer reviews are extremely helpful, but, unfortunately not everyone takes it serious and gives you the feedback that can really help you fix your essay.

I learned a lot by taking the MLA quiz. I found out that the books were italicized when cited. I knew that if I was writing about a particular book to underline, but this was good advice. I also learned that you do not write all the names of the authors in a citation only the first and then add an "et al." after it. I learned how to limit the database because databases are so scary since it has so much information. I now know how to restrict the search to what I want. I realized that the last name of the author should be stated either in the sentence or the parenthesis. I also understand now that you do not write the word page in the parenthesis is already implied. I knew that an ellipsis was used to omit a sentence or words that are not needed

Recently in my English course, our professor gave us an assignment in which we had to write an essay as if we were Native Americans meeting the Spaniards for the first time. When we wrote our first draft of our essays, we inter-changed amongst ourselves in order to peer-edit our rough drafts. As I received my essay, in which I thought I had done a great job writing, back I noticed a lot of the errors I had committed. Luckily, my classmates corrected them for me and made various suggestions to improve my essay.

Improving my writing has not been easily achieved, because the last six months have been some of the hardest I have experienced in a long time, they required me to make many sacrifices in my personal life. The two months that COMN 155 required were the most exhausting out of the three courses I took at SAIT, and with the help of wonderful instructors, many aspects or my writing improved gradually over time. From spelling, punctuation and word choice to complete understanding and reproduction of a text; ELF courses were the best decision I made to improve my skills.

In this class, we do a lot of peer reviews and I’m so grateful we did. Whenever I write my first draft of a paper, I always think it’s free of errors. My first drafts were not as perfect as I thought and I always found out through peer reviews. Having my peers review my work was so beneficial because they always were honest with the review and gave helpful feedback.

Enrolled in English 5, also known as Accelerated Academic Literacies, my professor assigned a total of three essays, four in-class writings and online grammar quizzes for students to improve with their weakness in grammar. As I reflect on myself at the end of this semester on my work in my English 5 class, I am able to see clearly how much I have improved as a writer. Throughout this semester, as a student, I have cooperated in both written and typed assignments along with peer review editing with other classmates. However, with the daily journals, homework assignments and feedback my peers have given to me for essays, they not only helped me improve so much, but also helped realize my strengths and weaknesses as well.

The results of Rieber's study (2006) strongly support his views. He compared the average grades of students who did not undergo peer review to the average grades of those who had directed peer review. The results showed that the second group who had peer review did significantly better than those who did not have peer review. Hence, such studies affirm that peer review, when do appropriately, can help the students improve their written performance. Moreover, a study by Yang, Badger, and Yu (2006), showed that teacher feedback was less successful than peer correction, probably in light of the fact that Peer correction incite uncertainty, the teacher correction indicated that it is associated with confusion and miscommunication, while peer correction promotes students to discuss and gained a deeper knowledge of the topic.

The editing and review process of my Advocacy Project was a lengthy one, however, it helped improve my writing and made me feel more confident with my final submission of the essay. The entire process of the essay took a couple of weeks of editing and required me to go through several drafts before submitting my final Advocacy project. After writing the first draft of the Advocacy Project and receiving feedback, I noticed I had a lot to work on and various issues to tackle. The main issues my peer and I found throughout my essay were grammatical errors. My first and second draft consisted of various grammar errors such as misuse of commas. I also needed to improve on my sentence structure. Some sentences could be better worded to improve the flow of my papers.

Different perspectives and a fresh set of eyes reading through my essays was the one of the major keys of developing my writing. For peer review, I was able to get feedback from two different groups – classmates

“The best way to become a better writer is to write and then to publish your writing, whether you publish it on a blog, in a book, or with a close friend. It’s only by practicing writing, and getting feedback on it, that you can improve” (Bunting). This quote describes how I feel about my writing experiences. This quote makes me reflect on this semester, how we would write a paper then submit it to the peer review link to get feedback from our peers. Doing this truly helped me become a better writer. When I read my peers papers and notice how they had grammar and spelling issues, I then go back to my paper and re-read it to see if I had some of the same mistakes. Also getting feedback from my peers helped me become better at taking criticism from others and compare my opinion to theirs.

Throughout my years in school, I did not feel that I was the best writer, my writing seemed terrible and to make it feel better, it showed in my writing. I did not begin to see major improvement in my writing until I took Advanced Placement English & Composition this last year. Before, I received little to no feedback from my instructors concerning my writing. My previous teachers would stamp my papers with a grade without letting me know what I needed to work on to be an excellent writer. When I found out that I would be taking English Composition, I immediately thought that I would not receive any feedback from my instructor. I thought that if I struggled with not receiving feedback from a teacher that I would see every day, then I should not expect to receive much from a college professor in my online class. I desired to be a strong writer. I feel that writing will be a part of me for the rest of my life, so why not try to be decent at it. Applying these skills helps me build a firm foundation for writing essentials. Evidence from three of my ENG 1113 papers this semester suggest that I have made great progress in using quotations correctly, creating a vivid style, and better understanding transitions between paragraphs and sentences in my writing. Reading through these papers, though, it is clear I am still working on improving punctuation, especially with commas.

One of the most pressured lessons I have learned in the course was the important of revising my papers and getting other people to look over my writing. In high school, most revision was mostly looking for errors, such as wrong words, punctuation, and grammar. For the majority, students did not critic the content itself. While these are still problems that I need to fix, the revision process also now includes others analyzing the overall quality and understanding of the work. As the writer, I have difficulties in finding how others may not understand my flow of ideas since everything makes sense to me. Through peer revision, I can adjust my papers to better clarity and fix exactly what problems I may have overlooked so that people who are not me, such as the grader, may be able

Peer feedback makes learners to be critical readers on their own writing Rollinson (2005). (Williams, 1957) states that positive impact of peer feedback depends on students readiness and it can generates positive impact only if the learners are well-trained. When the students know that what they are writing is going to be read by their peers, their writing improves (Clark, 2003).so peer correction has a