Spreading My Annotation Grades

My short writes responded and connected with the in class readings. The short writes helped me to think outside of the box. It made it more clearly for me to connect the readings with myself and to understand the material better. The short writes helped me narrow down my ideas for the issue analysis papers. The short write made it clear to me which issues I was most passionate about. I connected my personal thoughts and experiments with the class readings, which is a part of being a good writer. I was able to express my own thoughts without having a right or wrong answer. I could interpret the reading in my own way, which I liked. I could have been more specific in some of the short writes and brought more of my own thoughts into the writing.

With an improvement in writing, there also comes an improvement in reading. The first reading assigned to us, “The Banking Concept of Education” by Paulo Freire, was one of the more difficult pieces of writing I had been asked to analyze throughout my career as a student. This course has provided me with the resources and skills to break apart readings piece by piece and understand them as well as apply them to my own life. I slowly became a better reader, finally realizing the use of annotations and the importance of re-reading texts until you can understand them. A better understanding of the readings gave me the ability to produce essays that are well developed

Growing up I never had much experience when it came to writing. In school they would tell us to write an essay about a certain topic and turn it in. We rarely got any feedback in return, the feedback we received was our grade. If you received a high grade that meant you did well, and obviously a low grade meant you didn’t meet the

Teachers, parents, and friends often tell students exactly what the writing process should entail and how long it should take. However, the older I get, the more I realize that the writing process varies not only from person to person, but also from one writing project to the next. Throughout my years of life, I have written countless papers, ranging from a persuasive speech to an extensive research paper, and each project requires an altered version of my personal writing process. While each individual has his own writing process, there can be many similarities between different writing processes. Finding one’s individual writing process takes trial, error, and repetition. When an individual finally uncovers his unique writing process, better thought, work, and writing is produced.

Concerning my assignments, I always take hand written notes before writing up either a first draft or segments of one. This allows myself to clearly organise my thoughts to properly delve into the task at hand. Afterwards, I re-organise my first draft in a typed format and begin developing my voice; which happens along the progress of my written piece, creating a stronger and more advanced piece of writing.

Illich is making a bold proposal: he wants to follow the example of the U.S. in abolishing the governing of churches by government by separating school from state. One way to implement this proposal would be to forbid employers from evaluating candidates for jobs according to where they went to school.

What is your experience with annotating? Do you think it benefits you if you’re being graded on it? And is it needed?

I learned that annotating is good for you because it helps you understand the book when you read it more. It also gives you a deeper meaning of the book. It also helps you because it helps you in reading and writing. So I my book my annotations help me understand it more because if I just read the book I can just forget everything I read. Also when I annotate I know what’s going on I who this person or I think I know what’s happening next. Also annotating is good for me because it helps me know the book more and more when I get closer to that part or when I done with the book. Like for example annotating is asking questions or writing down words you don’t know and predicting and all of that. My challenge is to make the book better for me when

I find reflecting on, or even rereading, my own writing to be a vexatious activity. Much like looking back at my artwork, I find a piece I once loved to then be awkward, lacking detail and the polished completeness I crave. However, I should state that I generally prefer my personal “hobby” writing and drawing to any structured essay or assigned art project. One reason being that the mentality clashes with my own, in the sense that I see both writing and drawing to be an art form, and art rarely follows rules. The other reason being when I know my work is being graded I tend to unintentionally abandon my writing style in order to fill the requirements laid out for me. This in turn upsets me, especially when looking back at my own writing to

I did not enjoy annotating because there were many things to annotate for and it was hard to tell if my annotations were critical enough. It might have been more enjoyable if we did not have to annotate it, but because we did, I focused mostly on thinking critically rather than enjoying the plot. It was easy to fall behind on, so although I think one book per night is not too bad, if I put off annotating, the amount of work I had to make up would get overwhelming. Nevertheless, the fact that I am very close to finishing the epic poem is very satisfying because I will not have to annotate that intensely for the rest of the year. But again, annotating was kind of frustrating because it took up a lot of time and energy and the fact that I may not have been up to the standards when it comes to thinking critically is really disheartening. I think I did as best as I could but there is still that doubt in my mind telling me my annotations were not critical enough. The standards for annotations were to notice thematic topics, epic conventions, and figurative language, all the while, thinking critically enough so that my notes were not just summaries. I thought that I did well on my annotations, however when I got my graded 1-4 chapters back, the notes said that could have been more critical. I think what I struggle with the most is thinking critically because I cannot make connections to bigger ideas.

Based on chapter 9, annotation is summing up the information in my text by briefly writing the key ideas in the margin. I have to annotate because annotation encourages me to process the information and think about it. It helps me to manage the amount of information I need to read. It also helps me to decrease information by 50 percent or more, and it helps me to reorganize the information in a way that make the information easier for me to remember. Annotation helps me to identify topics and support ideas.To annotate, I have to read a chapter and then think about what would be important if I am going to make a presentation, and I also need to read at least three or four paragraphs in order to take note. In addition, I have to write my annotation

Earlier this year in my College Composition I class, we practiced annotating essays other people wrote. Sometimes these essays were written by professionals, while sometimes the author was a complete amateur. We were usually assigned to mention upwards of five characteristics of the writing we liked or an English professor might like. While I could certainly finish this assignment, I found it significantly easier to point out the mistakes the authors made. I could have had a list of ten noticeable mistakes, and have only two positive notes.

As we continue through our time at CCU there are a number of writing skills presented in The Bedford Handbook(2014) by Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers that I have found helpful regardless of the style of paper we may be assigned to write. I believe that most of the skills go hand in hand with one another, but two I would like to work to improve on is active reading and annotating.

I feel like timed writes have never been an area of strength for me. Rather it has been an area that has challenged me, but I feel like I do not participate in timed writes often enough to improve significantly. One thing I did differently in this diagnostic essay is that I tried to question the claims presented to benefit my argument. For instance, I tried to give an explanation as to why students are not meeting ideal standards in their writing. As always, I see my strengths in being able to express my thoughts coherently. My area of weakness is having the pressure of composing an essay in 90 minutes. This is not to say I do not work well under pressure, but my experience with writing has made me work to the best of my capacity when not pressured

Since beginning to write papers in English class, I have had countless successes and failures. While many of my English classes have taught me how to improve my writing, I have not learned very much in others. My most recent English class was last year, my sophomore year. My class was particularly undersized; therefore, it gave each student the opportunity to have additional individual attention. Throughout the class I experienced high points, weaknesses, and even difficulties that I never overcame. Overall, my writing skills improved, but only marginally.