Monday, April 14, 2008
Writing, interpreting and revising ...
To begin class today (4/14), I’d like you to reflect on last Wednesday’s writing workshop and the feedback you received on the first draft of our current assignment. What did you gain as a writer from this experience? What have you learned about doing interpretive or text-based research so far? How are you planning to revise your essay in the next week?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
After going over my paper with my peers last Wednesday I discovered a couple things about my writing that I need to work on before I can successfully revise and publish a final copy. The first aspect of writing that my peer reviewers, as well as Professor Bateman, noticed was that my ideas were a little vague. In order to make my argument stronger and more concise I need to use stronger language, instead of the general language I have previously used. Once I revise my paper and get stronger support from my research I believe the paper will be fine. That is my plan for this week; I have to get my research done before I can even think of revising my paper. In order to focus my ideas I need to be able to know how I will use the research to help me. Hopefully the research will not take too long because I already have my research material. I just need to look through it to find supporting evidence that will make my paper stronger.
I was not here for Writing Workshop because I was sick. Instead, I met with you and we discussed my progress. Regarding interpretive/text-based research this far, I have learned that deep analytical thinking and examination is essential to fully understand the various themes and characteristics which texts (or in my case, films), encompass. Also, I have noticet that there is no "wrong answers", because whatever you take out of the text, is one of the meanings of the piece. For instance, watching a movie evokes different types of responses from audiences. Each response and conclusion that the film leads to is one of its messages, even though it may not be the same for everybody. The tricky thing about these research essays however, is that you must convince your reader of HOW these messages or ideas are conveyed throughout the text, in a way that ultimately leaves your reader with an understanding of what your interpretation is and why it is so.
I am planning to revise my thesis statement to something that includes that the film I analyze, And The Band Played On, not only evokes response, but also works to serve as a reenacting of what occurred during the early years of AIDS. I also need to finish explaining what the effects were produced from the portrayal of the film as a horror movie. I plan on rewriting my theses after my body paragraphs are complete in order to create an initial message that fully explains my essay's purpose.
Professor Bateman,
It is my belief that participating in your writing workshops adds a great deal of depth to my final papers and also enables me to grow as a writer. I find tremendous value in receiving comments form my peers as well as you. Also, I think that actually writing letters about our peers paper’s is beneficial to our own product, because it teaches us how to think critically about our own writing. Bt writing these letters we are forced to evaluate and identify writing techniques such as ethos, pathos, logos, thesis, claims, primary and secondary sources, transitions, word choice, as well as many others. The process of commenting and critiquing these aspects of writing in our classmate’s papers helps me to effectively utilize them in my own writing.
From this writing assignment I have learned a great deal about how to properly write a text-based research paper. It is integral to incorporate primary and secondary sources into my writing in order to better assert my claim and support my interpretations.
As of now I am only half way through writing my Interpreting Illness essay. I have yet to incorporate my secondary sources and still have to cite the primary sources that I utilized. In addition to this, I have to develop supporting evidence and facts for my remaining body paragraphs. I perceive this to be the greatest obstacle that I face. In order to overcome this, I plan on scheduling an appointment with you to help me lay out my argument. Also, I may utilize the Writing Center for their assistance. Overall I am excited to continue writing and look forward to meeting with you.
Thanks,
Austin Pollak
Professor Bateman,
It is my belief that participating in your writing workshops adds a great deal of depth to my final papers and also enables me to grow as a writer. I find tremendous value in receiving comments form my peers as well as you. Also, I think that actually writing letters about our peers paper’s is beneficial to our own product, because it teaches us how to think critically about our own writing. Bt writing these letters we are forced to evaluate and identify writing techniques such as ethos, pathos, logos, thesis, claims, primary and secondary sources, transitions, word choice, as well as many others. The process of commenting and critiquing these aspects of writing in our classmate’s papers helps me to effectively utilize them in my own writing.
From this writing assignment I have learned a great deal about how to properly write a text-based research paper. It is integral to incorporate primary and secondary sources into my writing in order to better assert my claim and support my interpretations.
As of now I am only half way through writing my Interpreting Illness essay. I have yet to incorporate my secondary sources and still have to cite the primary sources that I utilized. In addition to this, I have to develop supporting evidence and facts for my remaining body paragraphs. I perceive this to be the greatest obstacle that I face. In order to overcome this, I plan on scheduling an appointment with you to help me lay out my argument. Also, I may utilize the Writing Center for their assistance. Overall I am excited to continue writing and look forward to meeting with you.
Thanks,
Austin Pollak
I always find that I do more revision work on my paper during workshop than my partners. It gives me the opportunity to start to analyze my initial thoughts and find what I am actually trying to say. In this workshop, I found my thesis among all the unnecessary rambling. It also gave me an idea of how much work I have left to do, which is a lot. I need to actually find the specific examples in “Rent” instead of generalizing, and also read Schulman’s book to get a better handle on my material. When I start to find my specific examples in “Rent,” I will be able to begin the interpretive text research instead of being very vague. I did some of this type of writing in my WRIT 1122 class, where I would find examples from the text and integrate my own thoughts about it. For this next week, I plan on finishing Sarah Schulman’s book and finding where specifically I want to draw from the musical. I also need to find the connection between the three points in my paper. Once I have done this ground work, I feel like it will be easy to add more length and depth to my paper.
I think I gained a better understanding of how to analyze writing and how ideas and sources can be asserted in writing. I think I gained much more of this from having to analyze other's writing than I would have gotten if I was just editing my own paper. I found it very difficult to write letters explaining how to make arguments clearer or better organized, but was definitely beneficial for me. I learned that doing text-based research can be extremely time consuming. Probably the most time consuming thing for me was reading through and summarizing the sources. I plan to solidify my argument and then from there go back through my sources and find the specific pieces that will support or challenge my argument.
Last Wednesday’s writing workshop was a productive exercise in the development of my first draft. Although I hate reading aloud, I do think this helps me to better understand my own paper. Sometimes, when reading aloud, I notice things that I may miss or skip over in reading to myself. It is beneficial to receive comments from others. After I have spent significant time on a paper, it begins to seem monotonous and repetitive. It is helpful to have a “fresh pair of eyes” in my revision process. I also enjoy seeing what others have accomplished in their own drafting processes. It is fascinating to see the varied approaches different people take in the same assignment. This opens my eyes to a new way of thinking and encourages me to think about my own draft in a different way.
So far, I have found interpretive/text-based research to be very different from anything I have ever done. It is challenging to incorporate the views of others as I try to formulate my own opinion. In my drafting process, I feel like I am developing my own views and argument along the way. This makes it difficult to make a strong argument, let alone a reasonable counter argument. In the next week, I will focus on greater precision in my argument. I need to tie my secondary sources back to my primary source more precisely, as well as in greater detail and depth. In my first draft, I focused more on my secondary sources than on my primary source. I will work on greater development of my primary source, both within my secondary sources and independent of them.
Last Wednesday’s workshop was a new experience to me. Most of the workshops I experience are in a different format: reading a partners essay, writing comments and suggestions, handing it back. This form of workshopping seems much more personal. I found it helpful to read my essay out loud, it was easier to find places where it just didn’t seem to flow. In listening to others read their essays out loud, I found it harder to process the information being read unless a more intense concentration was applied. While this made it more difficult to pick up on little things, it was easier to see the big picture and focus on big changes that needed to be made to content and idea. The input I received was constructive on a large scale as opposed to a focus on grammar and sentence structure, which is important for a final draft and not as much in a rough one.
Because of thoughts received from my peers and professor, I will spend this next week revising my essay to several specifications. The most important one and the thing I got the most feedback about is to get to my thesis faster and to clarify the beginning portions of my paper. I think I knew that this would have to be done anyway, but hearing it from so many sources made it that much more obvious. I also need to find direct quotes from the movie and songs so I will be watching the movie again.
So far I have learned that it is important to include primary and secondary quotes in a paper that is interpretive or text-based research. This makes the information presented more believable the analysis more persuasive. If the argument is not persuasive, there might as well be no argument at all.
A problem with my writing is that I often have trouble clarifying my ideas. They make perfect sense to me, but to others they can be confusing. That’s where the writing workship helps me, because I have other’s feedback on where I do well with analysis, and where I don’t. Even though, having my peers edit my paper verbally is helpful, I’d much rather prefer a combination of text editing and verbal feedback, because I like to go back and know exactly where it is that needs revision. Through this experience, I’ve learned how to break my ties with wikipedia and find actual scholarly sources that improve my writing. As for future revisions, I plan on editing my second paragraph where I talk about how Mimi’s recuperation from HIV/AIDS and heroin is dependent upon community. I have been told that this is the weakest argument relating back to my thesis, and therefore, I plan on using more examples, offering more analysis to support my qoutes, and also adding another paragraph expanding on how Angel’s role effectfs community.
It was comforting to see that although some had gone much farther into their drafts than I had, that they too were not very far in terms of developing their essay past a general idea. I realized that I needed to do more research to support my arguments. One paper in my peer editing group was nearly completed, needing only final revisions, seeing her paper gave me a clearer idea of how to go about formulating my paper. Regarding text-based research, I find that the farther into the paper I delve the easier the research becomes and the more it comes together to be a completed idea. I hope to be done with the paper by Friday and leave only the final read through and revisions for the weekend before turning in the final paper on Monday.
Well be honest, it felt very awkward at first when commenting on other people’s work. Since I was still in the very early stages of my writing process and had made many changes since handing in my paper and resource summary, I took this into account when taking part in the writer’s workshop. The two papers that I read ranged in quality and depth. The first essay I read felt pretty consistent and flowed very nicely as it talked about illness and discrimination. The one thing it lacked though (despite it only being halfway done) was continuous ties and references to the primary source. As the discussion continued to make sense and bring up other ideas and facts, it really would have strengthened the paper if the main source were referenced more. I truly only say this because the main source, which was Philadelphia, really connected with all of the discussions and would have only added strength to the argument. The second essay that I read showed great potential as it dissected the movie Rent. However, throughout the paper I couldn’t really understand what the main thesis was. Its seemed that at times she was arguing against Rent and at other times was arguing for Rent. Yet, the paper was still creative and brought up some interesting thoughts about AIDS and Rent.
After reading these two essays, it really helped me reflect on my paper because at times I did the same mistakes as my piers. For example, when going over my essay I did a good job at citing my primary source (Sontag) but didn’t really make it clear when and where I was citing her. As a writer, it is our job to make this as clear as possible. Upon realizing this, I must make some changes to my second and third paragraph so that I separate Sontag’s arguments/ideas on syphilis from my second source on syphilis.
Another mistake I discovered during the writers workshop was that my thesis was not really well explained due to the fact that I really wasn’t sure what I wanted my thesis to be. I often found examples in my rough draft where I went back and fourth, never revealing what I truly wanted to argue. With this said, my new thesis is “ The liberation of characters in the movie Rent is a type of romanticizing of the HIV/AIDS virus that, according to Sontag, was only possible with the syphilis illness”. This gives myself a clear path to stick to when it comes writing my paper.
I am glad that we had Wednesday's writing workshop because I rarely let anyone look at my writing. Hopefully, through this class I will be able to gain more confidence in my writing. I am in my senior year at college and I still have a hard time writing long papers. It has always been hard for me to make a strong argument and stay consistent throughout a paper. I know that with more practice and more workshops I will slowly improve my abilities to be a good writer.
It was helpful reading my rough draft out loud. I realized that there was a lot of little mistakes that had to be fixed.
The most helpful part of the workshop was the ability to ask my peers for direction. I had writers block in a few areas of my paper. I think I had to be more concise in my argument. From the suggestions I think I need to support my arguments with my resources. I should also incorporate readings from Sontag to help build a stronger argument.
I liked our workshop on Wednesday. Having other people feedback on your writing work is very important because you want your work to appeal to your peers, not just to you. Also, having your peers advice helps to make papers stronger. I had some points where my work made sense to me, but was not clear to others reading the papers, so that is good to know so changes can be made. I as a writer have gained the ability for positive feedback. I don't feel comfortable about my writing, so this is an easy transition to having other people read my work. I was sick when the origional post was made, but now I understand how to do text-based research better. I know how to include full ideas from text into my work, not just vague bits and pieces
Post a Comment