The texts Reflective Writing and Genres in Academic Writing: Reflection are about how reflective writing differs from regular writing. Regular writing focuses more on Descriptions such as who, what, where, and when whereas reflective writing focuses on the why part, the hindsight. This semester was my first semester at Delaware County Community College, I felt very welcomed by everyone. It was a strange feeling to be surrounded by people that were in the same class but were all of different ages. It was a great experience that I am glad I decided to try. I am planning to take more classes over the summer and into the fall semester.For the short time that our English 101 class lasted I feel like I learned much more than I ever have in a year of English at Marple.
Thinking back to the beginning of this course, I remember 2 things related to the course work, I remember, first doing 3 quick writes on the first day about how we felt during the class. At first I assumed it was just a writing exercise and an excuse to have the class write under pressure. After some time I realized that we were doing much more than that. We revisited the writing about a week later and upon reading it I remember much more about that first day in class than I could compared to classes where I had not written about anything. This showed me that we hold memories in our writing, we connect ourselves to our writing, and even now as I reflect upon that record of my feelings I begin to remember more about what we did each day in the class. The second thing I remember about the class was GRITT, which was an acronym that stood for Genre, Rhetorical, Identity, Theory, and Transfer. Much of our course was centered around this acronym. We learned about Genre awareness and through that I was able to distinguish the difference between the three main different genres of literature which are, Persuasive, Entertaining, and Informative. I also learned about Rhetorical awareness which is who the writer intends the audience of his work to be. I also learned how to identify myself as an author and how it is different from my normal self. I learned how to appreciate my writing and the writing of others, and the secret messages that are embedded within their work. I plan to extend what I learned in this class to the real world by improving my writing in the future and being more careful about what I am writing instead of throwing something together.
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This blog post will take my short story from blog post #5 and take a look at how it may have ended differently. It will show how my emotions would have been different, how the choices I made would be different and how the emotions of the people around me may have been different. We were assigned these two readings: Rewinding & Rewriting: The Alternate Universes in Our Heads (NPR Hidden Brain Episode), Two Views of the River (Mark Twain) and these two videos for this assignment: Kramer vs. Kramer: Action Scene (Shows/Deepens the Conflict), Kramer vs. Kramer: End-Resolution Scene We all think about our life and the choices that happen, the thoughts of why did I do this, and how would my life be different if this had happened instead. We all picture our own ‘perfect’ versions of life, but life is not perfect, in fact it is nowhere near perfect, we all deal with things we do not want to and we see how our mistakes affect the people around us. If I was to change the way that my Blog 5 post took place, I would have the story have a more happy ending.
I would have tried to convince my Granny to let Benji live a little longer to see if he got any better, or at least have him go naturally. The thought of him going through the pain, both mental and physical still hurts me. I could have also used more dialogue in my blog post to give the readers a sense of the conversations that took place, it was hard to remember what was actually said, I was more shaken up with the fact that he was going to die more than I was paying attention to what the people around me had said, and what was discussed. I could have displayed my story in a different way, I chose to open with a vague description because I felt that it was the best way to draw the readers in to my story and make them think of personal losses that they have dealt with instead of force my loss upon them. This blog post focuses on an emotional scene in my life. This will be used as almost a practice run for my narrative. This will take a look at how I present my scenes and feedback from anyone who comments will give me suggestions on how to better depict and describe what is going on. In Hills Like White Elephants Hemingway never tells the reader what the operation is, just as I never said how they were putting the dog down, as well as how I opened the story with a vague scene that leaves it open to the readers interpretation. Tears
… they drip cold down my face, blurring my vision, and leaving me in a blubbering mess. My nose runs as I try to make out the lifeless body beneath me. The one that once contained so much life, and happiness, bringing everyone so much joy. It is the second week in June, I have been in Ireland now for almost a week. My Granny’s dog, Benji, has not been doing well since I had got there, and he had been deteriorating rapidly in the past week. On Tuesday of that week we had taken him to the vet, there they did a biopsy. The results came back that Thursday. By that time we realized that he could no longer walk. My Granny went to the Nursing Home and brought my Granda home for the weekend to see Benji for the last time. I woke up Friday morning, to see that he was walking with a slight limp, while it was not back to normal he was making progress. It gave us hope, a false hope, because by noon he again was unable to walk. We had one or two visitors that day, compared to the usual of about 10 or so it was considerably empty. Saturday was very similar to Friday, with a hopeful morning, but by noon he had stopped walking again. My friends in the neighborhood stopped by that day to see how we were doing and provided some comedic relief as well as comfort. It was nice that they came by. Around 4 my Granny took my Granda back to the Nursing Home, I stayed behind to make sure that everything was OK with Benji. When my Granny got back we talked about what was happening and what we were going to do. Since Monday was a bank holiday and most people were off from work we decided to pray and hope that he somehow miraculously got better overnight, if not we would have the vet come down and put him out of his misery on Monday morning. Sunday was not better than Saturday. When we got up Benji had not moved and could not get up and walk. We called the vet around noon and arranged the entire operation. We called one of our neighbors Paddy and asked if he would come down on Monday to help send him off properly, he said he would. Paddy was always so good to my Granny, especially since her children no longer live in Ireland. The night before we stayed up until 1 in the morning, just laying there on the floor next to him. I started to cry and I don't think I ever really stopped until after I was back in the states. We both hugged and kissed him, gave him treats, made sure that he was comfortable, and finally after prolonging it for as long as we could said our final goodbyes and goodnight. I really wish that I had slept right there next to him. My biggest regret is not going back out there and just talking with him until I fell asleep. Monday morning finally came. I woke up and it was 11 am. “Oh no i thought, it's too late.” I got up and threw on the first thing I found and rushed into the kitchen. I looked down and I felt them, Tears This post will focus on the writing process and how it is different for each and every writer. I read these three articles Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product (Don Murray) -- introduction is not required reading, Against Vanity: In Praise of Revision (Mary Karr) , and Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life | pp. 28 -34 | Short Assignments & Shitty First Drafts (Anne Lamott) and analyzed each of the writers' different processes.
Every writer has a different style of a writers’ roundtable in their mind. For example I see mine as “a class of third graders who have no interest in being at school” at times. Other times I see “my writing process as a jungle, tangled with thoughts that have no relation to writing” with “each idea flowing by faster than I can write them down leaving me concentrating on what is passed not what is coming”. To summarize, my writing could use a little bit of organization, but even though it is messy and unorthodox it still gets the job done. I like the process that all three of these authors use, but my favorite one has to be Lamott’s. I like the description that "’Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you.”(Anne Lamott), it shows that no matter the size of the project you can only work one sentence at a time which she also shows in her story about her brother. “Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.”(Anne Lamott). The way Lamott describes writing is very similar to my view of writing in the way that “they pull up chairs in a semicircle around the computer, and they try to be quiet but you know they are there with their weird coppery breath, leering at you behind your back”(Anne Lamott). Both Murray, and Karr see writing in two different parts, “In the early draft, the generative self shakes pom-poms at every pen stroke and cheers every crossed t. In a month or so, this diligent and optimistic creature gins out, say, two hundred pages. The editor self then shows up to heft the pages, give a sniff, and say: Yeah, but . . . The editor condenses two hundred pages down to about thirty. I don’t mean she cuts the rest; she may well boil the whole thing down so the same amount of stuff happens more economically.”(Mary Karr), “Don’t look back. Yes, the draft needs fixing. But first it needs writing.”(Don Murray). The early draft is just your test but the final revised copy is where you take your draft and comb through it making it shorter and easier to read “The pieces of writing I have not yet thought of writing will become different from what I expect them to be when I propose them to myself. My constant is change.”(Don Murray), “Every writer I know who’s worth a damn spends way more time ‘losing’ than ‘winning’”(Mary Karr). Both Murray and Karr also believe that writers today do not express themselves in their writing but instead express who the public wants to see, “Of course the writer attends to an “other self” that reflects the voices and expectations of a wider public”(Don Murray), “Through reading and thinking, they’ve raised their taste beyond their skill levels. So when they stare down at their pages, they can no longer superimpose what’s in their heads onto the work.”(Mary Karr). I am writing a letter to my author-self. Upon reading A Fable for the Living, I realized that if we stop connecting with people and things that are gone they die a second time. Their first death is the actual loss of them from the earth, but a person's second death is them being forgotten about forever. If we don’t keep in contact with things that we care about we begin to lose them, so I am writing to my author-self in hopes that it is not too late and that I can still keep in contact with him and create a strong bond between the two of us. Dear Kyle,
I feel that the two of us are very similar, we are creative in our own ways, and we love to express ourselves. Despite these similarities we seem to be trapped, separated like the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet, ever destined to be so close to each other yet so far. Maybe they will see us as too powerful if we were to work well together. Despite these limitations I still get by. I do give you control of what I say sometimes. When I want to express strong emotions or opinions that's all you, I am bad at expressing myself in words. It is almost ironic, as if I have given you control over what to write in a letter to you. I would like to apologize to you for all of the bad interactions we have had in the past. It was mostly my fault for being too stuck up to admit that I needed your help. In recent years I have realized that I cannot do this without you and I am very lucky to have you, So thank you for being the little voice in my head that my friends say make my texts sound too formal. During the course of this semester i plan to try and communicate with my writer-self by keeping a notebook by my bed so that if I come up with something I want to write about or even vent about I can keep a record of it so that I don’t forget about what I wanted to write about. I also plan to talk with my writer-self more, not in the crazy person way, but in the way that it allows me to improve my everyday speech and break free of a lot of the slang that I use in everyday conversations. Sincerely, Conor So when I first made this post my site could only change between black and white backgrounds. Since then I have changed it to differ between white and turquoise and magenta. The reason for adding this is to express myself a little more visually. I am a person who likes to be organized in my own special way. If you do not like the theme you do not have to use it. If you have another two color combination that you like leave it in the comments and I will try them out and see what I think.
Here is the link that I used to add the theme https://editortricks.weebly.com/how-to-create-a-light-and-dark-mode-button-for-your-weebly-website.html. To change the color you will need to go into the code and add change the hex color which is in a letter / number format. This blog will assess the four sources listed below. These sources give tips on creating a weebly website, and help to give a stronger definition to multimodal writing, and break down design into four simple steps, which are contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity, and how these four things can help you create something that is very appealing to the eye.
How to Create a Weebly Website (Video Tutorial) All Writing is Multimodal (Cheryl Ball and Colin Charlton) It's All C.R.A.P: Four Principles of Design (Think Around Corners) Assessing Multimodal Student Work (Kent State University) Why are we creating a website for our English Composition I course? We are creating a website to act as our personal portfolio to hold everything that we are writing in our english course and beyond. How do Ball and Charlton define "multimodal" writing? Ball and charlton define multimodal as two words combined together, the first being multi- or many, and the second being modal meaning style. So multimodal is writing that has different styles incorporated in it. Do you agree with Ball and Charlton when they claim "all writing is multimodal"? I do agree for the most part that all writing is multimodal. While some writing such as poems are strictly poems following a format, but other authors use their own influence to change the style of writings between two different modes. As a web site author who will create your own web page content in this course, how would you rank the importance of the five modes on a scale of 1-5? Please provide a brief rationale to support each mode ranking. 1 Aural: If everyone spoke in a monotone voice nothing would have a tone or any meaning behind it, and it would be quite hard to remember anything as you would stop paying attention. 2 Visual: Visual writing allows the reader to picture in their head what is happening in the story as it happens to the narrator or main character. 3 Gestural: Gestures allow the author to add emphasis to their writing by adding hand gestures or even moving about to keep your attention. 4 Linguistic: Linguistic writing allows for the author to convey his or her thoughts on paper which is not always the most important thing as you can write a compare and contrast essay or create a Venn Diagram and both of these methods convey the same information. 5 Spatial: Spacial writing just refers to the physical placement of a body of writing which I do not see as the most important aspect. What does the C.R.A.P. acronym stand for? C.R.A.P. stands for contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. As a web site author who will create your own web page content in this course, how would you rank the importance of the four C.R.A.P. principles of design on a scale of 1-5? Please provide a brief rationale to support each design principle ranking. On a scale of 1-5 I would rank alignment and proximity as a 1 being the highest as when things are placed to close together or are very scattered it makes it hard to focus on the page. I would rank contrast at 3 because if your page is all the same it will start to get dull to look at. Repetition I would rank as a 4 or 5, when you begin to repeat the same things over and over they begin to dull the impact of anything. What are the seven sample criteria Borton and Huot suggest writers use to assess a multimodal composition? Borton and Huot suggest these seven criteria to assess a multimodal writing. Purpose, audience, tone, organization, transitions, synthesis, and details. Do the Borton-and-Huot criteria seem similar or different from the criteria we would use to assess a traditional print essay? Why or why not? The Borton-and-Huot criteria seem very similar to how we judge our traditional essays. Many rubrics look for tone, organization, transitions, details, and our focus - which combines audience and purpose. Hey everyone! Welcome to my blog, which will follow my journey through the English Composition class. This post of a bit of an introduction to let you all know a little bit more about me, you can read how I answered my Proust Questionnaire, and even fill your own out!
__1.__What is your idea of perfect happiness? Happiness for me would be laying in bed on a rainy Saturday afternoon and watching Star Wars or listening to music. __2.__What is your greatest fear? My Greatest fear would be being alone. While it is something I also enjoy, it is only good in moderation, too much of being alone becomes depressing. __3.__What is the trait you most deplore in others? One trait that I deplore in others is lying. Anyone who takes the time to go around my back and deceive me does not deserve any of my time __4.__What is your greatest extravagance? My greatest extravagance would be music products and accessories, as I enjoy most music and I am currently looking into getting a record player. __5.__What is your current state of mind? I am currently at a balance of moods. I feel happy, yet sad, as well as excited and nervous. As I fill out this questionnaire I am texting with my Girlfriend who is the one person in this world who makes me very happy, every time I think about her I smile and my day gets a whole lot better. I am also excited because I am having a movie night with my closest friend, he is the one who has been there for me. I cannot place where these sad and nervous thoughts are stemming from, today has been good, it's a Friday and we have a long weekend. __6.__What do you consider the most overrated virtue? There are two virtues that I see as overrated, these being prudence, and fidelity. Prudence is very similar to that of common sense and wisdom. I see that as more of a character trait because not everyone has common sense or wisdom. Fidelity is just a blend of the other virtues, so you may just as well take out the other virtues and have fidelity be the only one or take fidelity out. __7.__On what occasion do you lie? I don't lie often, but when I do it's usually because I have done something that I was not supposed to do. __8.__What do you most dislike about your appearance? I dislike the size of my body, I am slightly overweight and it is hard to keep the pounds off. I Have a sweet tooth and love to eat. __9.__Which living person do you most despise? I do not despise many people because everyone is allowed to have their own opinion and it is wrong to judge people based upon their opinions. __10.__Which words or phrases do you most overuse? I mostly overuse slang words that replace greetings such as dog - referring to my friends, and bruh - as a reaction towards something __11.__What or who is the greatest love of your life? The Greatest love of my life is Music followed at close second by my girlfriend who makes me very happy, and that I am very lucky to have. __12.__When and where were you happiest? I am happiest in many places, but the types of happy are different depending on who I am with and where I am. But the two places that I am the happiest over all is when I’m hanging out with my closest friends or spending time with my Girlfriend. __13.__Which talent would you most like to have? I would love to be able to read music and play guitar. I can sing, and I play Percussion but I would much rather play guitar. __14.__What do you consider your greatest achievement? I consider my friends as my greatest achievement, not them as people but the bonds that we have with each other and how we all trust one another. __15.__If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? If I were to die and come back as a living thing I would come back as a wolf, I do not see myself as someone who can go it alone, I need a ‘pack’ to help me through it, but I am also very faithful and loyal __16.__Where would you most like to live? I would most like to live in the Irish Country-side as I have been there many times and it is beautiful. __17.__What is your most treasured possession? My most treasured position currently is my cassette player and cassettes as they are a different style of listening to music compared to streaming through spotify. __18.__What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? The lowest depth of misery is being lied to and deceived by someone who you trusted. __19.__What is your favorite occupation? My favorite occupation although i have never worked officially in the field is aircraft engineering. The thought of being able to fix airplanes and design new ones is a really cool thought in my head. __20.__What is your most marked characteristic? Honesty is one of my most marked characteristics. I can be brutally honest at times, giving feedback that isn't always wanted. Around some people I will sweeten it up a bit and make it less of a harsh impact. __21.__What do you most value in your friends? I most value truth and honesty in my friends. Especially when it is about my appearance or opinions. __22.__What is it that you most dislike? I do not dislike many things but my biggest pet peeve is people who expect me to do their work for them. __23.__What is your greatest regret? My greatest regret is taking a year to realize how bad for me my first friend group was. __24.__How would you like to die? I personally would like to die not due to natural causes, but instead I would like to go skydiving without a parachute. In my last few minutes I would like to listen to Father and Son by Cat Stevens, and think about all of the good times that I have had. __25.__What is your motto? Shit happens and there ain't nothing you can do about it. |
conor mcgrathWelcome! I am pretty laid back and chill. glad you all could join me here on my journey. if you have any suggestions let me know. Archives
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