Now that I am enrolled in Professor Smith ENG099 class, I am hoping to learn and improve my writing skills. Starting this semester with Professor Smith has been good. I’ve noticed that when I have any questions or need any help with anything, he is there to help me and the others out. He is positive minded and constantly tries to keep us focus. At times, I know we need to do our behalf to be able to succeed, but it is hard when you work full time and go to school full time right after you get out of work. You feel like everything is pilling in your shoulders. I do catch myself at times studying in the train and bus while I’m on my way to school.
I am going to be honest with you. This is not an easy class for me because my writing skills are not so good. I often do have problems with my writing. I could speak English, maybe not perfectly but I could say is well enough. When it comes to writing I always have difficulties.
I think I do well with my introduction and when I give examples of my own when I'm writing my essay. There are a few things I believe I need improvement on. My main thing is with my punctuation marks. I am able to write the sentences but my problem is that at times I don’t know exactly where to place my comma, semicolon, etc. I tend to put a period everywhere and simply just start a new sentence every time. After revising my work I end up putting commas where they belong at. Second thing, I believe I also need improvement with is with my verb tense. When I write my summary or essay I at times mix present with past tense verbs. Sentences might sound correct to me but they might actually be incorrect. I believe I mix my verb tense a lot because I do not read or write a lot. I know I definite need improvement with that.
At times, I do have problems writing an essay of four hundred words. With the CAT-W practice test I think I did okay. I had a topic that was a little bit difficult for me to write about but I did write about something. I do know that I did not achieve a goal of writing a four hundred word essay. I believe that for me to pass this class I need to know my verb tense. That’s why I’m trying to stay focus to be able to pass this class this semester and also to get better writing skills.
Hi Vanessa:
ReplyDeleteBelow you will find my response for this blog series. This is not a grade, nor is it intended to be read as an evaluation of your performance in this class so far. The evaluation of the blog series may be found in Blackboard in the gradebook for this class and the grade is derived from a totally dofferent method as described in the syllabus. What you will see below is a response to your overall writing as of this blog series. The categories are from the CAT-W evaluation rubric (what the evaluator’s use). The comments below are intended to be both descriptive (what I see) and prescriptive (what you need to work on). I will be speaking with you personally about your current strengths and weakness during class. Please feel free to ask as many questions as you like about the following in class, during office hours, or in our FB groups.
Critical Response to Writing Task and Text: For this category, I look to see if you summarized effectively thereby demonstrating that you understood the reading/text, that you are actively engaging with the ideas of the text and responding in some way to them. For this category, you are fine but could still use some improvemement.
Development of Writer’s Ideas: This category responds to how well you use reasons to support your claim, how well you use evidence to support your reasons, and how well the reasons work together as a whole. For this category you need more work, particularly in your use of detail?
Structure of the Response: Is it an argument essay? Does it work well as a whole? This category is concerned with the overall structure of your writing--can I see that you had a plan and executed it well.
Sentences, Word Choice, Grammar, Usage, Mechanics: Is your wriitng clear and easy to read? That is what this category is all about. What issues need to be addressed now to improve the overall effect of your writing?
Overall: From this blog series I can see that you have the basics dwon from the first few weeks. You are summarizing the texts, identifying main ideas, responding to them, and you are writing “essays” when asked. Now we will work on argument format for essays and development. You are exactly where you need to be at this point in the class so let us focus on more development now. Keep up the good work!