1. Throughout high school, writing has been mostly taught as a recursive process. It’s never something you can just sit down, write out a paper, and it’s perfect and ready to hand in. Instead it’s starts as a basic outline with some possible quotes. From there, a little bit of explanation is given for each quote. Paragraphs are built around each idea and it’s quotes. This gradual build-up is continued till the paper is complete written up as a first rough draft. After that, bits and pieces are adjusted and fixed more as editing happens. This is how I was always taught to write a paper where I went to school. For our first paper, actually putting the quotes in was something I didn’t do till the second draft. I wanted to build up my thoughts first and then add in evidence as a ‘cherry-on-top’. It didn’t end up helping and adding to my point like I wanted it to. This time around, I started with the quotes and built around like I said early. For our third paper, I decided to do a mix of both papers and created my different points, picked out the quotes that went with each point/claim that I was trying to make, and then put it all together into one cohesive paper. This was the best and most effective technique for me because my thoughts came out the way I wanted, and it earned the best grade.
  2. Putting quotes into a paragraph to prove a point was something I always have a hard time with. I have a hard time with picking the best quotes to support my ideas in the most effective and efficient way. For me, it’s a lot easier to paraphrase a text then it is to pull and incorporate a certain quote that seems to work best for me. In high school, the majority of the stuff that we were instructed to do, was to put direct quotes into our papers, so paraphrasing is not something I have a lot of practice with. It is something I usually do in first drafts on papers I write and then later on, I go in and add a quote in where the paraphrase is and usually that is the best way for me to incorporate quotes. That did not seem to be working for the first two papers that we did so I changed it up on the third one. This went a lot better because instead of trying to force the quotes into a spot that they did not fit into, I was molding the text around the quotes and it had a much better flow than the others.
  3. Since forever, I have been that person that reads through an entire text/article/passage and then goes back to pick out the things that seem important to me or make me question something. For the majority of my junior year of high school, my English teacher tried to get me to actively read instead of reading through once and then going back. It never worked. I, for some reason, can’t comprehend what I’m reading fully, if I’m also writing down my thoughts. The way I do it now seems to work just fine for me and what I’m trying to accomplish. Most of the notes I take more connecting thoughts then they are about questioning things and expressing a one-word thought about something. By reading ahead, it allows me to not focus on questions I may have (because they get answered later) and instead on the information being given to me and how I can use it.
  4. I think I am equally good at critiquing my own stuff and other people’s papers. I’m much better at the grammar corrections and formatting errors than editing for content. I am incredibly hard on editing my own mistakes and I’m not afraid to hate entire sections of my paper. I sometimes do the same thing with other people’s papers but I’m less likely to bring it up to them. It’s their paper and in the end, they can make their own choices but I still sometimes feel like my opinions might offend them. I do really enjoy when people hardcore edit my paper to tell me all the things I did wrong and how to fix it. I usually have to read something first for grammar errors, or else that will be all that I notice. After that, I can usually read through for some content mistakes and make suggestions.
  5. MLA is something we constantly did in high school, so it has been ingrained in my brain. I honestly think it will outlast my name in there. I’m not very good at the work cited part of MLA but everything else I have down almost perfectly. The intext citations have always been a confusing area for me, mostly because fitting them into my paper is hard for me. The teachers I had in high school were very strict and were incredibly picky about how we did our MLA formatting so coming to college and having the rules be a lot looser and less to the book, was a little weird. It was hard for me to get out of the straight-to-the-point form of MLA and to transition into something more creative but still following most of the rules. Finding good sources to use were easy for the first two papers because they were supplied for us, but having the option on the last paper, was fun to deal with. You had to do a bit of research on the source to make sure that it is reliable.
  6. I have not, in any of my papers, noticed a reoccurring problem with my grammar or formatting. The biggest difficulty that I seem to have is when I write my paper in Word and then attempt to transfer it to Docs, some sort of formatting error happens. The reason that it usually happens is because I assume that the transfer went perfectly fine and there is nothing to worry about. I have always been extremely picky about my grammar and spelling ever since I was little and started picking out mistakes in the books that I was reading. It annoyed me so much that I was determined to have the best grammar and make little to no mistakes. That is probably the only strong skill that I have in writing, everything else is mediocre and I am still working on making better. I am always listening to suggestions and ideas on my grammar and the way I use certain things so that I can continue to learn and improve my writing overall.