Assignment # 15 Final Reflection

As I look back to all of my writing I will say that my writing have changed since then. Sometimes it is too hard to express your thoughts in writing especially when English is second language for a person. As looking all of writing in this semester, I can feel how my wring has been improved over this short time. Furthermore, in writing I better understood the purpose of essays, and I also improved my writing in developing my ideas clearly, including enough examples and evidences. Also for each of those essays, which were assigned during this semester in class, I get good sense of including rhetorical situation in my papers.

My goals in future English classes are to improve and develop further in writing. I strongly believe course of English 101 will help me in my next English 102 course. 

Assignment # 14 Revision

For my portfolio I chose to revise my 4^th argumentative essay. The strongest side of my essay was that I effectively introduced my thesis statements. However, the weaknesses were that I did not focus on my thesis statement. Some evidences were on my topic but some were off my thesis statement.

Once I have a thesis statement, now I have to come up with good evidences to support my thesis statement and argue my position. I will write out my arguable position and then I will list several reasons, which will fit with my thesis statement. Also I will ask myself which reasons are best for my purpose and audience. 

Then I will work on my organizations. To organize effectively my argument's evidences I will follow chart of organizing arguments. First, I will introduce my idea what I will talk about in my essay, then I will state my thesis, then I will give first, second and third evidences to support my thesis, at last I will write effective conclusion. 

Overall, if I will look all of these steps then my paper should be well organized and focused on my thesis statement. 

Assignment # 13 Favorite Paper

My favorite essay was an advertisement analysis. I consider this essay most interesting to analyze and write about. At the same time, the advertisement was hard to analyze because for the image and text. I had to carefully study both the image’s and text’s language to get entirely ad’s meaning. It was easy for me to clearly write about purpose, audience and style. Also I had follow well and organize my introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion.

Overall, the image and text was interesting to analyze, to get main idea what it says and why it is expressed in that way. This essay also helped me with learning style like generating my ideas, by deciding what and how I want to analyze given text and study what is hidden behind a text which has to be analyzed. I became more comfortable about analyzing text and think more critically. I enjoyed a lot analyzing this advertisement paper. 

Assignment # 12 Evidence

“Parents should not force their children what they want to do in the future, such as, choosing a major. Therefore, parents should let their children make their own decisions.” This is the arguable thesis I wrote to support my evidences.

• The evidence that I find strongest and compelling part of my argument is that parents try to help to their teenage children by advising what they should study in college, but this advice might mislead their children. I believe that this is strong and one of the interesting evidence because it fits with my thesis statement. On the other words, parent’s force may have a wrong cause in their children’s decision.

• The evidence that I think is the weakest part of my paper is that children by deciding own choices, this self decision will increase self-confidence and understanding in personality of the person. This evidence might be a good one for my paper but I did not give good example to support my evidence. So I consider this evidence the weakest in my argumentative paper. If I wrote more prevalent examples this evidence might be a better. 

Assignment # 11 Effective Arguments

For my third essay I analyzed article “Get Smart About the College.” By reading this article gave me a helpful ideas to make my next arguing essay strong with included convincing evidences, background information or effective argument to appeal to reader’s emotion sides. 

This article gave for their position reasons included with evidence. But I think authors didn’t really use enough supported evidence. However, for my 4^th essay I know on what to concentrate and give as many convincing evidences as needed to support my arguing position. I also find out that it will give a good position to my essays to include necessary background information, so for reader should be clearly and easily understandable what was being argued. I believe article uses effective argument based on college financial sides to appeal to readers. However, audience for this essay most likely to be parents and it address mostly to parent because usually they pay for students education. So I see that it is important to bring emotional responses for readers for my next arguing positions paper. Overall, based on reading this article brought me a good idea and helped me on what specific details I should most focus for my next essay.  

Assignment # 10 peer review

When we asked to read two or three of our peer's essays it was more effective. We read our essays out loud, and then made comments what we thought was right or wrong. Also one interesting thing for a bigger group was that we all had same essay topics. And after discussing it, some un-understandable and unclear points became more reasonable to think about improving a paper. However, doing peer review in small group is okay too. Reading alone you make more accurate judgments. If you see other student’s mistakes it might be helpful for you not to make same mistake in your paper. 

My strength is to find in others writing statement of purpose, and if they don’t have one clear statement of purpose, I try to give an idea to look it over and make it clear because it is important part of essays. My weakness is I try not to be too mean and rude while making comments. We are not really close to each other to make very harsh comments. 

However, a peer review is interesting process. It might be helpful but I don’t consider it very helpful process.

Assignment # 9 "Never be Blind to Your Own Errors!..."

Oh... errors, errors, errors!!!...  It is something that drives me crazy about my writing. Sometimes it seems impossible not to make mistakes. Not to make errors, or make fewer errors needs a hard work.  Some people believe that people learn on their own mistakes and experiences. Yes, I agree with this statement, and I believe that people learn on their own mistakes. When I write essay and then review a graded essay with comments on it, I have an idea what mistakes I make over and over. However, I try not to make the same mistakes over and over, and have strong will to improve my errors for my next paper.

After reviewing my papers I find out that my weak sides in writing is clarification, concise, and run-on sentences. 

• Sometimes I write paragraph, try to analysis an article or writers idea in which I make a statement of purpose. After writing a purpose, I find myself that I need to clarify my statement. I may have statement but it should be exactly clear and easy to understand my statement, opinion, or attitude toward my topic.
• I also make concise errors. I usually use more words and including extra or unnecessary information. For example, in my ad analysis I wrote, “ In general, advertisements have several different symbolic messages, which strives to reach their target audience. The goal of advertisers is to deeply touch people’s phycology. Advertisers try to attack consumers with pleasing images to pay our attention to their advertisement. “ In first sentence I wrote what is advertisement goal, however in second sentence which I marked in red I include same and extra information, which I should have taken out or change with other idea. 
• My other problem is run-on sentences. I know the rule of run-on sentence that it has to have two parts of sentence, which smoothly joined together instead of connected too long sentence. But sometimes it’s hard to realize when sentences are correctly join to each other. When I think that sentence is not run-on, it appears that I am wrong and sentence is extremely long. 

Assignment # 8 Get Smart About College

The article “Get Smart About College” talks about high school graduated students who are planning to attend colleges. The article says that not only students make decision which college they will go, but also parents try to help them by making right choice. However, by making choice it may be lead them to right or wrong decision. The article states some main point of ideas how to deal with the college planning. First possibility talks about choosing college by it cost. Second talks about how much parents should focus on college financial situation. And third writes about right place to choose for college.  

I choose this article for my essay because I had been under those steps and times spend with researching with my parents about my college and which degree should I chose. It is the hardest thing to think about school and cost at the same time. You might want one college but it can be expensive and because of it you  may not go to that place and choose other college which be leas expensive. It is the long, hard and struggling time to make a right choice for your future education. 

Assignment # 7 reflection, reflection, reflection!!!....

Do I think my writing has improved during this short time? I don’t have a strong, arguable answer yet. I can say neither “yes” nor “no”. In these weeks we had assigned two different types of essays literacy narrative and ad analysis. I would say, these essays were very challenging for me write. I kind of struggled by writing about my life, or past experiences, so my first essay about literacy narrative was very tough. I tried very hard whole day and night just to figure out which writing experience I wanted to write.  And when I finally decided and started writing I knew that paper wouldn’t be great. So I was right, I didn’t write it well. However, I want to point out that I always have strong feelings about my papers when I write clearly, strongly and well written papers, and I also know when my papers are just piece of junk. When I was given writing assignments I was lost at where to begin. But after reading “The Norton Filed Guide to Writing’s” essays and discussing in class, it gave me clear understanding what, and how to write about given topics. However, getting my thoughts down on paper is still the hardest part for me. I have strong hope to overcome my difficulties and learn to write. Also this class gave me deep understanding about rhetorical situations. Now I know more deeply and it is clear for me content of purpose, audience, genre and tone.  I try to make more sense in my writing about rhetorical situations. I consider writing a good way to improve critical thinking in life. I truly believe that I will achieve my goals in writing, and also end of this semester this class will improve my abilities in writing, and this achievement and progress will be well seen in my papers.  

Assignment # 6 Rhetorical Situation

In literacy narrative essay I told the story someone who taught me how to write a paper and helped me to improve my writing skills. In contrast, for my ad analysis I analyzed perfume advertisement. As we know, rhetorical situation usually talks about purpose, audience, genre and tone. However, rhetorical situations won’t be same in writings, for example in literacy narrative and ad analysis. 

In literacy narrative purpose is to tell the well-told story, focus in a single point and include vivid details. In contract for ad analysis purpose is different, it is critical analyze of the advertisement. It has to answer questions why I analyze text, focus on a specific point; make strong argument and thesis statement. Although for my essays audience is different to each other, audience for literacy narrative is teacher and students, and for my ad analysis audience is women. Genre is different type for my essays too, in literacy narrative is well-told story, memory, and for ad is analyzing advertisement included with text. In other hand, tone is different too; I’m not giving same style, since I’m approaching differently with my subjects and audience in those essays.

By comparing those two essays both have beginning and ending. In both essays beginning has to be attractive to catch reader’s attention, and make reader interested by subject.

By using rhetorical situations, it makes our paper to write strong statements and catch reader’s attention. All those rhetorical situations have their own purpose to be easily understandable our essays to our audience. 


p.s.  I commented on those ads 

• http://janes101blog-11.blogspot.com/2011/10/analyzing-ad.html#comments
• http://sevda-engl101-21.blogspot.com/2011/10/assignment-5-miss-dior-cherie-ad.html#comments

THE IRRESISTIBLE FRAGRANCE FROM CHANEL

Assignment #5 "Allure difficult to define, impossible to resist"

Allure perfume for women by Chanel 

The purpose of advertisement is to influence consumers to by buy product. Also in this ad Allure perfume for women by Chanel tries to attract people’s attention and make a powerful advertisement.

In this ad “what is that makes a woman alluring?” grabs the consumer’s, especially women’s, attention. This ad not only defends “women’s allure” but it also defends Fragrance, a pleasant and sweet smell, for perfume Allure. The young woman on the advertisement sends out the message, by reading “Every woman has her own special allure. It can be found in a glance, a movement, a voice, a face across a crowded room.” In her face or glance we can capture “women’s allure.” The way she looks in her eyes we can read woman’s power to attract people.

The audience for this ad is women. This advertisement tries to appeal to all young and older women. By reading on the left side of this ad we easily understand that the message is for women.

(Genre) Brand Chanel’s style is very specific, extraordinary and stylish. Their every ad is unique in certain ways. If we look to other Allure perfume ads, we’ll see that Chanel for that perfume has follow same style; a way of using allure’s language, white background and women’s clothes, they wears black clothe for this ad. Including in this ad a bottle of perfume. However, in Allure advertisement every women empress differently their allures. 

p.s. some other advertisement from Allure collection, to show that they follow same style for perfume Allure...

The tone for this ad is classical and very powerful by glance of women, which define both "perfume’s & women’s allure." Also we can think that brand Chanel  tries to define their "Allure", that brand has qualities to attract people.  In addition, at the bottom of the ad we read "The irresistible new fragrance from Chanel," by pointing out this we see that perfume is new and impossible to resist. 

Assignment #4 Revisions

• My final paper is kind of different from my rough draft. After writing first draft I read over my essay, improved my grammatical mistakes and get ride of unnecessary sentences and statements.

• I reread my work previously to improve my essay’s organization, errors and main focuses.  I also think in the paper I supported my thesis statement and I tried not to be off the topic.

• After revising my paper I noticed some grammar errors, which I tried to rewrite.  I know that my weak side is run-on sentences. 

• I knew I had some mistakes that I had to correct after writing first rough draft. The peer review was kind of helpful thing that guided me to look for some improvements in my paper.

• I think I wrote clearly and enough vivid details. The strongest side of this paper might be the organization of materials that I wrote in one place and tried not to jump one place to another. I also tried not to repeat a point more than once. My weakest side can be grammatical mistakes, which I tried to improve. 

Assignment # 3 what makes a "good" paper?!

Rules of writing makes the differences between an A paper and a C paper. 

Focus on a main idea

Focusing on a main point makes a paper clearly understandable to a reader. It’s important to focus on the main idea when you start writing first sentence of the paragraph. It should include a well-written topic sentence and summary that gives a reader a brief statement to understand. Also sentences and paragraphs have to be related. When someone reads an A paper you don’t have to allow them to ask a question “what are they talking about?” or “ why this sentence relates here?” when readers ask this kind of questions, that means that your paper isn’t as clear as you think. So without focusing on a main idea an A paper might turn to C paper. 

Punctuation

The marks, such as period, comma, semicolon etc. use in writing to separate sentences to clarify meaning. Not knowing proper use of punctuation, where and when to write marks, you may end up by making run-on sentence mistakes or comma splices. So when writing, you may not think where use comma or period. You just write period when sentence end ups, or comma when you think it sounds okay. But by not knowing punctuation rule correctly it may bring your paper in a very poor writing, which also occurs other mistakes. 

Verb tenses 

Using suitable verb forms in writing essays are also very important. So when writing in past tense it has to stay in past. By switching tenses you may lose your reader. It can be misunderstand able for the readers what you were writing about. Changing verb forms it breaks the connection within the sentences and paragraphs. 

When reading an A paper, all of the above specific qualities must be include to make an effective paper, and not end up with C or lower grade. 

For me most hard to focus is on run-on sentences. I often don’t recognize when the sentence has to be independent clauses or joined with others. Sometimes I’m just not linking together sentences correctly. 

Assignment # 2 Literacy Narrative

The first possibility for my essay may be etymology of my name. In my lexicology class I was assigned to write research paper about history of my name. At first it sounded pretty easy paper to write, but as I went on and on I found out that it was one of the hardest essays I’ve been given. On the other hand, for the first time I enjoyed researching and writing paper. Also I didn’t know teachers taste what style she liked or what would be for her a good paper. Because she gave this paper as mid-term exam and before that she didn’t assigned any essay that I could specify in what direction I should wrote. So I just stopped thinking about what she might like or not. I just kept going to research and write what would seem well-written paper for me. Surprisingly at the end, I wrote great paper. I believe that happened because I didn’t think what others might think about my essay, would I get good grade or would I failed it. I just did it for me!..

• I believe this paper will be the most effective essay to write because it is still fresh in my mind. And I remember how hard I tried to write good paper not for the teacher but for me. Also I found very surprising information about my name that amazed me.  

The second essay I may write is about group reading. During summer my couple friends and I decided to read same book, then meet every week and discuss. The book we read was “ Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.”  This discuss improved our reading and understanding. There were some of the parts, quotes or questions my friend or I didn’t understand. By talking and analyzing our ideas we focused more and we were able to understand. I think group reading is fun and helpful. It’s also helps with literacy writing, or with school assignment, it makes easier for us to focus with our writing experience.

 

By writing how group reading is helpful might be a well written paper. It’ll show how extra reading and writing can be helpful. I think with reading books or articles our knowledge improves a lot and gives us ideas what to write about, which style or genres use in our own papers.

The third essay I may write is my first writings and teacher who helped me a lot, during my high school year, with my papers. She is so great teacher. At first I didn’t understand what she wanted me to write. Every time she assigned paper and I wrote I was getting low grades. I was lost at that time, and wondered what she didn’t like with it. One day I got very nervous and angry and I just asked my teacher what was happening with my papers. So she sat with me and explained everything step by step so I could understand my mistakes. After that day I tried to improve my mistakes.

• This essay might be as good as second one. It will give me good ideas about writing and how it improved during past years. Also writing about my paper errors, grammar problems, and story telling. The idea not to give up even paper is very poor. Thinking positively that by the time and by our mistakes we learn a lot and trying not to make same mistakes. But I believe it’s important not to make same mistakes over and over. It won’t help. 

Assignment # 1

I am taking English 101 because it’s a required course. Even it wouldn’t be required, sooner or later I would take since it is helpful course to improve my writing skills. Some people write because they have a talent or want to share their opinions. Sadly I am not gifted with writing talent, but I have will to share my ideas and beliefs about special subjects. I enjoy writing but I feel that I need to develop my grammar skills, essays, etc. I also would love to write well to interest my reader. I believe this course will be useful for my writing development.