Writing Reflection
10/17/15
My greatest weakness in writing is currently transitioning between my paragraphs and connecting them to the rest of my paper. Each of my paragraphs are strong and have a logical flow with a topic sentence, evidence and analysis, but they don’t connect to other paragraphs. In one of my paragraphs, I end with this sentence: “Most of the elected officials are concerned with furthering their own political careers and disproving fellow officials, rather than being concerned for the future of our country or the struggles the citizens face.” The next paragraph is my conclusion where I write about tyranny and it’s relationship to democracy and citizens’ unhappiness with this. These ideas aren’t well connected, and the transition is abrupt. To work on improving this, I can stick to the outlines I create and not change the outline last minute. I need to spend extra time in my writing creating transition sentences that explain to the reader the logic of my argument. If I switch to different ideas the previous paragraph needs to hint at that, or the paragraph needs to start by referencing the previous paragraph and explaining how I got from one idea to the next.
In my Tocqueville writing I realized I struggle to connect my ideas to my thesis. I had a hard time coming up with a solid thesis, so I added a part about creating positive change to fix the problems, but then I didn’t fully develop those ideas in the writing. In Lori’s feedback she pointed this out, and asked me several questions that I hadn’t answered in my writing. Instead of talking about an ideal system, or ways to improve a tyrannical democracy, I stated that we just have to deal with the system we have. These ideas were not connected to my thesis, which caused my argument to break down. To work on this I can test each paragraph against the thesis and determine if it completely supports/answers the thesis concisely. If it doesn’t match the thesis well, then I need to change the paragraph, or delete it.
Another weakness in my writing that I didn’t realize I have is being repetitive. In my college essay during the first two rounds of critique peers told me I had a lot of repetitive phrases, especially in my first two paragraphs. Sometimes it was just words or ideas, but I was also saying the exact same thing several times in one sentence. After the first round I cut a lot of it out, but in our second round of critiques peers found a few more repetitive things. I think the most helpful strategy for overcoming this is utilizing my peers. Often I don’t see how repetitive my writing is, or I’m attached to phrases and the flow of sentences, which means I might not delete something slightly repetitive because I think it’s pretty. Getting peer critiques is really helpful because they can pick up on the reoccurring content when I miss it. During critiques I could start making that a minor focus question to help me refine my writing.
My greatest weakness in writing is currently transitioning between my paragraphs and connecting them to the rest of my paper. Each of my paragraphs are strong and have a logical flow with a topic sentence, evidence and analysis, but they don’t connect to other paragraphs. In one of my paragraphs, I end with this sentence: “Most of the elected officials are concerned with furthering their own political careers and disproving fellow officials, rather than being concerned for the future of our country or the struggles the citizens face.” The next paragraph is my conclusion where I write about tyranny and it’s relationship to democracy and citizens’ unhappiness with this. These ideas aren’t well connected, and the transition is abrupt. To work on improving this, I can stick to the outlines I create and not change the outline last minute. I need to spend extra time in my writing creating transition sentences that explain to the reader the logic of my argument. If I switch to different ideas the previous paragraph needs to hint at that, or the paragraph needs to start by referencing the previous paragraph and explaining how I got from one idea to the next.
In my Tocqueville writing I realized I struggle to connect my ideas to my thesis. I had a hard time coming up with a solid thesis, so I added a part about creating positive change to fix the problems, but then I didn’t fully develop those ideas in the writing. In Lori’s feedback she pointed this out, and asked me several questions that I hadn’t answered in my writing. Instead of talking about an ideal system, or ways to improve a tyrannical democracy, I stated that we just have to deal with the system we have. These ideas were not connected to my thesis, which caused my argument to break down. To work on this I can test each paragraph against the thesis and determine if it completely supports/answers the thesis concisely. If it doesn’t match the thesis well, then I need to change the paragraph, or delete it.
Another weakness in my writing that I didn’t realize I have is being repetitive. In my college essay during the first two rounds of critique peers told me I had a lot of repetitive phrases, especially in my first two paragraphs. Sometimes it was just words or ideas, but I was also saying the exact same thing several times in one sentence. After the first round I cut a lot of it out, but in our second round of critiques peers found a few more repetitive things. I think the most helpful strategy for overcoming this is utilizing my peers. Often I don’t see how repetitive my writing is, or I’m attached to phrases and the flow of sentences, which means I might not delete something slightly repetitive because I think it’s pretty. Getting peer critiques is really helpful because they can pick up on the reoccurring content when I miss it. During critiques I could start making that a minor focus question to help me refine my writing.