When it comes to me being a writer I would say I am a pretty good one. My writing is very strong when I am free writing or when I am writing on a topic I am passionate about. A time I felt successful in my writing would be last year when I was writing a paper on why cheer should be a sport. The topic was very meaningful to me which allowed me to become more passionate in my writing and allow it to reach its full potential. It also helps when I know a lot about the topic of my writing. I’d like to work on being able to make my writing flow better because sometimes that is a challenge for me. I would also like to enhance my writing skills to make my writing better no matter the class. I hope my writing teacher can allow me to become more confident in my writing. I am the type of student that learns by examples and seeing exactly what they did.

 

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page	Dan Melzer. “Understanding Discourse Communities.” Writing Spaces: Reading on Writing, Volume 3, 2020, 115.
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words	There are many characteristics when it comes to a discourse community. One of the most important one the article talks about is genre. Genre allows these discourse communities to be able to have something in common and build off of that. These genres help people in their writing also especially in college writing. It can help you understand the assignments your teachers are giving you and can also explain why there are different genres for different classes in different fields. This allows me to be aware about all the different genres I read about in my classes, which then leads me to think about the discourse community of the topic.
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.	Discourse- “can mean any type of communication…”
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?	This connects to the last article we read in class because they both have the main idea of discourse communities and how they help writing skills.
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.	Why do they not start to teach the importance of genres and discourse community at earlier ages in school?

 

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page
Gita DasBender. “Critical Thinking in College Writing: From the Personal to the Academic.” Volume 1, 2011, 51.

Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words
The author of this article breaks down the steps to analyze articles and be able to understand what the main idea of the article is. According to the author analyzing the text will allow the reader to connect to the reading more and actually learn something from it. She also states that it is good to keep notes of what you have been reading to help the reader connect all of the ideas together. The writer asks the reader to make an academic connection with the article that they are reading. This connection allows the reader to get something out of what they have just read and apply it to their reading as a student.

 

Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.                                                                                                          Thoughtless- “our actions would not be tainted by our biases or motives, our prejudice.”

How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?
It connects to other articles I have read because it is providing the reader with tips to help their academic skills, which all of the other readings I have read in class have also provided us with those skills.

Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.
How often do you actually take the main idea from articles we read and apply it to your reading and writing?

In this article the main idea is discourse communities. Johns uses the idea of discourse communities to inform the reader about all of the different discourse communities there are. Although she does not do a good job of explaining what exactly a discourse community is. It took me awhile to understand that a discourse community is a group of people who share basic values and assumptions. John then proceeds to inform the reader about the different discourse communities which would be social, political, and recreational. An example of social communities would be a neighborhood or a school. A political community would be a group of people who agree on politics. A recreational group would be people who bond over their love for recreational activities. Most people in society often affiliate with more than one group at a time, which is normal. Some discourse communities can also be professional too. Some might involve going to conventions or meeting. Discourse communities allow people with similar values and beliefs to come together and bond over the similarities they have together. It allows them to meet new people and make lifelong connections. Everyone in the community pushes each other to try and become more involved in their common discourse community.

My discourse communities: Fitness, Student, Sorority Member, Church, Family.

Exercise #1

For this assignment we are suppose to free write for 10 straight minutes without stopping. I figured the easiest thing to talk about who be this school semester. I am a little nervous about my class but I am also excited. I have a few classes and I am a little concerned about but I know I will be just fine. Last semester was very good to me and I had all A’s and one B. I also received a gpa higher than my gpa was in high school so I was very proud of myself for that. I am going to try real hard this semester to not procrastinate doing my school work. I realized last semester that it is much better to finish your school work at the beginning of the week so that on the weekends you don’t have to worry about any of your work being due. I also hope this semester brings me a lot more happiness than last semester did. Last semester I hated it here in Oxford because it is so so hard to meet people and I always felt so alone. I went home almost every weekend because I felt out of place here in Oxford. Although I am in a sorority we still are not allowed to do anything because of Corona. It has made our freshman year not fun at all. But I soon began to realize that I was not alone in how I felt about Oxford. I talked to a few other people and most of them said the same thing. So far this semester I have met a few more people than I did last semester which is always good. I also have gotten to go out with some people I know which was a fun way to start the year off. I hope that this semester things will start opening back up and we will be able to at least have a decent second semester of our freshman year. Sometimes I feel like I am paying all this money just to sit in my dorm and not do anything which is awful. Maybe we will have more fun this semester.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wdAJw34KGJX4XrQfYrgf7-bLr7SxkvP9k2NzO4_QmV8/edit?usp=sharing

I have learned from this class a writer can be many different things but consist of the same basis. To me a writer is someone who expresses their feelings, opinions, and facts they have concluded in a piece of writing. According to the dictionary a writer is someone “who has written a particular text”. Although, this is true I feel that writers are more to it than just people who have written a piece of text. I was reading an article from The Writer and the author describes a writer as someone with a “sensibility, a certain awareness and responsiveness to the world.” I feel like this statement has more truth to what a writer is. I would describe myself as a writer but a different type of writer. I am not a professional who writes everyday. I am the type of writer who writes about events happening around us and how it affects us as society. My writing is most of the time based on other people’s writing that I am reviewing or responding to. Yet, I still consider myself a writer.

In this YouTube video Celeste Headlee talks about 10 ways to have a better conversation. She states that all of the things we are use to hearing when it comes to conversation making is trash and we need to throw all of it out. She gave lots of tips that I would not have thought about before but they are all very true. All of the advice she gives is very useful but the one I think would allow me to have better conversations would be to use open ended questions. Most of the time when I am having a conversation I tend to use answers that are very short and it is hard for people to answer to that. If I start to use open ended questions I feel like it will allow me to learn more about that person but also allow them to think about the conversation also. Open ended questions will also give me insight to how that person feels and might allow me to think about the situation differently also.

I  would give the first student’s essay a letter grade of a C. I would give this student this grade because the introduction does not have a good hook. The conclusion also did not sum up the purpose of the essay. Although they refer to past times a lot it still does not show logical reasoning to why they think this. He refers to the past too much and does not talk about the current situation enough. 

I would give the second student’s essay an A. They have a very good hook at the beginning which makes people want to keep reading it. The introduction introduces the main theme of the essay. The writer then waits until the second paragraph to show what the essay is about. The student also sounds very educated about their topic and states why they think what they think. It was a very good essay and that is why I would give it an A.