Reflective Final

Throughout this year of blogging I have learned a lot about myself as a writer and the ways I write. There were many ways that my blogging skills have improved this year. I have learned how to use CD's and CM's in my blog posts. I learned how to use block quotes, and I learned many new ways to write. When I first started blogging, I wrote about many random non significant topics. After some time of doing that, I began writing about emotions, after that, some scattered academic assignments. I think that my writing has gone from, boring and short, to more detailed complex posts. This is exemplified when I wrote

“Q’s defining characteristic is that he constantly wants other people to try new things, but he wont try new things himself. He also goes back and forth between prideful arrogance and shameful embarrassment.

   “We had made various attempts to get him up on land with us”

Q is always trying trying to make his uncle come up on land with him, but when his

uncle tries to convince q to go back to the water, he doesn’t want to.

This was one of the first academic blog assignments where I wrote about Qfwfg. In this post I didn’t introduce quote, and I didn’t have an introduction. This was near the beginning of the year when I just started blogging. The quote in this post was less than four lines, but since we were learning how to block quote, I tried to block quote it. Another mistake I made was not citing the quote. This entire academic post was only about 500 words. In a recent academic blog post, I wrote a book review about My Side of the Mountain. In this post all these errors I made were fixed, this is shown when I wrote,

“Bando is a very friendly person who thinks his life is boring when he meets  Sam. Sam has been  living in the woods for quite a long time and has made himself a house, and many other necessities he needs to survive. Bando was from the city, and when he saw the way Sam was living, he thought he had a boring life. This is exemplified when Bando says, "Thoreau, I have led a varied life- dishwasher, sax player, teacher. To me it has been and interesting life. Just now it seems very dull." (George, p81).”

In this post there was an introduction that included TAGS, a properly formatted quote, and an introduced and cited quote. In this post I improved on all my past errors and corrected them.  This blog post was 1050 words. Compared to the one I wrote about Qfwfg in the beginning of the year, it was 550 words more. All of this is evidence that my blog posts went from short and boring to more detailed and complex posts.

In the beginning of the year it took me a long time just to get over the word limit. An example of this would a post I wrote about Facebook. In this post I had lots of trouble getting to the 350 word limit so I totally strayed off the topic. I ended my blog post with,” This is not even 350 words. I'm so close and I'm almost there. Ohh yea Mr.Sousa lost his keys today. It sucks cause we might not be able to use the field on Monday. Yay 362 words.” There were many other posts like this. As the year went by my blog post started to get better. I didn’t stray off topic and got over the 350 word limit. Some of those posts include “Internet and Wireless in the World”, and “Response to Tram”. In these posts I made very few mistakes and never strayed off topic. Awhile after that, my writing started to improve drastically, I started to blog without even worrying about the word limit. I started writing in more detail and my posts were about 400-600 words. Some of those posts include, “Windows of Truth”, and “The Risks of DNA Manipulation”. I also ended these posts without straying off topic. This is exemplified when I wrote, “Altering genes should not be legal. People should just let Darwin's theory of natural selection take place. People wouldn't be the only species population the earth, religious people wouldn't be mad, and there would still be natural resources left.” This was a post about the risks of DNA manipulation. I didn’t stray off topic at all throughout the post and the total number of words was 411 words. This is a big improvement from barely getting over 350 words and straying of topic in the end. This happened through looking at my old posts and analyzing the weak points. After receiving some peer review comments in class about how my writings could be improved, I looked over some posts I wrote in the past and saw that I made some of the same/similar mistakes. After I recognized these mistakes I immediately knew why I made that mistake and how I could fix it. I rarely made the same mistake after. Analyzing my old posts for similar mistakes has really helped me improve my writing/blogging skills.

The response from my peers also helped me improve my writing. Peer editing comments really helped put more detail in my work and also helped me realize some of the errors I made. For example, when I wrote a paragraph about My Side of the Mountain, Bianca noticed that, “

In your third paragraph, you mentioned the book's pictures and diagrams. You

could probably expand the paragraph more if you described more about these

diagrams so that the person who is reading your post will know what diagrams

and pictures you are actually referring to. I would like to hear more about the

author's "adventure" when she ran away. (I know you already explained it and

used the book to provide proof, so to elaborate more on the author, you could

do some research.)Also, you could include who in particular(for example a   

certain age group) the book was intended and directed to.

This really helped me improve that paragraph so that when it was time to write the final, I knew which places of my paragraph were weakest. Peer review comments are really helpful because I can get a little insight on how other people would write my posts. This helped me elaborate on certain places in this post and also helped me understand the mistakes I made. When I understand the mistakes I make, I try to find out how I made those mistakes to that in the future, I won’t make the same mistakes again. This has really helped me improve my blog posts and also my overall writing in general.
    There are many benefits of blogging. Throughout this year, I feel that I have really improved my writing, going from boring blog posts to complex, detailed posts. I also improved by getting over the word minimum of 350 words without straying off topic. This improvement was in part, due to the helpful comments students in class gave me on my blog. Blogging has really helped me improve as a writer, and I will continue to do so to improve as a writer, and a student.


.

Peer Review Comments

I left comments on Bianca's post, Bassam's post, and Melissa's post.


Bianca-Hola, Bianca, I think your RD was very strong, but I also think that you should try to give some facts about smallpox. When you "The whole book is based off of smallpox, so when the author used real facts, it made it more genuine and realistic, which is a great thing to have included in a book." What were some of the real facts that the author included? Another thing you can do is describe the background of the author in the introduction. This make it clear that the author knows her facts. <---It will make it more believable. Overall great job!

Bassam- Bassam, I think you need to elaborate a lot more on your points. For Example, when you say "book is breath tacking", elaborate on HOW it is breathtaking, do it provide very detailed imagery? Or do the words make you feel awesome. You also need to provide TAGS in the introduction, tell the reader some background about the book. You also need to make the post longer, at least 800 words I think.

Melissa-Hola Melissa, Tony thinks Melissa should include TAGS in her introduction, so that readers can get a basic understanding of what the book was about. Tony also thinks that you could relate some of what Ronnie does in the book to what some teenagers do everyday. Other than that, this was a pretty good book review.