Sample Essays: First and Final Draft
Learning Outcome 1
Before I started this class, I had a very basic knowledge on how to write and revise an essay. In high school, whenever we wrote essays, we did a form of local revision on classmates writing; but even so, revisions were not my strong suit. I would only make some sentence and tense comments on my peers writing but would never have them change big picture ideas. For my essays, I would only read over it once because I felt that since others looked over my work, there was no need for me to keep changing it. This all changed once we started writing our essays for this class. I learned how to make revisions plans and make major edits to my paper that made it much more pleasurable to read. However, this took awhile for me to do. The most improvements that I have made can be seen when comparing my first draft of my second essay to its final draft: Technology’s Relationship to Empathy and Depression. In the first draft, I had too long of a thesis, many run-on sentences that did not make sense in the text and not a lot of references to the text. Luckily, I got comments from classmates that were able to help me know what I needed to work on. This made me realize just how little attention I paid to certain details in the past and I knew I needed to change in the future. I made my revision plan, splitting up each paragraph, writing specific steps for each on what I needed to improve. One example of a global section that I worked on was my thesis, trying to make it more condensed. I started out with a long run-on sentence with contradicting points, stating that even though technology connects people, the amount of empathy has gone down rising depression levels. I changed it to a precise two sentence thesis that had a clear argument, stating that with people being on their phones so much, the amount of empathy has gone down. This is raising the amount of depression in the world. Another example of aspects that I improved were sentence structures, which are local improvements. I cut sentences that I felt were reiterated somewhere else in the text and I made sure I added introductory sentences at the beginning of each of the paragraphs to establish what I was going to talk about. Last, I made a global revision by adding in more text from texts introduced in the first essay to try and draw connections between writing. This was seen as I took quotes from Robert Waldinger’s Ted Talk, comparing the happiness of couples he talked about to the unhappiness people have by not spending time with others since they are preoccupied on their phones. Although I was able to make these text connections, I feel like incorporating text into essays is still something I can work at. This is because I feel like I am able to find the connections between texts but I sometimes feel like I do not pull out the best quotes that show these connections. I can do this by making sure I look at all my annotations I made and picking out ones that I feel can be a strong attribute to my essay. From this class, I learned that revision is a strong tool when it comes to essay writing. It is not a bad thing to change around your essay inorder to make improvements. With this class, I can see how much I have improved from global and local revisions.
Learning Outcome 2
When it comes to my final draft of my Technology essay, I felt that I was successfully able to use quotes that would strengthen my argument. I feel like the use of quotes is important because it shows you have evidence that can back up your point you are trying to make. Working with quotes is something we did a lot this semester and I feel like I have shown vast improvement. In the beginning of the year, I would only incorporate one quote per paragraph. Now, however, I am about to incorporate two or more in each paragraph that makes my argument stronger. When it comes to quoting, I had to make sure I followed Barclay’s formula, having a claim, introduction to the quote, the quote itself, an explanation and transition. Here is one example of my work with Barclay’s formula in my essay:
“In Matt Richtel’s article, this point is prominent as he talks about the Campbell family and their infatuation with technology. Richtel, throughout the text, mentions how Mr. Campbell spends a majority of the day on some sort of device, whether it be his work computer or his cell phone. It has even gotten to the point where his wife and children are starting to join in. Ritchel also gets Mrs. Campbell’s opinions about it, mentioning a specific time when the family went on vacation, and how they spent their first night there: “‘We didn’t go out to dinner,’ Mrs. Campbell mourned. ‘We just sat there on our devices’” (Richtel). Their family does not realize how much technology is ruining their lives. The parents are not being the types of role models the children need in order to develop social skills. The more time they spend on their phones, the more the children do and it is a recurring cycle. Being apart on their phones rather than together as a family will lead them to become unhappy. This theme of lack of relationship due to phone use is also evident in Twenge’s article”
As seen here, I started out incorporating a claim, presenting what I was going to talk about for the section. Then, I introduced and embedded the quote. Next, I had few sentences explaining the quote and why it is important. Last, I had a transition leading to the next quote. Barclay’s formula was very useful when writing the essay because it kept my writing organized and easy to follow. There were also parts of the formula that I was able to skip and come back to later depending on how many quotes I used in the paragraph. For example, there were parts to the formula where I had to draw connections to the quotes I talked about, which I would always do at the end of a paragraph. Here is an example of me doing so:
“Twenge even adds how, “Although the rate increased for both sexes, three times as many 12-to-14-year-old girls killed themselves in 2015 as in 2007, compared with twice as many boys” (Twenge). These years are significant because the iPhone was released in 2007, so the rise in the suicide rate correlates to the rise of the iPhone. People do not understand how much their actions can affect someone else’s life, which is what Twenge is getting across. A friend of mine used to have a tight net friend group, but then they started to hang out without her and post about it. When my friend confronted them, they did not care about her feelings, which caused my friend to become depressed, as she felt she was alone. Eventually, she pulled herself out of this, but it took a lot of time. Turkle and Twenge relate to one another because they both bring up ideas, similar to my example, on how people are caring less about others’ feelings and making people feel victimized.”
From this example, it shows how I integrate a quote from Jean M. Twenge, going through the Barclay formula. I even added my own insight from my real world experience to back up my quote. At the end is where I was able to draw a connection between Twenge’s writing and Sherry Turkle’s writing, comparing them since they both share similar ideas. By having two quotes and comparing them together, this was able to help my argument more than if I just had one quotation.
I am very happy with the progress I have made in this year. Feel like I can set up quotes and make text to text connections well. One area that I still could work on is my signal phrasing. This is because I normally have similar ways for introducing a quote and I feel like it gets to be too repetitive. If I can use more of the templates we used in class, such as “They Say, I Say”, and other templates found online, I can find different ways to signal phrases and I can improve.
Learning Outcome 3
When it comes to my approach at active reading, I feel that how I annotate text has majorly improved from the beginning of the semester. Before coming to college, all my annotations consisted of underlining key ideas, highlighting and defining important words. In the beginning of the semester, once we were given the coding sheet, this is where my annotating started to change. Most of my annotation in the very beginning of the semester consisted of principles under the understanding column. I would rewrite many sections of the text into my own words just so I could have a better understanding. I would do this by underlining sections and writing in the margins of the text. This made it easy to know what the text was about and made it easier to find quotations for my essays. This type of annotation is very prominent when it comes to my work with Daniel Gilbert’s text, “Reporting Live from Tomorrow” (picture 1). As the semester went on, however, I started making other types of annotations that helped me progress as an active reader.
I started to notice shifts in my annotations when it came to my work with our text in the Technology section. The reason that my annotations differed is because even though I still wrote in the margins, I was able to relate more with the text, being in the generation that grew up with cell phones. I could also challenge some of the aspects that it was talking about. Throughout each of the text, there was more and more I could relate to and I made sure I marked them down because it was part of my coding sheet. I would underline these sections and write down what I want to get across in the margins. One text that I was able to draw a relation is Matt Richtel’s “Attached to Technology and Paying the Price”. There was one section that talked about how the family was on vacation and the first night, they were all on their phones. This relates to my family where there have been times where we have been traveling somewhere and instead of doing something, we are distracted on our phones (picture 2). I even challenged part of this text that I felt could be argued. I mentioned that some families do not do this and save technology for free time. These relations and challenges help connect me to the text and help with my understanding of the text as a whole.
I noticed how much my annotations improved when we read Robin Henig’s, “What Is It about 20 something?”. When it comes to her text, I started to incorporate questions and relation annotations to not only myself and other texts. Throughout this text especially, I made sure I paid close attention to parts of it that I did not understand and I made sure that I would write questions (picture 3). This way when we got to class and talked about the reading, I knew what I wanted to bring up. For the relations aspect, like I did with Richtel’s text, I would read a section and either relate it to other texts we have read or to my life (picture 3&4). This was very helpful when it came to writing essays because I knew where I could connect authors’ ideas. All of my annotations I did were written out. I did this because I feel like writing them down helped me to understand what I was trying to get across. One reason that my annotations improved was because of the informal reading responses. These helped me focus on what I got out of the text and why it is important for me to annotate. This class made me a much better active reader and I hope these skills will help me in the future.
Learning Outcome 4
Before this class, I only would comment on sentence structures and grammatical errors. Coming into this class is when I realized all the different types of comments that you can make on someone’s work to help them proceed. The first time we had to mark up a peer’s essay, I tried my best to make sure I gave them helpful tips. One person’s essay I want to mention my peer review techniques on is Maria’s first draft of her happiness essay. When Professor Pahigian gave us the paper with all the codes from commenting, including looking at their ideas, evidence, organization and then any local revisions, I knew this was going to be helpful for me as I went about this process. My strategy was to go through each type category of peer review and find areas in her essay that needed fixing which matched what the categories description. In the first paragraph, I suggested rewording a sentence to make it easier for the reader to understand, which would fall under local revision. Other types of comments I made were revisions about her evidence. For example, there was a section where she gave ideas from Daniel Gilbert’s writing, but then transitioned into her own ideas without a quote from Gilbert. I suggested that adding a quote will strengthen her argument and what she should focus on when finding the quote. Moving on, I also made comments surrounding her organization suggesting that she could combine two smaller paragraphs into a bigger paragraph with two authors that have similar points. The last type of comments that I made were information comments, where I would mention how she could make parts of her essay stronger if she added in ideas from other authors. At the end of every peer review, I added one last comment at the end of her paper talking about what I thought she did well and what she could focus on fixing. This way, she has a clear way about going through her revision process. From this essay on, I would practice leaving these types of comments, and I feel like I got better at it the more essays I read.
When it comes to improvements, I feel like I still need to work on the global revisions aspect. I feel like I need to work more on the evidence aspect, trying to give more advice as to where my peers can add more evidence into their work. One way I can do this is by looking at my own work and own annotations to see if I can find areas that I pointed out that my peers could mention as well. I also need to work on adding more suggestions in my comments. I can find areas where peers can improve but I am not as good at suggesting how they can improve it. I feel like if I try to put myself in their shoes and think about what I would do in this situation, it will help me give them the advice they need to progress. I feel like even though I can get better, I have become strong in my editing abilities, which is something that I was never good at prior to this english class.
Learning Outcome 5 and 6
Coming into UNE, I knew MLA format but I did not realize how much effort goes into making the formatting correct. One area of MLA format that I learned coming into this class was that there are various different formats depending on what source you are citing. By using The Little Seagull handbook, I learned how to cite correctly using MLA. This includes citing an author in a sentence in an essay and citing the author in the Works Cited page. One example that shows how I have done this is through in my technology essay:
Turkle even adds in a comment from the dean of students in regards to the actions of one of the students: “[The seventh-grader] was almost robotic in her response. She said, ‘I don’t have feelings about this.’ She couldn’t read the signals that the other student was hurt” (Turkle 380).
Turkle, Sherry. “The Empathy Diaries.” Emerging: Contemporary Readings for Writers, 4th ed., edited by Barclay Barrios. Bedford/St/ Martin’s, 2019, 378-387.
My in text citation shows how I was able to transition into a quote, write out the quote, and correctly cite it with the author’s last name and page number. The work cited citation shows how I was able to include all the information needed to properly cite a text within a book. Not only was I able to improve on my citing, but I also was able to improve on my local revisions. Through this essay, I was able to reword, reposition and cut and add sentences to make the essay flow better. I was also able to work on grammar mistakes that made sentence no make sense. One example of this that I did was when I cut a sentence about a counter argument from Richtel about how the family did spend time without technology. The reason I cut this is because it does not add anything to the essay and makes the paragraph confusing since the paragraph is about how the family always spends time on their phones. With the work I did in this course, I became an all around better writer.
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