https://docs.google.com/document/d/11k3WM7Lq6H4yez5Wdt9BJLU5QrmdH3Hn2UI1TkAXDa8/edit?usp=sharing (Comparison)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DMOSH5Q8pX3KKoQB7UDGWSzVb8tTg8WbSPmO1wsB5A0/edit (Final)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pEbWWjhIqKJeTmctJ_ya8JoYKPr9foJzb9xsF_am7gE/edit (Rough Draft)

This paper that I choose to showcase was our reflective learner paper. This was the first paper that we had written and I feel best showcases my growth in the learning outcomes. I believe this because this was a topic that I was really able to connect to because it is a bigger part of our lives then we realize.

Learning Outcome 1: Revision

Rough drafts are meant to be revised a lot, and that was something I never really understood. Using the learning outcome for a guide, “Demonstrate the ability to approach writing as a recursive process that requires substantial revision of drafts for content, organization, and clarity (global revision), as well as editing and proofreading (local revision).” I was able to do surface revisions without a problem, commas gave me trouble but I am improving in that area. I completely would skip over global revisions and would ‘fall in love’ with my first draft and have a difficult time changing what needed to be changed. When writing this paper my rough draft was no where near what needed to be turned in, so instead of just using that paper and making a couple of changes, I decided to use it as a stepping block to the next step, global revision. My first step that I would do is make sure that my thesis was easy to read and was the overview of my argument. Focusing mainly making sure that it was specific to my topic. The next step was adding in my arguments and making sure that they were easily able to be identified, sometimes this meant changing an entire paragraph(as you can see in my comparison of the two documents). A lot of the time I would have to rearrange my entire paragraph to make sure that it would make sense according to how my thesis was written.

Learning Outcome 2: Integrating Sources

Integrating sources into your paper is one of the most important parts of any paper, it can decide wether or not it is credible. Also, being able to introduce and conclude your quotes shows understanding of the content and can make or break a paper. This semester we focused heavily on our source integration. The first step is finding the quote that we need for our argument. With the help from our active reading strategies I was easily able to go back into my notes and find a quote that was relevant to my topic writing about. One area that I found myself improve upon throughout the year was deciding where my quote was, as you can see in my rough draft, I would just throw a quote in to make it look good. But, with my final draft, I really focused on making sure that the source was used to back up a claim that I would make, instead of using the quote as the claim. Developing my argument and concluding the quote is something that in the future I need to focus more on. Analyzing my quotes is also an area that needs to be focused on, working on this in the future is going to make my arguments and claims a lot more credible.

Learning Outcomes 5 & 6: MLA and Surface-Level

MLA is the format that we all use on our papers. This is just the proper way to format you paper and the way you cite your sources. Although this is a smaller learning outcome, I probably had the most growth out of anything. Using “The Little Seagull” I was able to cite all of the sources that I needed. Even in this paper I had forgot to put page numbers for my sources, but by my last paper I had everything that I needed and was able to cite without using the book or a citation maker.

Surface level revision is something that I struggled with all year. Grammar is something that I never focused on in school and I often would have patterns of to many commas or to few throughout my work. I feel like this paper best showcases how I have improved in this subject because there was a few mistakes but there was no patterns, unlike my other papers. In the future, taking a closer look on my surface level revisions will be something always on the back on my mind when editing papers.