Introduction. In the beginning of this semester I started English 123,  a continuation of English 122. I had high hopes for myself this semester. I knew that I needed to work on my grammar, and text annotations, as well as my in text citing. While these were my main goals, English 123 opened my eyes to all the other aspects of my work that could be improved as well. Amy helped me greatly throughout this semester and because of her, I was able to improve not only my writing for this course, but in my other classes as well.

• Writing as a recursive process.  For my “Narrative for Change” essay, I greatly improved my recursive process. There was immense preparation for this paper. We did many blog posts, as well as in class activities to brainstorm and prepare ideas for this paper. But even with all of those activities, I still continued to do more. I sat down and created a mind map of all the potential ideas I wanted to use, as well as the sources I was going to use for evidence to back up my claims and ideas. After that I went into the sources and annotated texts, and spoken lectures to find specific quotes as evidence. I created two separate drafts, and researched many sources and topics that I wanted to possibly include in my paper. As I gathered this information, I quickly realized that I had too many things that were not related, and had to change the topic and direction of my paper many times before I was able to pick a specific thing to write about. This was only the beginning of my revision process. Once I started writing, I added all of the information and evidence that I had acquired, into my first draft. When I was finished I then revised once more. I took quotes and evidence out of my paper that I thought was unnecessary or that pushed my argument in a way that I didn’t quite want it to go. Once I was finished with all of my revision, I was able to see what I wanted out of my work, more clearly than I had ever been able to before. Lastly I corrected grammar in my final. Overall, I put a lot of work and effort into this essay, and I believe it shows. In my opinion this is the best papers I have written throughout this course. Amy was also a great help in my process. She helped me to create a mind map, and helped me to better understand the assignment. This is my mind map for my “Narrative for Change Essay”
• Integrating your ideas with those of others. Throughout this course I think I have greatly improved in integrating my ideas with those of others. Although I must admit, I never really struggled with this in too much in the past. I think I did well with this, not only in my essays, but also my blogs as well. For example, in my “7 Billion Others” blog post (https://tbollman.uneportfolio.org/2017/03/27/on-imagining-others/ ) I talk about the beliefs of people all over the  world and then connect my own ideas, and beliefs into my statements as well.  I also do well with this in my “Narrative for Change” essay (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F7Qln4xBXiPeT5GqaKESid7Y07vu-dM2yUNIuOz3c_I/edit ). I bring a lot of outside sources and ideas into this essay, and connect them to my own ideas on how we can use narrative as a society to achieve universal acceptance of diversity and equality. I honestly think that this was one of the sections that I am either at, or very close to mastery.
• Active, critical reading. This is probably my weakest section throughout the entirety of this course. I have always struggled with doing in text annotations. I find that when I’m reading it’s hard for me to stop and make side notes without forgetting what I’m reading about. Instead I highlight or underline important quotes or text that I know I want to use later in my work, and then when I look over all my evidence I organize my thoughts on what I want to say about each piece of text I have pulled. I have found this to be far more effective for my own personal learning technics and I will most likely continue using it. I think personally we worked more on active and critical reading much more in English 122 than we did in English 123. This is the most of what I do when doing active and critical writing
• Critiquing your own and others’ work.  I think I have greatly improved in this area throughout this semester. In the beginning of English 123, I was minimal with my comments on my peers work. I mostly only ever made local comments and suggestions, most of which were about spelling or grammar. But I quickly progressed in that aspect. I started making more global suggestions. I gave advice of when and what quotes to use and how they might relate and benefit my peers work. I also related my own views or stories to their writing. I also was sure to let others know what was working really well in their paper, and what might not. I think I definitely progressed a lot in my peer reviews. With that said, I’m sure that I could step up my game, but I still have the fear of accidently offending someone. That is something I will continue to work on in the future.

This is an example of my early peer review: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rOJAAMtcoM-hckzUCIITqVXbIQY3VCPPsw5PStk7zds/edit

This is an example of my most recent peer review: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dvNbvtwf-gwEDrgVy-1oqegi3FDJP3Bot4iNAUzxsEA/edit

In the first link you can see that I only make local suggestions when doing a peer review. However, in the second link you can see that I only make global suggestions.

• Using MLA citation. I think that I have improved a lot with using MLA format and citation. However, I definitely think that I still have a lot I can continue to improve on with this. There are so many different rules that apply to MLA, and without The Little Seagull Handbook, it’s difficult to do all of the steps correctly. I now know how to properly cite after a quote, but still need the handbook to correctly cite sources on my work cited page. I used to never cite anything after a quote, but now I believe I can do it correctly. This link is an example of how I didn’t know how to correctly cite sources in MLA format: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bpp7PHy1QjqEFne0sF2Oo0MW70ypID6ambi6v5V0ZSk/edit. It is very obvious from this paper that I had no idea what I was doing. In my more recent work you can see that I now know how to correctly use MLA: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F7Qln4xBXiPeT5GqaKESid7Y07vu-dM2yUNIuOz3c_I/edit

Conclusion: I think overall I have grown immensely throughout the course of English 123, and it shows through my work. The section in which I believe to have grown the most, is in the recursive writing process. In the beginning of this course I struggled with correctly revising my work. I only ever changed, reworded my essays, or fixed grammar and punctuation, never any global changes. However, throughout this course I changed that and now I am confident in my revision process, and because of this my future work for all my classes will greatly benefit.