Written Language: Natalia

Maria P. Rey's, Letter to West Port High School's English Department, was written for an assignment in her English Composition course at the University of Florida in late October of 2009. In Rey’s letter, she tries to entice her former teachers to re-evaluate how and what they are teaching to their students. Rey explains that her former instructors are not teaching their students a standard format, but that she actually received conflicting guidelines from different teachers. Rey continues with describing to professors the four rules that obstructed her ability to be a good writer. The first of these are the five paragraph essay model that is taught in most schools. Rey believes this method can inadvertently cause issues for a writer. One being

Dez' Janani Mangram is currently a freshman enrolled at Clayton State University working hard on her BA degree in Biology to become a surgeon. She has never been a huge fan of writing, but coming to college has helped her gain more knowledge on how essays should be organized and constructed. She has written many essays and reports since coming to Clayton State, she plans on writing many more reports as she further her medical career. In the future she plans on using writing as way to distribute out patients medicine, and write down signs and symptoms of a patient. She feels that writing is important in the medical field because just one little mistake you make writing down someone prescription can cause epic problems in their

Gemelli is currently able to write a five-sentence paragraph given sentence frames, with good grammar, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. She did have to do re-type her writing after finding and correcting her spelling mistakes with the help of the teacher. Gemelli does struggle to write to her 6th grade level standards

I have used the “D” variation of looking at individuals Student Writing from Katherine Bomer’s Hidden Gems to analyze and evaluate Melody’s writing. My first reactions to Melody’s writing are that her structure and conventions are strong and detailed and organized. Bomer and the list of “qualitative features of writing checklist” located in Hidden Gems, helped me analyze Melody’s work in a positive aspect located things such as the student “communicates thoughts and ideas, the story has a logical organizational structure of sequence, the story has an effective strategies for organizing information and the story has a sentence – to – sentence and word – to – word relationship” (Bomer, 2010, p. 83). All of these ideas that Bomer has listed

Early on McCarthy states the the point of this study and article is to, “Contribute to our understanding of how students learn to write in school.” (234). McCarthy literally wants to make the point that learning to write should be viewed as a growth process from both a social and individual aspect depending on the situation. (234). McCarthy observed a college student as he took three different courses composition I, poetry, and biology. McCarthy explains that through her examination of the the

Students are subjected to write an array of essays, but they lack the required tools needed to effectively deliver a great paper. They are struggling to write and teachers are needing to design and conform to their current student’s needs. New methods are created and implemented in order to execute the daunting task of learning how to write a well-developed paper. Practical recommendations are brought forth for teachers to use and good teachers will learn to design instruction and activities based on suitable references. Teachers must set goals and deliver their lesson with specific strategies to meet their objectives. They must learn to improve skills dramatically by observing and modifying the students. Teachers must plan strategies in order to help the struggling students catch up or exceed in their writing skills. They must learn to motivate their students by keeping them engaged throughout the writing process if not they risk losing the student’s ability and focus to do better.

Instructional Setting: Whole classroom usage, sometimes at desks working independently or with a partner, and also working as a class.

Students are instructed on how to develop and organize their writing by developing a plan or out line to follow. Teachers should discuss with their students how to effectively plan out their writing strategy. Students need to be taught to question themselves about the purpose of their writing. Questions like; “Who am I writing for?” or “How will I organize my thoughts?” are two general examples. Gersten mentions the importance and purpose of the first draft and how it provides a concrete reminder for where the writing is going. The plan and its draft provide a common language for teacher and students to share making communication easier. He also speaks of the strengths of the revision process. Gersten illustrates how peer-editing can be a useful tool to employ during writing.

The art of writing is a complex and difficult process. Proper writing requires careful planning, revision, and proofreading. Throughout the past semester, the quality of my writing has evolved significantly. At first, I struggled with the separation of different types of paragraphs, and I found writing them laborious. Constant practice, however, has eliminated many of my original difficulties, and helped to inspire confidence in my skills. As a collegiate writer, my strength lies in my clear understanding of the fundamentals of writing, while my primary weakness is proofreading my own work.

While attending writing class, I learned about the 4 steps in writing, bases for revising, organizing, and connecting specific information, and I also learned about the different types of essays such as descriptive, narrative, process, cause and effect and argumentative essay. I have been a student at Milwaukee Area Technical College for 1 semester, and over the course of my enrollment I have grown and learned more that I knew prior to attending this writing course. Participating in this writing class has taught me so much more than stuff about literature and language, it has taught me another way of expressing myself. I have learned here how to write and express myself, how to think for myself, and how to find the answers to the things that I don 't know. Most importantly I have learned how important technique, outlines and organization are. My goal in this paper is to inform writers about how my writing skills have improved.

For two long years, she worked hard to gain oral and written competency in the language, so she could be fully integrated into Canadian society. As a refugee, Kadra strived for a better life and a bright future so she worked hard in her studies. In school, her formal education trained her so that she could be prepared to enter high school. Her instructors utilized various methods within the classroom, some of which aided in her language acquisition and others that did not suit her learning preferences. Oftentimes Kadra preferred group work and presentations over written assessments. The interactions with peers of similar level provided her with a comfortable atmosphere where she became eager to interact and learn. However, a major aspect in her journey to learn English that Kadra found difficult was being able to write academic essays. There is a major disparity between how one speaks in everyday life and how one articulates themselves on paper. Although she knew the topics well, Kadra struggled in being able to convey her thoughts in a formal, theoretical manner; an issue that she struggles with even until

Technology is a helpful tool for teaching the writing process, and Marchisan and Alber (2001) concluded that writers can be taught to write using the writing process approach paired with tools of technology, direct instruction, and committed well-trained teachers. Graham, (2008), Graham & and Perin (2007a), and Rogers & and Graham, (2008), agreed that technology makes the process of writing easier and often provides very specific types of support. Word processing provides at least four advantages: (a) revisions are easily made, (b) publishing is professional-looking, (c) typing provides an easier means for children with fine motor skill challenges to produce text, and (d) word-processing programs have software programs, such as spell and stylistic checkers designed to reduce specific types of miscues. Other tools are speech synthesis (i.e., the writer’s spoken words are transcribed to electronic text) and word-prediction programs (i.e., the computer program reduces the key strokes by predicting the writer’s next word). This is helpful for students with difficulties with spelling and the mechanics of writing. In addition, outlining and semantic mapping software can aide with the planning process, and the use of computer networks and the Internet can help to promote communication and collaboration among writers.

As a writer there are many elements of writing that I struggle with, especially when composing an essay. When writing an essay, there are usually many skills that need to be used in order to be successful with the writing assignment. Many times in writing I struggle with explaining and fully developing the supporting details and ideas in my essay. I would also like to improve on incorporating clear topic sentences and concluding sentences, connecting my paragraphs ideas back to my thesis. Lastly, improvement can be made in my writing by avoiding awkward or wordy sentences. Writers face numerous challenges in their writing but strive to overcome or improve these challenges with each piece they write.

Throughout the semester, I have gained skills necessary for understanding and utilizing logic while writing. I am now aware that for any writing to be scholarly, it must possess an introductory section, a body and a conclusion section. Further, I am now able to understand as well as utilize most of the basic techniques useful in pre-writing, revision and editing. Through writing the “downloading from torrents” paper, I acquired skills in word processing, sentence elements, and punctuation. Further, I developed some special skills in writing a website analysis which is a critical aspect in contemporary learning as argued by Flateby (p 182). As the semester folds, I believe that I have gained the prerequisite skills in writing and critical thinking. However, I need to improve much on some of the common problems in writing that seems to disturb me especially grammar.

Over the course of this past semester, my ability to write has improved tremendously. Prior to undertaking this course, my expertise in writing was not as fine-tuned as it should have been. I had never previously been enrolled in a class specifically tailored to writing-- which was quite clear. Upon reading my past works, it becomes apparent that my writing style consisted of fluff, small words, and inconsistently structured sentences. These problems have, for the most part, been remedied with the coursework I have tackled in College Writing. Rather than long, drawn out papers that take an eternity to reach the primary point, my recent work is much nicer in terms of composition and grammar. I credit these improvements to the three primary