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My Life for Writing

Writing 39c has improved my research and writing abilities, and can be seen
by looking and comparing the work that has been done for the class, including two
essays. The first essay I completed was called the Historical Conversations Project
(HCP), the purpose of this essay was to introduce the reader to a problem that is
occurring in the education system. I focused on funding of class size reduction and
improving teacher effectiveness to improve student achievement which meant
increasing graduation rates, closing the achievement gap, and improving test
scores. You were not supposed to solve the problem, just provide a background on
it. The next essay I completed was the Advocacy Project (AP), this essay was when
you chose a side and found an advocacy that you supported, and why. The two
essays demonstrated what I have learned and continue to learn because of this
class, including my composing process, multi-modal use, and revisions.
Beginning with the composing process the way I started my research papers
was by first selecting a topic that I was interested in, not too broad and was a
problem facing schools today. The problem I chose was one that I had personally
dealt with which was class size, in high school I had a class of approximately 40
students. The room did not have enough actual desks for students so some just sat
in chairs and one at the teachers desk which was ok because it had the softest
chair. After deciding on that topic I had to find what the problem was. The problem I
found was the high costs of these programs which led me to looking into
alternatives that would cost less than a class size reduction program. The usual
alternative was improving teacher effectiveness or quality. Next came researching
deeper into the problem, for my first essay, the HCP, my research was not thorough.

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I found this out when I received my grade for the essay, it was not what I expected,
but going through the essay I see the many mistakes I made. An example comes
from the intro within two sentences I already made a mistake which was repetition,
stating what the problem was twice. Another mistake is Project STAR
(Student Teacher Achievement Ratio) in Texas (HCP final 6) the mistake is that
Project STAR came from Tennessee. I only realized this after I had researched further
for the AP. Besides having made a mistake there the sources themselves are strong
and varied (Graded Rubric HCP) demonstrating that from my research I was able to
provide solid evidence supporting my statements, the problem came from my
structuring and how I used these sources. Even though the final draft had problems
with structuring, I still improved compared to the first draft. Some sentences were
random, and confused the reader with useless information such as The problem
was not solved by the additional funding provided by the government because since
then there has been an increase in disabled students and English language
learners. (HCP draft1 2) what does this have to do with my problem? What I was
trying to say was that the increased funds created by ESEA was being used on
students that would require more funding. These students however had nothing to
do with my class size reduction programs I describe later in the paper. In the final
format of the essay I still incorporate a similar statement, but it talks about the use
of teachers which is more related to the topic, but still unnecessary and I could have
chosen better wording.
Besides my composition process I also improved my argumentation skills.
First I had to decide what I was promoting, which took time both sides of the
argument had good points. When I first started writing in this class I supported
reducing class size because it did show positive effects, but as I researched more I

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discovered the riskiness and the costs of these programs, and found little benefits.
The sources I chose for my HCP were chosen out of usefulness, variety, and
trustworthiness. I needed sources to support my claims, because
anyone can just throw out numbers and say what it means, but
having a trustworthy source backing up your word demonstrates
that when you speak for yourself that your word can be trusted. An
example is from paragraph two it says The average class size of
the school is 31 students (this is higher than the average of 26 [Shin]) (HCP final)
my use of this source was just to prove I was not lying, and that it is a factual
statement. In the HCP I use counter arguments to try and prove that teacher
effectiveness is not effective, but as I read it now, it was not very solid, and
disorganized (HCP final 5). I use the book we read in class which is titled The Death
and Life of the Great American School System, it is a solid source, but the way I
frame it is the problem as stated earlier, which in the future would be one thing I
would look out for.
Before talking about the future of my writing, I want to talk about the many
revisions that my HCP underwent, and my revision strategy. First after receiving
feedback from either fellow students, or the teacher, I decide what is in need of
improvement, usually it was based off of what the teacher said because I did not
receive peer feedback in time to be useful. Depending on what needed
improvement, for me it was usually structure and integrating quotes, so I did not
research much more after that, besides when I needed sources that would support
my facts I added to make flow better. Revision plays a key part for my writing
because after writing a draft it really gives me an idea of what is needed to better
improve my paper. I do not see the criticism I receive as negative because it is

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beneficial to me if I am given a response of everything seems good, or I think the
overall word is very concise and precise. (Peer Review HCP Draft 1) with that I do
not know what to improve, because obviously my writing is not perfect, there is
always something I can work on. The main type of revision I underwent was
rewriting sentences, and reorganizing paragraphs, and adding the multi-modal
aspect to the paper.
The revisions made on the HCP not only improved that essay they also helped
me to improve my next essay, the AP. I now understood better what problem I was
having in my essay, so when I wrote the first draft I already had
in mind what would make the essay better. Just like the HCP I
first begin with my composition process. This time we did an
assignment to get us thinking about the project which involved
finding your problem statement, the impacts of the stated
problem, who is benefitted and who is hurt, then possible
solutions to the problem. Part of the assignment is shown to the
right, and as can be seen, it is incomplete, but this was before
diving deeper into research on the topic. Then came the
prospectus, including an annotated bibliography, between the
time that was started and the class assignment was done is
when I realized exactly which side I had chosen for the topic,
which was teacher quality. The cause of this was because after looking at a
supporter of CSR I looked at the sources they used. The sources turned out to not
actually support the claims made by the author, then I was reading the comments
(not at all reliable) and that made me start to challenge my opinion that CSR is the
best thing schools can do. Next after researching this I found plenty of scholarly

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sources proving CSR was a waste of money and demonstrated little results. While
writing the prospectus I kept deleting and rewriting it because I kept changing my
mind on which is the most effective solution but I finally decided as can be seen by
this sentence in the prospectus I believe that decreasing class size is not the most
cost efficient way to improve student achievement. (AP prospectus) after this I
would finally be able to search for advocacy for my side of the problem. Compared
to my HCP the drafts for this one were more organized, and detailed, there were
also less mistakes. Also the amount of time I spent researching was far greater for
this essay, because I had so much information to provide the reader about the
costs, the causes, and the benefits of the different sides of the debate.
My argumentation for this is essay was far better than before, for one I felt
like I had an actual solution to convey, I had spent more time getting the
background of the debate, and I was not questioning the causes that I stated unlike
my previous essay the HCP. The solution I was going for was increasing teacher
effectiveness the way I got to this solution was when I was looking for alternatives
to CSR many sources pointed towards improving the teachers effectiveness. From
that I looked further into it and found one current policy that is being implemented
in certain school districts including Memphis, and is supported by the Gates
Foundation. Furthermore I did a better job of using multi-modal design to
incorporate facts that would be to boring if stated in words such as graphs. These
graphs were also more relevant than what the HCP had, which included student
population and what that has caused (Advocacy final 1). This essay was built on a
more solid foundation of knowledge than the previous one because I had already
spent time researching the topic, and I also spent more time reading some of the
sources, including the large 50 page ones. With the solid foundation I was able to

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incorporate a solid argument that was about the costs of each program and at these
costs the benefits of each. I realize now that I should have spent more time
describing the benefits in a more concise way, and kept the same flow of these
benefits throughout the essay, that way the reader could easily compare the two
programs and see why one is better than the other.
After my first draft which was far from complete, I knew that I needed to
make the essay flow better, and I thought about it. Then I decided that my
presentation had flowed pretty nicely, so I organized my paper in a similar manner
to my presentation, it turned out decent, and I scored higher than I did on the HCP.
My revisions for this essay were in steps, jumps, and leaps, from my prospectus to
my first draft it was easy, because I did not add to much more to it. From the first
draft to the second it was more difficult, because I had gone from an incomplete
outline to an actual essay that was still incomplete. Next came the final draft which
was even more difficult because everything needed to be finalized meaning that I
had to add approximately 1000 more words to my incomplete draft, reorganize it,
and search for sources that would support my new claims made in the new
paragraphs. After all this I had finally finished my AP and I earned a B on it, which is
an improvement from the C+ that I earned on the previous one.
I understand why I got the grades I did, and can be shown by the hours I
spent researching the AP versus the HCP. Overall this course has given me a better
ability to research, and organize my essays. Although I still have difficulties
integrating and making the essay flow better, but I have worked on it, and
compared to when I first began I believe that I have gotten better, still not perfect,
but I do not expect to be. Later on in my UCI career I will take my last writing course
which will deal with technical writing for engineers, and my ability to research will

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need to be used once more, and hopefully by that time I will still remember
everything I learned in this class, and that I can use that knowledge to better my
writing. After everything it is good to know what I have gone through to get to
where I am today, and to know how much time a well thought out research paper
will truly take.