Page 1 Audrey Page Suzanne Ingram English 1101 October 2, 2013 Mid-Term Assignment 1.

Take a solid question from your first blog, answer the question and explain how you got that answer. In my first blog, I didnt really have any questions written down but there were certain ideas that kept appearing throughout my blog post. How can we go in-depth with writing compared to high school English classes? And how will writing in this class help us in the future? In this class were going through each others papers to help improve our and the writers work. By doing this we are making our papers flow smoothly and sound professional since were now in college, not high school. While writing our literacy narratives, we peer edited our papers twice and then gave them to Professor Ingram, for her to edit them again. With everyones help my first shitty draft has morphed into a better, sounding paper, but its not complete. When we read others papers it helps with our reading and editing skills so that we can edit our own paper with better effectiveness. Also through writing readers responses, we apply what we read into our own words to show what we learned from the educational essay. Ive engaged this course by doing everything on time and thoroughly reading and analyzing every writing passage we have read. Through writing reader responses and peer editing, Im not as scared to write as I was at the beginning of the year. 2. What are the differences between high school competency and college success?

Page 2 The major difference is the work load and the topics we cover. In high school we covered a huge variety, mainly working from books and analyzing them. We read books in college but there are different types of genres, we read educational essays as in high school we read novels with characters and plots. We still write and read indepth but we dont do unnecessary activities like web maps and bubble charts. In high school our work load was a lot more since they tried to cram so many different subjects into one class. In college we slow down and focus on one thing and after we work through it, then we move on. Since we slow down, I can work on expressing myself and making my works better and college level. So I will sit down in the library or in my room, wherever its quiet, and read our assigned essays in-depth. Reading in the quiet place allows me to comprehend and understand what the author is trying to express then I cant accomplish the assignment we have for it. I did it differently in high school because we would move on so quickly, I would have twelve other things to do so Id rush through it without gaining any thought towards the reading. 3. How can students be prepared to make the transition to college? What can students who are in the midst of the transition to college do in order to more smoothly adapt? If I was going to give senior high school students advice on next year, firstly I would tell them they would need to keep up to date on whats due. Secondly, read everything. Thirdly, they should be organized and prepared for classes. A major concept they should understand is do not procrastinate. It takes a while to understand how things work in college, since you were so use to how high school works. But if you follow these important rules, most high school students will be fine. I adapted smoothly because the thought of not doing something in college is scary. You dont

Page 3 want your professor to think youre a bad student by not studying or not turning homework in. Since, Ive done all my work and Im on time, Im not stressing or hurting in my college classes. 4. Now look at the list of Key Concepts on the syllabus. Pick one of the concepts that you think you're engaging with really well and explain how you're doing that. You can use specific examples from your work in the course. There are a lot of key concepts that Im engaging and using, but the writing process and revision is the main key concept Im using this year. The writing process was always hard for me since I hated writing because I couldnt express myself in the right way. But Ive learned that if I first write out the main topics I want in my paper, I can organize my thoughts into a paper. For example, thats how I organized and wrote my literacy narrative. Revision is being used through peer editing and rereading others papers. In high school, I never would go back through and read what I wrote but since Im in college I want to sound professional. So Ill go through my papers a couple times to make sure I dont have any mistakes. In high school we never went into detail on how to write a good essay other than a research paper. So writing my literacy narrative was a challenge for me so I had to create a list and web to organize my paragraphs. This helped me and also the peer editing, because I got other students opinions on my work. Peer editing helps add extra ideas that I would have never thought of to make my narrative sound more smooth and realistic. 5. Now pick a key concept that you're struggling with (or, if you're not struggling with any of them, pick the one that's most challenging). What's confusing or challenging about that concept, and how might you strive, in the second half of this semester, to

Page 4 better engage with it? The key concept that Im struggling with the most is critical thinking and going in-depth on our reading assignments. I can understand what the author is trying to say but I dont think more into his reasons. Im going to work more on this for the rest of this semester since well have more reading essays. While reading, The Five-Paragraph Essay and the Deficit Model of Education, I had to reread and try to understand what the author was trying to tell his audience. Some works are harder to understand since its written for other scholars not students. So Ive learned that if I reread articles I understand them better but its hard if I dont understand after the third time rereading the essay. Ill have to find discussion groups so that we can discuss the purpose and theme of the essay or article. 6. What connections can you make between any of your answers for questions 1-5? That is, how do the issues you've addressed relate to each other? In the previous questions, I mainly compared high school to college English classes. So the last questions are related through how high school rushed through everything. High school rushed through writing and reading so I didnt understand how to write or critically think about passages we were supposed to read. Then when students get into college everything slows down and allows students to truly understand what they are doing in English classes. Since high school moved to fast for me, Im now trying to catch up on how to write effectively and the rules of writing like proofreading. I can analyze passages without rushing through them to get to the next essay and then writing what I learned from that passage. By writing reader responses and my literacy narrative, I can express myself and go in-depth with the meaning behind the article. 7. What questions do you still have? What do you still really want to inquire about in

Page 5 this course? I never had any questions to begin with since I entered with an open mind. The questions I had were more like concerns because I knew college English classes would have more pressure than high school English classes. So I wanted to know the difference and how the class worked. I still dont understand risk-taking and how I can take risks in my writing. Is risk taking what I feel while I write something? Expressing myself? I would like to be better at proofreading my papers and others. But Ill probably gain more experience through practice. Im also curious about how everything will be graded, like how the e- portfolios will be. Are they graded based on others papers or is there a rubric to follow? Hopefully, I will gain more skills on writing papers this semester.