Garden of Eden

• Does the writer provide an introduction that grabs the reader’s attention?
• Yes, it talks about how the different family members take turns taking care of the writer's grandpa.
• Does the writer focus on significant events in his or her life rather than trying to narrate his or her entire life’s story?
• Yes, the story is about how she has to take her grandfather to the grocery store.
• Do the descriptions of the characters or important objects in the memoirs include sensory details that help readers to visualize, hear, smell or feel them?
• Yes, the food that is describe in the story is all stuff that everyone has heard of, or at least some part of it.
• Has the writer quoted speech or dialogue so as to reveal some important aspect of a character’s personality?
• Yes, the dialogue between the writer and her grandfather reveals the kind of relationship they have.
• Does the writer narrate or describe events in a way that allows readers to connect them to experiences or relationships in their own lives?
• Yes, the dialogue at the end sounds like a conversation you would hear at my house. I was reading it picturing my grandparents the whole time.
• Has the writer explained the significance of the people, events, places, or objects in shaping who he or she has become? Does this explanation make sense in relation to the events, people, places, and things described throughout the memoir?
• Yes.
• Does the writer provide a conclusion that reinforces the point of the story?
• Yes.

Once More to the Lake

• Does the writer provide an introduction that grabs the reader’s attention?
• Yes, the introduction has a lot of sensory details in it that caught my attention.
• Does the writer focus on significant events in his or her life rather than trying to narrate his or her entire life’s story?
• Yes, the story is about all the memories that the writer has of going to this lake with his father during the summer.
• Do the descriptions of the characters or important objects in the memoirs include sensory details that help readers to visualize, hear, smell or feel them?
• Yes, the lake and the wildlife that surround it are almost always described with sensory details.
• Has the writer quoted speech or dialogue so as to reveal some important aspect of a character’s personality?
• No, there is no dialogue in this story.
• Does the writer narrate or describe events in a way that allows readers to connect them to experiences or relationships in their own lives?
• Yes.
• Has the writer explained the significance of the people, events, places, or objects in shaping who he or she has become? Does this explanation make sense in relation to the events, people, places, and things described throughout the memoir?
• Yes, yes.
• Does the writer provide a conclusion that reinforces the point of the story?
• Yes.

Personal Narratives

• Does the writer provide an introduction that grabs the reader’s attention?
• The introduction doesn't so much jump out at you and grab your attention, but it does begin a story that seems like it could be interesting to read.
• Does the writer focus on significant events in his or her life rather than trying to narrate his or her entire life’s story?
• Yes, the writer focused on a difficult French class that he took.
• Do the descriptions of the characters or important objects in the memoirs include sensory details that help readers to visualize, hear, smell or feel them?
•  Yes, he detailed not only the other people in the class but also the actions of the teacher.
• Has the writer quoted speech or dialogue so as to reveal some important aspect of a character’s personality?
• Yes, he uses dialogue to show how much the teacher possibly hates the students.  
• Does the writer narrate or describe events in a way that allows readers to connect them to experiences or relationships in their own lives?
• Yes.
• Has the writer explained the significance of the people, events, places, or objects in shaping who he or she has become? Does this explanation make sense in relation to the events, people, places, and things described throughout the memoir?
• Yes, by the end he realized that he could understand what the teacher was saying. Yes.
• Does the writer provide a conclusion that reinforces the point of the story?
• I think that he does.

Oops.

I guess I either forgot to hit post, or I just completely spaced putting it on here. Either way. This was from a while ago.

Describe the writing assignment:

This writing assignment was to read an essay from our Seagull Reader book and write a 2-3 page summary paper over the main idea of the essay we chose.

Describe your topic:

My topic was keeping a notebook. I covered why a person might start keeping a notebook, the information that might be kept in the notebook, and how someone would react to reading a notebook that they wrote years ago, and the memories that would come with that.

State your thesis or your dominant and controlling idea(s):

When someone writes in their notebook, they only write down the information that they deem important to know sometime in their future.

Describe the audience for your written work:

The audience of my written work is my professor.

Describe the writing process you used to develop this work:

I used a strategy that my High School English teacher showed us how to use my senior year. You write down the most important thing that comes from each of the paragraphs and those sentences will be the basis of your writing.

How many drafts have you made: 2

Approximate time spent prewriting, planning & drafting this work: 6 hours

Describe the outside assistance you have received on this work (from instructor, peers, tutors & others):

The information that my teacher in high school teacher gave me and had my younger sister proof read.

Describe the revisions you have made after you drafted this work:

I took out a lot of duplicated sentences and used the thesaurus to come up with different words to use.

What areas of sentence structure, word choice, grammar and punctuation did you pay special attention as you proofread and edited this work?  Please describe:

I think that I paid an equal amount of attention to all of the areas. I’m somewhat Type A about proofreading and revisions. I edited the sentence structure the most of all of the options though.

Discuss some of the concerns you have with this work:

I think that my biggest concern with this work is that I used all of the right formatting. Another concern that I might have about it is that my writing makes sense to me and the people that know me, but that they won’t make sense to anyone else.

Discuss some of the positives of this written work:

I think that my sentences flow together really well for the most part. Another thing that I think I did well was that I used a range of different words.

Sentence Variety

  Sam got in her car, drove to the mall, and went to the shoe store where she bought a pair of boots. She also bought a shoeshine kit. Sam went to the food court and bought a burrito. The burrito had onions and peppers on it, Sam ate the burrito. Sam saw a cute boy at the pretzel stand. The boy looked at Sam and she blushed. The boy walked over to Sam and she said hi. The boy wrinkled up his nose. Sam was confused, so she said hi again and the boy gagged and walked away. Sam was shocked. She then realized she had bad breath and ran to the bathroom and cried. She put on her new boots and shined them, then walked  confidentally out of the bathroom. After finding the boy, Sam told him he needed manners and kicked him with her new boots. The boy fell to the ground and Sam walked away, out of the mall.

Principles of Composition

After reading the section, I think they the principle that I have the most trouble with is omitting needless words. I think I acquired this during my time in journalism where the more elaborate the wording was the more likely someone in our school was to actually read it. I think that to try and correct the problem with this, I could take more time in revision to run words through the thesaurusto try and come up with maybe one or two words that could condense down all of the other words that I have used.

One thing that I think I am better at is paragraph composition.