William Curtin's Site

*Downloaded as PDF and converted to a word document, lost the format of the paper*

MY RECURSIVE WRITING PROCESS

NAME: Billy Curtin

Favorite Active Reading Strategies

• Ask questions
• Identifying unfamiliar words

Favorite Brainstorming Strategies

• Free-writing
• Researching the topic
• Asking who, what, when, where, and why

Favorite Polishing Strategies

• Checking the spelling and grammar of my sentences
• Revisiting my sentences to make sure they are in the correct order, justify my claim, and make sense

Favorite Drafting Strategies

• Free-writing
• Writing in 30 minute increments

Favorite Revision Strategies

• Reading each paragraph by itself
• Reading paragraphs from their last sentence to their first (backwards)

Rough Draft English Essay

Final Draft English Composition

Exactly how important are the metaphors that we use and who is the most capable (and responsible) for making them? How does the metaphor best serve us? These questions play a direct role in James Geary’s “Metaphorically Speaking” and Michael Erard’s “In Defense of Distraction.” In “The Trouble with Medicine’s Metaphors,” Dhruv Khullar takes the conversation further when he explores metaphor’s significance as it pertains to healing and medicine.

Your task is to write a 1,500- 2,500 word* (CHANGED) paper advancing your personal position on metaphor’s role in how we perceive our bodies, experience sickness, and pursue health. What kind of impact does language actually have on our physical and mental wellbeing? Who is responsible for managing this language? Engage each text in conversation as you define and explore your own understanding of metaphor and identify the potential consequences of this understanding. Some questions to consider: How important are the metaphors that you use in your personal and public life—most specifically as they pertain to your health? How much of a difference can a metaphor make on someone’s health? From where do the most meaningful metaphors originate? Professional metaphor designers/Advertisers? Public institutions? Ourselves? Please be as specific as possible as you connect the texts with each other, the larger world, and your own personal experiences.

The Significant Writing Project, which is of our first essay, depicts my ability to cite my sources and address errors at the very beginning of the semester. This view, allows for me to reflect on my growth in citing my sources. During this time, I must admit I lacked the skills of citing sources.  It was not something new to me, especially coming from my high school, but this was the first instance if me citing sources in a paper since my last high school english class. Just at an initial examination of my sources, I can immediately tell that I have messed up citing the last source, a TED Talk byJames Geary. I notice this because when we cite sources, the author is supposed to go first, not the title. For typical errors, I spotted one right in the opening sentence. The sentence states, “We must not ask ourselves how our actions can influence, but how our words can .” It took me a minute to catch, but I included a space between the period and last word of a sentence. To add later on I made an error when I typed, “While they are only the result of the vibrations of our vocal cords, metaphors and language itself serve a larger purpose, one which can improve the physical and mental wellbeing of many worldwide while also causing distress if they are used inappropriately.” This came also from my introduction paragraph, while it is not an obvious error, I feel as if it is a run on sentence since I was able to find where to break it up into two. The Significant Writing Project has allowed for me to see the growth and development of my citation skills as well as correcting and finding errors.

At the beginning of the semester, I was extremely uncomfortable with peer editing. It was not because I believed that I was bad at it, but rather because I felt unsure if what I would suggest would be good. I always believed my writing was a step behind everyone. I did not feel confident enough to edit the works of my peers and as a result was very intimidated by peer review at the beginning of the semester. However, as the semester progressed, my confidence grew, as well as the number of comments on the essays I peer reviewed. I credit my growth to being a mixture of meeting people in the class and getting to know them, feeling less anxiety with making suggestions to peers, as well as improving as a writer. As seen in the images attached below, I have made several comments on the most recent peer review of the multimodal essay. While it is a general statement, it is easy to overlook that during the beginning of the semester I averaged probably around three to four comments per essay. With our final one having seven, I hoped the growth and development of my peer review to be seen from the increase in the number of comments and suggestions I left on the essay. I feel this class did an exceptional job at developing us into better writers as well as editors. A large portion of our class was reading, annotating, writing, and editing. All skills were developed over the course of this class, I feel writing and editing stand out because of the frequency of which we annotated.

Significant Writing Project: Final Draft English Composition (1)

In our early writing  assignments, such as our first essay, I used an array of sources which were given to us in preparation for the prompt. My use and integration of evidence within the essay can first be noted after mentioning Dhruv Khullar. I used facts within his article to justify my claim of there being a need for metaphors to exist in the medical field. In my essay I wrote, “He began with elaborating on the frequency of metaphors used in the medical field. He stated, ‘One study, from 2010, found that physicians use metaphors in almost two-thirds of their conversations with patients who have serious illnesses.’ (Khullar).” My use of evidence and method of integration was in fact juvenile, leaving me a lot of space to develop and progress. My integration of the quote was not strong, and since then I have been able to introduce quotes at a higher level. In class when we revisited integrating quotes and evidence, we discussed the proper way to format and introduce the quote. This would include the punctuation used for quotes, such as placing a comma before the quote and quotation marks are written. To add, we were taught that a quote cannot be simply placed in a sentence. The author has to be first introduced prior to using a quote from their article. Following this you must include an introduction to the quote, which can be as simple as writing, “He stated, ‘(quote here)'”. With help from the lessons in class my use of quotes and integrating has improved since the first essay written.

Rough Draft 1:Rough Draft English Essay

Final Draft 1: Final Draft English Composition

My chosen writing project from the term was our first essay where he had a prompt about the importance of metaphors and their application in life. As it being our first essay, I made careless mistakes such as including the header, as well as underlining my title. My revisions at the beginning of the year, were very elementary. I was being naive, thinking that since I could do it in high school, I would be automatically able to in college. However, that was not the case. My revision process was always incomplete now looking back at it. I see within the rough draft that I have weak claims that needed more revision, my use of quotes and integration of them could be drastically improved.

While my early revisions are not at all what I remember them to be, I see a great upside to it. If I thought my revisions were incomplete or not as strong looking back at them, that means my writing has experienced growth. While it is a long shot, if I did not grow as a student over the semester, I would have looked back at this essay and still think it was worthy of being turned in as a final draft. The case for my revisions being substandard is strong, my writing early on was not where it has grown to now and I feel my development as a writer was evident through revisiting my revisions from this essay.

The active reading process, a process all too familiar but one that proves to be the most useful when it comes to understanding and learning the message an author is trying to communicate to us. Active reading includes paying close attention on the readers part, and requires annotations to be made. These annotations include questions, general comments about what the author said, and even connections the reader has made. When I actively read, I follow a series of steps to ensure I understand the author. I begin by reading the text one time through to understand. I then follow up with rereading and making comments. These comments consist of connections I have made to the author and their text. To add, the annotations can include comments relating to the authors word usage, since as an active reading strategy I make sure to pay close attention to the authors words, the pattern they follow, and the literary techniques the author used within his work. A large part of my active reading is the questions I ask. A question, such as the one which was from Michael Erard’s “See through Words” which I asked, “Who is Rilke? Why is time a destroyer?” This question sprouted from when Michael Erard stated, “If you could ask…, or Rilke where he found the notion that time is a destroyer” (1). My questions signify the importance of this section of text, as I have yet to understand it.

Susan Gilroy’s, “Interrogating Texts: 6 Reading Habits to Develop in Your First Year at Harvard” eludes to the importance of active reading and why having good habits and strategies is critical to the process. When referring to questions she states, “they are reminders of the unfinished business you still have with a text.” When questions are asked, the material is not understood. If material has yet to be understood then you cannot be done with it. This is my perception of having questions when it comes to active reading. Gilroy also said to, “Mark up Mark up the margins of your text with words and phrases: ideas that occur to you, notes about things that seem important to you, reminders of how issues in a text may connect with class discussion or course themes. . .” Her statement on annotations is a great point as the more you annotate, the more you tend to understand. I felt her description of annotating is similar to my belief on annotating because when I do not annotate, I understand far less.

With the semester coming to a close, I feel proud in what I have done with active reading and Learning Outcome 3. Throughout the course, we first learned how to properly active read. We were challenged with many active reading assignments which gave us different opportunities to improve at it. This class has taught me to read to understand, reread and annotate, and then respond accurately based off of my thoughts and opinions of the text.