Week 9
Continuing My Journey in 39B: The Connect Blog
Joanne Tran | March 10, 2019 | 11:59 pm (due date)
Hello, and welcome to my blog entry for week 9! Because we are so close to the end of the course, now is an optimal time to look back on the progress I have made so far in the class. Thus, this week's blog is dedicated to analyzing my score reports from Connect, particularly for the LearnSmart Achieve and Power of Process assignments. Let's get started!
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Looking back on my reports for the LearnSmart Achieve practice sessions, I have done particularly well with the grammar assignments, such as the ones pertaining to commas and semicolons, subject-verb agreements, and italics, because I scored over 90% in these categories. But, even though these scores tell me I did well, there is still definitely room for improvement, otherwise I would have scored 100%. Diving deeper into my reports, however, I noticed that there were some assignments I did worse on, and upon seeing these scores, I recalled missing multiple questions during these sessions because I lacked knowledge in these areas. For example, I struggled with the Conventions of Academic Writing assignment, as seen with the reports below:
These images are the reports given for my "Conventions of Academic Writing" Assignment. With the left picture, you can see that 15% of the time, I was not aware I was incorrect, telling me that I needed to correct my understanding of certain academic conventions. The image on the right indicates which topics were the most challenging for me.
Evidently, I was unaware that I was wrong 15% of the time, indicating to me that I do not know the conventions of academic writing as well as I thought I did. I specifically struggled with the questions pertaining to topic sentences, transitions, and the qualities of introductory and concluding paragraphs, and realizing this, I acknowledged that I needed extra help. Thus, after finishing the assignment, I participated in a "recharge" session to strengthen my skills in these areas, adding to my progress with this topic. Consequently, I was preparing myself for the RA Essay, for knowing how to effectively construct topic sentences and introductory and concluding paragraphs are pertinent to my writing for the essay, and if I had not done so, my current draft would be substantially weaker, since these areas would demonstrate my lack of understanding of the conventions of academic writing. Even with the extra practice with the "recharge" sessions and my continual revising of my RA Essay, I know that I must keep working towards honing my academic writing skills, because as I keep improving, my writing will become more credible, and thus, and effectively contribute to the academic community. Therefore, to progress in this area, I plan to utilize the "recharge" sessions even after this quarter ends, since my subscription to the Connect program extends past these 10 weeks.
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Another LearnSmart Achieve assignment that I did not do as well on was the "Eliminating Redundancies" assignment. Knowing my bad habit of being wordy, I already knew walking into the assignment that I would not perform as well as I wanted to. But I knew that acknowledging that I was weak in this area helps me rid of this habit even faster because I would be more aware of which questions I was missing and the techniques I needed to acquire to combat my wordiness. Below shows my reports on the assignment:
These images show my reports for the "Eliminating Redundancies" Assignment. The picture on the left shows how many times I was unaware I was submitting incorrect answers, which is indicated with the last section in red. The image on the right shows which topics were the most challenging for me in the assignment, or in other words, which type of questions I tended to miss the most.
As seen with the images above, I was unaware that I did not know the answer nearly 20% of the time I was doing the assignment, and I continually missed questions pertaining to removing redundancies, fillers, and sexist language. These results did not surprise me, but upon seeing them, I realized what I must actively look out for while writing for future assignments. Knowing that these areas are my weaknesses, I am now able to apply this knowledge when I proofread my work because I can actually identify what redundancies and wordiness look like, whereas I was not able to before. Reflecting on where I am now, I can definitely say that this assignment allowed me to become a better writer, especially with regards to the RA Essay. If I had not participated in this Connect assignment, I would still continually be writing over the word limit for every assignment I have, but luckily, I have been effectively utilizing my skill of identifying repetitiveness to make my writing more concise. Even with this progress, however, I know that my tendency to be wordy is still prominent, and thus, I must continually work to improve how I recognize and eliminate redundancies in my work. Because of time constraint this quarter, I have not been able to do "recharge" sessions for this assignment, but I have been trying to actively work on improving my wordiness through the continual revising of my RA Essay, and in the future, I plan to do the "recharge" sessions for as long as I still have access to my Connect account and read the Owl Purdue article about how to be more concise, which was recommended by Professor Delany-Ullman herself.
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Regarding the Power of Process assignments, I learned that, to effectively analyze any text, including my own, I must be able to narrow down my area of focus to effectively analyze what I am reading. Every practice session so far has had sections, or reading strategies, that focused on specific areas of a text. For instance, our most recent assignment was on our own draft for the RA Essay, and each section had us pay particular attention to a certain area of our essay, such as topic sentences, textual evidence, etc. From completing the reading strategies in the order the program outlined for me, I learned how to productively look over a text, since the order of strategies demonstrated how my train of thought should flow. For example, with my draft, I realized that I should be analyzing my essay by first looking at my title, since it is the very first thing the reader sees, and then my topic sentences, thesis, outside sources, etc. Consequently, I was learning how to evaluate any academic work that I may write or read, and I realized that by focusing on specific areas-- as opposed to simultaneously looking at a work as a whole-- I more easily grasp the message of the text: evaluating one section at a time allows me to pinpoint the purpose of each, and as I build on each section, they all come together to create one entire message. I was able to recognize this pattern for every Power of Process we encountered, but I did not fully recognize the relevance of this reading strategy until I applied it to my own work. As seen with the image below, I learned how to take apart my own essay and analyze whether each section served its purpose towards creating my argument for the RA essay, and if it did, I demonstrated a solid understanding of how to build a rhetorical analysis, otherwise I would have to improve lacking areas to strengthen my argument.
This image is an excerpt from my Power of Process assignment regarding my third draft for the RA essay. Here, you can see how I focused on specific sections of my essay, as indicated by the different colored highlights. Each color identifies a certain section I had to pay particular attention to, analyzing whether my writing was effective and whether I met the requirements for that area. The pink color indicates a topic sentence; grey indicates rhetorical analysis signals; and blue indicates the utilization of outside sources.
Reflecting on all the Connect assignments we have done, I realize that each had an important relevance to our understanding of writing and reading academic works, and now that I am able to apply this new knowledge to my own work, I am becoming a stronger contributor to the academic discourse community as I continually improve on my writing and literacy skills.
On that reflective note, I would like to say: please stay tuned for more updates on my progress in this course as we quickly approach the end of the quarter!
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Until next time,
Joanne
This image represents my learning process with the Connect assignments--that is, I first acknowledge and understand my weaknesses that are exposed by the assignments, apply what I learned in subsequent "recharge" sessions and in future writing assignments, and, by doing so, create works that demonstrate my progress in honing these skills.
