Jasmine Franklin
Wise English 105-01
October 27, 2010
Professor Peterson
Midterm Assessment
My Advancement in WISE
At first being in this program was kind of confusing to me because I did not get the concept of why we had to write in forms of technology or connect our literary work with technology. For instance, writing in blogs was irrelevant to me because I thought English writing was supposed to be in paragraph form and on regular standard computer paper. As the semester continued, being in WISE made more sense to me, because it teaches a student how to write in certain circumstances, for conciseness and writing for the rhetorical audience and not just because. I have learned more about how I write from being in the program than being in an honors english or regular english class, because everything is easier to grasp and analyze. From this class I have learned how to be concise, adhere to the rhetorical situation, and use my references as guidance for my assignments, thus leading to me writing more efficiently.
When I had to write my first blog, it was difficult for me because I had to summarize everything within ten sentences and I’m use to giving detailed analysis. Writing blogs for this class, helped me get straight to the point and be concise in my writing. For example, the blogs Anti-Intellectualism and” Ode on a Grecian Urn” that we responded to had be detailed enough for the audience to comprehend the concept; however, they could not be long and overdrawn because it was still a blog. Being efficient and straight to the point helps me in my work because it gets my point across without the unnecessary detail.
Since the WISE program is connected with two classes, history and english, some of the assignments are joined. For example, the cultural analysis essay has to be presented in both classes, but they have to be different in the rhetorical content. Having the same assignment means that as a student has to give a detailed writing aspect in an English context and a historical context. Composing literary works with the same backgrounds is a learning experience to me because I never had to take the same research and use it for two different subjects and make sense of it. Therefore, I am attaining how to take the same research and manipulate it so that it adheres to both English and history rhetorical situations. The cultural analysis is also helping me by teaching me how to go deeper into my writing so it can be well organized analysis of my topic.
The hardest and most tedious assignment to date in the class to me is the annotated bibliography. Even though I made sure to do a good job, I still had some difficulties that hindered my grade. Working with CMS and having to give precise detail to each citation and note was sort of easy because I just had to follow the directions. What was hard for me was just how tedious the assignment was. I had to make sure I put my commas and periods in the right place and also make sure that I constructed italicized words correctly. It was accommodating that the task of the annotated bibliography was done in stages, because it made me stay on target and be more thorough while giving my annotations. I would have to say this is one of my best works because it shows how hard I worked to make my citations correct and how effectively I set up for annotations for the paper.
Being in WISE has also helped me follow directions better. I try to refer to the rubric more often so that my work is at its best. The Arti-factual interview can best describe this point for me because there was a certain way the paper had to be constructed or it would have been all wrong. This assignment was fairly easy to me because it did have certain instructions on how to compose of it. To demonstrate, I work best when everything is put together for me, such as the length of the assignment and what the teacher is asking for. That way when I begin to think about what I am going to say I know that I can’t go over board with the details and it allows me to gather enough information on my subject. The only thing that was difficult for me was having to cut some of the information out of the interview. That was hard because I had to base my central idea around something new rather than just having an ordinary interview.
I have noticed the difference in my writing from the start of the semester to the mid point of it. Though I have been in WISE composition for a short period of time, my writing skills have improved drastically. I now eat, sleep, and breathe the concept of rhetorical situation because really without it there is no purpose for what a person is writing for. Also engaging in topic, restrictive and illustrative sentences (TRI) has also benefitted me while writing because I stay on the main focus and do not put something in my writing that is irrelevant to the subject’s purpose. Some of the strategies I use to make my writing better was going back and re-reading my paper and having one of my peers read over it again for me before submitting it. I also noticed that prewriting aids in my writing process because it stimulates the ideas I am searching for on a certain topic so that I can document them on my literary work.
Overall, I being in composition WISE and in the WISE program in general has benefited me greatly. It has engaged me to think more critically and to get straight to the point while writing, and it has demonstrated how technology has come to help in the writing process. I have improved on some of my grammatical elements and I am still working on correcting them fully. Most of my improvements are on my analytical and writing skills. To illustrate, my writingfor the most part is meeting the requirements and have gotten stronger to adhere to the rhetorical situation. As a whole, this composition class was not anything that I expected. I thought I was just going to be wasting my time blogging about technology but I have learned a lot from my matriculation from the beginning of the semester to the midpoint of it.
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