Thursday, December 9, 2010

Blog #9

             
I was able to re-write my evaluative summary and get a better grade than the previous one. That was my biggest goal. I was able to voice my own opinion on the subject better than before. The evaluative summary gave me the willies. I had never written one before. I did seek help from two different tutors and ended up with a paper that was not appropriate for the assignment. The re-write was difficult because I was not sure I truly understood what was required for the paper.
I am now able to go to the Sugar Grove library and find a book I am looking for. I had never used the Library of Congress Classification system before and had no idea how to find the book I needed for my research paper. That was something important to me and something I was glad I learned. If I had not asked for help I would have wandered around the library forever and never found the book I was looking for. I also learned to use different search engines that I had never thought to use before. I had been to the Todd Library site, but I had only ever used the general search.
As for the research paper, I asked a friend of mine who is going to school in Mississippi to edit my paper and she told me things I did not know about how to format the paper and long quotes. For instance, I did not realize that there were extra spaces at the end of each page and that I had to go into the paragraph tab and check the box for it not to add spaces after paragraphs of the same kind. I also did not know that for a quote that is longer than four lines you should make it a block quote. I never knew these things, and when I asked my tutor who is supposed to know more about these things than me she told me “Yes, that is correct.” This after reading my paper two to three times before and never mentioning it before. My friend’s teacher is the head of their English department, so I am glad I asked her to review my paper.
I hope my grammar improved, and I think it did. I cannot say that I had a huge problem with grammar before, but I know it was not perfect. I have often been told that I write like I am talking to a friend and that my papers should sound and be more formal. I think I worked on this in this class and that I improved on it. I was told that the way I write would be okay if I was writing a book, but not if I was writing a formal English paper, or a paper of any kind. Whereas before, when I wrote on my own and did not ask for help I would not really revise or make drafts of my paper. I would edit and that was it.

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