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| Image by MacEntee, Sean. "finish line". Uploaded 5/17/10 via Flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic license. |
What challenges did you face during the project? How did you deal with them?
The hardest part of this project for me was the editing process. After spending so much time writing and rewriting, I reached the point where I didn't want to look at my QRG ever again. Every time I wanted to give up and just submit it as it was, I would wait until the next day to give myself a break. Usually, when I went back to it, I found new mistakes or had new ideas of how to improve my project, and got more work done.
What successes did you experience on the project and how did they happen?
My biggest success in this project was creating a final project that I'm happy with and proud of. Doing each step in deadlines 2-4 made creating the final project much less painful than it would have been otherwise. Instead of trying to find a quote in the great abyss that is Google, I could just go back to my annotated bibliography, and pull a quote from one of my sources. Having less tedious work to do left me with more energy and time to devote to writing successfully.
What kinds of arguments, rhetorical strategies, design choices and writing practices did you find the most effective for your project? Why?
I mostly used informative, unbiased writing in my QRG. Using the QRG conventions, I merely organized my information. I liked using hyperlinks instead of citations, because readers are much more likely to seek additional information if it is one click away.
What kinds of arguments, rhetorical strategies, design choices and writing practices did you find were not effective for your project? Why?
Since I'm not trying to persuade my readers, I didn't need to use rhetorical strategies or arguments. I also didn't need long, PIE formatted paragraphs. Some of my paragraphs are a single sentence, usually to clarify a point that I made before or to introduce my next point.
How was the writing process for this project similar to other school writing experiences you’ve had in the past?
Like all writing, this boils down to being able to convey a purpose to the intended audience. I've never written in such an informal format before, so that was a new experience for me. I liked being able to organize my project using headings rather than having my organization be based entirely off of transitions and paragraph structures.
How was the writing process for this project different from other school writing experiences you’ve had in the past?
The last big writing project that I had in high school was my senior research paper, where we had to use in-text, MLA citations with a bibliography at the end. This QRG is much more relaxed, and the formatting is more of the author's choice than following a set structure.
Would any of the skills you practiced for this project be useful in your other coursework? Why or why not?
Any time I do a writing-based project, I feel like I am improving both my writing and my editing skills. Being a good writer is essential in almost every college class.
I am taking a political history class that focuses on propaganda, and we do a lot with arguments and analyzing whether they are logical or not. Knowing how to analyze a source for credibility will be helpful in both that class and this one.
Reflection:
I read Savannah and Isabel's Project 1 Reflections.
Isabel and I both said that this genre needs to be informative and relatively unbiased to be successful in informing readers about our topics.
Savannah and I both wrote almost every day, and we both did a lot of revising. I was surprised by how much of my time this project took up, but I'm glad I worked so hard, because I am happy with my final product.
Just as a side note, I am so glad that we did peer revision, because I think my draft improved a lot with the suggestions that I got from my editors.
I can agree with a lot of the things you said in your answers. I found we had pretty similar ones. I like what you said about using hyperlinks as sources because it engages the reader more and encourages them to do some research of their own on the topic. I too felt that the actual process of creating the final draft of the QRG was easier because we had already found the sources we were going to use in other blog posts. Very well said and good job. Also, kudos to us to not waiting until saturday morning to finish up module 5.
ReplyDeleteI share your editing struggles. I would always look at my paper and see major issues. I completely reformatted and rewrote my paper three times! Hopefully we can both get better at writing our drafts and editing! I also used unbiased information in my QRG. I though it would make my paper more balanced.
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