Breanne’s Blog

English 112 is coming to an end extremely fast. At first I did not believe that I would enjoy this class or learn much of anything that I did not already know about writing. However, I was pleasantly surprised. I really liked the way Amanda constructed class and the set up for each paper we had to write, especially the third big paper. The book was also helpful too in constructing a solid introduction, body paragraphs or conclusions. However the part of this class that I will truly use the most is synthesis and finally learning the correct way to do MLA format in papers. Before taking English 112 I have never used synthesis or realized what it was for that manner. I feel that it is very effective and helpful in terms of source support for papers. Yes it took me till English 112 to finally clean up my MLA format. I believe with help from Amanda and the handbook I finally have it down. Now after learning all I have, I feel like a more confident writer. I know that I am able to write an A paper and when I get my final papers back and see that it makes me want to be even better. After English classes are over for good, I know that everything I have learned will stick with me throughout any of the other classes that papers are required for.

I felt this exercise that we conducted today in class on rewriting another’s paragraph was a little difficult at first. It may be difficult at first trying to help another by rewriting their work, because you did not conduct the research on the topic. You are simply an outsider looking in on just the paragraph and the information that they gave to you. After I got started however, it was actually a cool experience. I felt it was easier to rewrite her work than to say write on the topic she was getting across by doing research. It actually really helped me reading what my classmate wrote of my paragraph, because she came up with ideas and organization strategies that I had not thought of before. Both by rewriting someone else’s work and reading what they rewrote from mine helped me to see ideas that I could add into my own essays. Today I have learned that everyone has their own personal writing style. Neither one good or bad, but everyone’s own writing style is unique. Cheating is bad because plagiarism is definitely wrong and you can get into large amounts of trouble by doing so. I just do not see the point in cheating, because you should be proud of whatever work you have done yourself.

A major issue that has existed for many years now and is still a large issue for elementary schools and especially elementary school teachers to figure out everywhere is the issue on bullying. Bullying has not seemed to diminish in any way shape or form over the years and something must be done to educate these poor elementary school teachers on why it is occurring in the first place. If teachers could just have the ability to get inside a bullies mind and figure out where this anger and aggression arises from in the first place than maybe they could be able to help in a more constructive manner. Researchers so far say a couple reasons behind this issue maybe because children are too worried about fitting in and another is because they put other children down because of their own personal insecurities. However, the main reason experts in this field say that students bully other students is based off of personal family issues. This is probably a very hot topic that often goes unrecognized because people would like to believe society is getting better and there is more out there to prevent these problems from happening. When in actuality, they need to recognize that it may help to obtain further education so that teachers can get to the bottom of this issue and easily configure how they can fit into this situation and make things a little better for everybody.

Writing this editorial will definitely help me when it comes to writing easy three, because it gives me a second chance to look at all my information again and decide if changes need to be made on my topic and it also gives me the chance to look at my topic through a different genre. It will help me to write better in various styles; even though I am not one hundred percent positive I completed this assignment right.

Personally overall the whole process that our class is going through to write the Big paper is extremely smart and helpful. I felt that by doing the source analysis my whole entire thesis and idea for my paper has changed significantly just from the proposal which we had just previously finished. I felt that I knew what the main causes for my paper would be in the proposal, but after researching the topic further and really reading academic based journals and articles from people that knew exactly what they were talking about, I quickly found that I was wrong. Soon my major causes became my minor causes and then I came up with a new thesis for my paper. Some similarities between a source analysis and an argumentative essay are that you are doing the research and coming up with a situation to argue or purpose solutions for. However, the difference is that a source analysis does not get as in detail as the argumentative essay would. Instead it is a paper designed to help you better collect your thoughts on how you are going to use these sources that you found when it does come time to writing that big essay. In the source analysis you do not get as into the audience as you would with your essay. It is so that you can discover the research that you have found and figure out how that changes what you are about to write upon.  

To begin, I would like to start by saying that essay three is quite a large challenge. It would be almost impossible for the majority of our class to pass this essay if our professor had just said, “write a ten page research paper on whatever controversial topic you choose.” Therefore, I truly believe that we are all going about this paper the correct way. So when asked “why write a proposal for essay three?” I would have to say that it helps to organize your ideas and get you on the right track in regards to the BIG paper. It really mad you think about why you were writing the paper on the topic you chose, who your audience was going to be, a tenative thesis and it forced you to begin researching. Learning how to write a proposal is not just good for the sake of this essay or this class alone. I honestly think if I have another big paper such as this to ever write again I will type up some type of proposal to organize my thoughts. The most important part of learning how to write a proposal is because throughout our years in school and work we will be almost expected to know how to write in different genres. A proposal is one more genre that we will be familiar with and feel confident in completing!

1.) Yes, my issue is current and relevant. Children are bullied in elementary schools everyday. I will need to find academic articles to help support my idea of speculating causes on why children bully.

2.) School bullying is a negative issue, and from what others have said causes sometimes harmful effects on bullying.

3.) Others have addressed that this issue is negative and becoming more wide spread, and often address what can be done to help out the situation. What I really want to figure out is why these bullies do what they do. Is there physically something wrong in their heads? Do they do it to fit in? Or, do they bully simply because of their own insecurities?

4.) My take on this issue is that bullying is occurring widely throughout elementary schools and really is an important issue to be addressed. There are many negative effects behind this and I am going to speculate causes on why bullies bully other children. My possible thesis is: “Many Americans believe that elementary school children feel the need to bully in spite of their own insecurities or boredom, but the main reason why children are bullying is to try to fit in.” By putting down someone whom you think is inferior to you, they feel it makes them look good. Kids get laughs out of others being teased and then continue the teasing to get a rise out of the others and in return gain popularity.

First I would just like to start by saying that I have no idea what to write about for this paper. I am a little bit confused about this whole thing so far; therefore this topic that I write about may not end up being what I decide to write my last essay on. I suppose I am having trouble coming up with topics that interest me and ways to question the ideas that I have.

One issue that does interest me in some ways is bullying. Children are forced with tough issues when they are growing up. Trying to fit in is a huge never ending discrepancy. I feel that I can personally relate to this issue in ways that I may or may not be willing to talk about. It is an issue that almost all children can relate to whether they were or are being bullied or were doing the bullying themselves. Especially in elementary school these issues arise. It is not just physical abuse but also and maybe even more difficult, verbal abuse. When this sensitive subject happens to you it can be hard to forget or get past it. I know that it exists everywhere you go, and it seems that kids are only getting worse with time. You here now more than ever about suicide rates going up amongst children because of issues such as these that they cannot get rid of. I guess I just have a few questions about it. One, what causes this issues to be so large and wide spread? Do children simply pick on other children because it is the cool thing to do, or to boost their own self esteem because they have their own personal insecurities to worry about? Two, is there anything that can be done to prevent this from occurring so often?  Is there a way that society as a whole can become better or help elementary school children to get through these issues easier?

Now that I have essay number one under my belt I feel a little more confident about essay number two. I did not do as well as I had hoped to on essay number one so I feel that now I have so much more motivation to do better on the second essay. New that I know where my biggest mistakes lie I can focus on those points and try to improve on them further. For example the work cited page in the first essay was a little messed up for me, and now that we have more articles to cite I want to be sure that I am doing so correctly. Therefore, although the class activity that we did was a bit long and tedious, it helped immensely. Other areas that I know I need to focus on is elaborating on my ideas, appealing more to my audience and I know I am going to need a little help with synthesis. Synthesis comes easy to me when examples of what I am to write are handed straight to me, but I have difficulty finding similarities and quotes within all the articles that I am responsible for discovering and writing about in my own paper. So so far, that is my most difficult challenge for essay two. Over all, the first paper was definitely a good building block leading to paper number two. It really helps that the articles we are using to write from are consistently staying the same, with the exception of a few added here and there. It creates less work for us, and at the same time it really helps us to better understand the articles and different ways of writing about them.

I truly felt that From Inquiry to Academic Writing textbook helped me out immensely with my writing. This book gave plenty of good tips and pointers on what would be helpful to do while writing. It taught me about things I was not sure on; for example: synthesis, paraphrasing, citing sources and much more. So yes in many ways I have read these various chapters and taken everything that was said into consideration when I am writing, and I believe it really has helped a lot. However, every writer is different. No two writers are alike therefore I do add my own style and previous knowledge to everything I do. My writing process consists of generally the same things. I take in the information that I have learned throughout all my years of taking English class. I try to do some type of brainstorming or drafting to collect all my ideas. Second I start typing my rough draft from that, and I am always sure to have at least one person check it over along with a teacher so that I can begin my revisions. One thing that I personally have found useful is starting to draft and then taking a break and coming back to it later, because I feel then that I have to ability to spot mistakes that I could not before. Honestly, just in this little time that I have taken English 112 I feel that I have learned a ton and I truly believe that I am progressing (maybe slowly) but I am progressing into a better writer.

This next essay that our english 112 class is responsible for completing will by far be a challenging one. The most difficult part is probably going to be understanding and using synthesis correctly. I now see that this concept will be a bit hard to grasp, so to be able to display it correctly when writing our essays it will help to practice by understanding that we use synthesis constantly in our everyday lives. Therefore this next story is one of my everyday “real world” examples of synthesis.

When I was in high school I was a part of a group called the Badgerettes, because I attended Berkshire High School and our mascot was the badger. The Badgerettes are basically a kick, flag and dance line for various football and basketball half time performances and pep assemblies. It was in the fall when our kick line received an invation to a eastern dance association competition. Of course we wanted to perform in our area of expertise, high kicking. Although the majority of our 16 girls were interested in the idea, a small portion was opposed to participating. Our advisor said in order for us to participate we all must do it together, but of course the un-motivated four girls were not. Therefore we were told by our advisor and the school that it would not be possible. This really became an issue for the other 12 girls who were all very excited for the idea. So we decided with much thought that we would have to persuade our principal of our school, the band director and our advisor to let us compete under the name the “Badgerettes from Berkshire High School”, use our uniforms, and the money from our account. In order to persuade them we said that first of all if we did win, that it would look really good on our school. We showed the advisor and band director the website and sat and discussed the situation. Second we tried to remind them that although not all girls would be participating, the money that was in our account was raised by the majority of us and the majority wanted to put it to use for this competition. We put together a binder of what we have completed to earn the money and a list of the girls that were there to perform the fundraisers. Still not completely convinced we created a list of our parents  with their signitures that would watch us during practice so that our advisor and band director would not have to be responsible for us. The panel of people we had been trying to persuade were not interested, but we tried and ended up working extremely hard to find an alternative way to compete. We did, won first place in the high kick competition and made sure to rub it in the faces of the people who tried to hold us back from our determination in having an opportunity such as that.