ENC 1101
Everybody knows that a cub is not nearly as dangerous as a full-grown tiger but, is still more dangerous than most animals.
Since the beginning of the semester, we had to face many Reading Responses along with other different activities, which I was barely able to do it. Just like a cub, I embrace the task and I fought with all my strengths, fearless. One thing that I already had was self-determination but even though I try to use my little pawns to scratch the assignment, one single bite could have been way more effective.
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I felt very lost in my first reading response. The text by Wardle and Downs “Threshold Concepts of Writing” was a simple introductory text explaining how writing has different views. How Wardle and Downs prefer to take another perspective from the text, instead of saying what is correct and what is not, they would like to work with the writer for a better writing experience. In this assignment, we needed to summarize the text and give our own opinion and points of views along with some textual support. All the instructions were clear and relatively easy but there was something about it that really made me feel stuck.
In this next stage, I will show part of my first Reading Response
1 - Even though it was my first Reading Response I did the beginning of the MLA format correctly.
2 - Rapidly after a good start I lower the quality of my writing with a very confusing introduction. I tried to talk about the main point but my arguments were weak and lacking on strong ideas.
3 - Finally, after a very weird paragraph when I am developing the idea I just dropped a random quote from the book hoping that it would resolve all my issues and give my essay textual support. Instead, it confuses the reader even more because the audience was not prepared for a quote and I do not make comment about it or even explain why it was important for my essay.
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It is also important to mention and to pinpoint my failure in the MLA in-text citation and the reference page. At the time, I had no idea that what I was doing was correct and, more importantly, I thought that if I got it wrong it would not be relevant. This is what I consider to be one of my biggest mistakes because the content can be as important as the way of delivering that information.
Although I am criticizing myself very vigorously I received full marks in this assignment because, apparently, my teacher was expecting something similar or at least to my level of writing. She gave me feedback right after I receive my grade and not only pointed out the bad aspects of my writing but also the good ones. She also saw where I could potentially improve my writing and gave me tips. For example, for the quote, she said "In the future, explain a little more about the quote you use--why are the authors saying this? How does it relate to your overall point?". This is how I start slowly improving my reading responses, I used her tip to boost my text and obviously to not commit the same mistake twice. I have to say that it took me a few tries, but after I could master it, it changed the way I write completely, at least from my perspective.
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Later on, in class we had different activities, like quick writing or group activities, that force us to get used to writing and typing. Overall, in this course, we had 14 other Reading Responses, very similar to the previously shown, which made me try new things and experiment. From my point of view, the consistency and the great number of Reading Responses were the most influential factors of my growth in this course.
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Especially because I could realize that I was Learning.