Evaluation of my project - blog 28

I.

Focus – I feel that my focus is strong and is repeated throughout the essay. Both the interview and literature point to the focus.  – 45

Audience/genre – My initial drafts did not identify a strong enough focus on the writing studies community as an audience. The form seems appropriate but I am not sure that the language is entirely appropriate (if it is formal enough or if it uses the right writing studies terminology). I tried to fix the audience issue in the last draft and felt I did this well, but overall the paper could have been better if, from start to finish, I had kept the writing studies community in mind.  -35

Organization – Is pretty strong, the sections are divided clearly with headings and all. Each idea accomplishes a different purpose, except perhaps the Analysis and Conclusion, which feel a bit repetitious. Also, transitions and overall flow were hard to do because of the sections.  -28

Development – I do a lot of in-depth discussion both in my Lit Review and Data sections. -30

Correctness – Little to no errors -5

Total 143

II.

Data & Analysis (Preliminary Blog 22, further analysis Blogs 24, 26, 27, 29)

I felt that my data was very useful and connected well to my project’s focus. Although at first I had trouble finding sources that seemed relevant, the article and the blogs that I chose to use actually offered very valuable insight on my topic. It was the right kind of information for my topic, especially because it did not draw from solely Christian sources I was able to generalize the information for the general audience easily. The interview went extremely well and offered a lot of valuable information for my topic.

I feel like my analysis was very good and drew out strong points that contributed to my focus. If anything the only downside is that I could not fit all of the information from the analysis into the paper because there was so much. The analysis built well into the research question and also generated new potential factors of awkwardness that was unique from that found in the literature review. I was not sure if I divided the factors into useful categories or not, I wasn’t sure if the categories should match those of the literature review or be distinct. Also, it was hard to choose which factors from the analysis to put in the paper, since they all could not fit but they all felt important. I do feel like the analysis comes off a bit choppy and does not flow as a whole paper well. I wasn’t sure how to fit enough ‘discussion’ while having enough pure analysis. I also was unsure of where to put the discussion of my results – either right after the section of interview that I got it from or in the conclusion.

190

Really strong data and turned it all in on time, but I wish I had done better with the analysis and drawing out the points in a logical fashion.

III.

Writing process techniques (Blogs 7, 8, 19-29)

My writing process for this project went well, although I think the timing of things was a bit scattered. From beginning to end I had a plan that was created and adjusted based on the challenges that came up. I was able to receive feedback from the blogs and from in class discussions that helped me understand better what needed to be done. My techniques for revision drew both from my personal decisions and from others’ feedback. The techniques for invention were new to me and fun to use (learning and then implementing discourse analysis) and allowed me to add something new to a topic I was already interested in.

Revision process (compare 22,24, & 26, 20 & 25, 23 & 27, and 27 & 29)

I feel that my revision process showed a lot of improvement in each step. The introduction changed a lot between its original version (blog 25) and the final version (blog 29) based on the information I gained from the in class presentation. The final draft of 27 and of 29 also shows some important, although not foundational, changes toward framing the piece more towards a writing studies audience.

Writing about Writing (Blogs 7,8, 19, 20)

Blog 7 and 8 Are the Research plan and the Revised Research plan respectively. In both of these posts I needed to think through the upcoming process. The former was mainly a discussion of where I was at with the thinking about my project. In the latter I rewrote the research plan in the correct format and limited my discussion in each of the correct headings (statement of purpose, statement of focus, etc), this shows improvement in how I was thinking about the project and also in the writing I needed to do for the project. Additionally, I saw that my thinking became much clearer in the second post. In the section on Information I Need to Gather I listed things more systematically and clearly, stating things as achievable goals. Blog 19 is also a “thinking on paper” blog where I was able to discuss how things were going so far. I mentioned some of the difficulties as well as what I was doing to overcome them. I think this post is a good example and shows how I was able to point out specific strengths and issues I was having with the project. It did not have much discussion about my actual writing process because at that point I was still doing more research than writing. Blog 20 was the one where we discussed our paper with a partner then wrote out what was said. This is also an example of metacognitive strategy used on my project.

140

I think my writing process was strong and I saw improvement in each draft. The only exception would be in the data analysis & conclusion sections, which I wrote last. I don’t feel like my improvements were very great and I don’t feel confident that these sections are the best they could be.

Total: 473