For the Social Media and Self Project, we explained the impact social media had on our lives. By developing claims from our own beliefs and other sources, we established our position and supported it with evidence.
Learning Outcome 1: Revision
Learning outcome #1 states that students should be able to, “Demonstrate the ability to approach writing as a recursive process that requires substantial revision of drafts for content, organization, and clarity (global revision), as well as editing and proofreading (local revision).” In other words, students should be able to revise their first/early drafts with the mindset of making big changes. This can include switching the order of paragraphs, considering different evidence to include, or in some cases completely replacing paragraphs/sections if they don’t directly relate to the main claim. Then, they would look to make smaller local revisions when they get to their final draft. These smaller changes would include fixing punctuation, spelling, and grammar mistakes. I believe I improved with this learning outcome most significantly when it came to global revision. At the beginning of the semester when I would go to revise my paper, I would look only at local revision. I would make sure my spelling was correct and fix punctuation errors but that was about it. However, I am much more comfortable with making big changes to the whole structure of my essay now. The pictures above show the comparison between my first and final drafts. The second, third, and fourth pictures show how I switched the order of my paragraphs. After reading through it, I realized that it would flow more smoothly if two of my paragraphs were rearranged. I also added more evidence from the sources I had established in my rough draft in order to integrate each into multiple paragraphs. This allowed me to explain the significance of each source and show how what the authors were discussing related to my own ideas.
After I completed these global revisions, I would continue on to local revisions. However, I wouldn’t do it the same way as I did at the beginning of the semester. Instead of just focusing on spelling, grammar, and punctuation, I was eventually able to figure out mistakes I commonly made and focus on those. For example, I focused on not including empty words. I also occasionally made mistakes when it came to commas, so after learning more about commas in class I fixed these mistakes in my paper. When making global revisions, I also started using a trick that was suggested by the Writing Fellow in my class. She suggested reading my writing out loud when revising because it’s easier to pick up on words that don’t sound right and it makes punctuation errors clear.
Learning Outcome 2: Integrating Sources
Learning outcome #2 states that students should be able to, “Integrate their ideas with those of others using summary, paraphrase, quotation, analysis, and synthesis of relevant sources.” In other words, students should be able to recognize when it would be most effective to quote, summarize, or paraphrase information from another source. This means that quoting would only be used if the specific wording of the quote is important and adds to their writing. Otherwise, the information should be summarized or paraphrased. It is also important for the student to make sure all the evidence that they use relates to their own ideas and claims. I feel that I improved on this learning outcome as well. At the beginning of the semester, I tended to use mostly quotes when providing evidence from sources. However, with this project, I didn’t do this. I also believe I did a good job of selecting evidence that would thoroughly support the claim I was making. An example of this was in my fourth paragraph where I was explaining the negative effects of social media and the time spent on it on teenagers’ mental health. “Teens are continuing to increase the amount of time that they spend on their phones and by themselves, and the increased amount of time on technology correlates to a decrease in their happiness. Twenge explains that when they do hang out with friends or do something outside of the house, they often make sure to post about it so everyone else can see how much fun they’re having.” In this case, the specific wording that Twenge used wasn’t especially important but her idea was. Because of this, I chose to paraphrase instead of quote.
In other cases, I did choose to quote the author. For example, later in my fourth paragraph, I used a quote from Susan Greenfield’s book Mind Change. She said, “Social networking sites provide an unprecedented platform for social comparison and envy,” (125). I decided to use this quote because I believed her word choice in this particular statement was powerful. I didn’t think I would be able to express this problem with social media in the same way, so I used her exact words. From the beginning of the semester to this project, I improved with choosing evidence from sources that would help develop my own ideas instead of creating new ones. I also believe I improved in determining when it was best to quote or paraphrase a source.
Learning Outcomes 5 & 6: MLA and Surface-Level
Learning outcome #5 states students should be able to, “Document their work using appropriate conventions (MLA).” This project shows how I was able to successfully use MLA formatting to format my paper, in-text citations, and works cited page. I formatted my paper by using the font Times New Roman in size 12, double-spacing, and including page headers. I also did all my in-text citations correctly. When I was citing Danah Boyd’s book It’s Complicated and Susan Greenfield’s book Mind Change, my in-text citation consisted of their last names (if they hadn’t been mentioned directly before the quote) and the page number. However, my in-text citations for Jean Twenge’s article only included her last name. This is because we discussed in class that for magazine articles, the page numbers may be different based on what device the article is being looked at on. Therefore, adding page numbers may be misleading when others are looking back to that source.
Learning outcome #6 states that students should be able to, “Control sentence-level error (grammar, punctuation, spelling).” I was able to control sentence-level errors by carefully revising my work. When revising, I focused on taking out empty words and repetitive words. I took out words such as “that”, “really”, “very” and other words that don’t add to the importance of the paper. I also realized as I was revising my paper that I included the words “social media” many times throughout. To fix this I took a few out when they weren’t necessary. When doing local revision, I also focused on sentence errors, especially when it came to commas. I have the tendency to add in commas without a coordinating conjunction, so in these cases, I either took out the comma or added a coordinating conjunction. Finally, something else we went over in class was how to punctuate when “however” is used in the middle of a sentence. I used to put a comma before and after the word, but I learned that in most cases there should be a semicolon before and a comma after. Upon learning this, I corrected these errors as well.
