thlog #4

This week in class, our class worked on our drafts for WP1.  The one part that stood out to me the most was when we highlighted different parts of our essay in different colors.  On Monday, we were to highlight the first sentence of each body paragraph, citations from our course reader, quotes from our sources, and analysis.  This really helped me understand the process of writing better.  A few of my paragraphs’ topic sentences did not relate back to my thesis.  By highlighting each topic sentence, I was able to point out the ones that did not relate to my thesis and I was able to redirect them to the main argument.  I was also able to point out my lack of analysis.  I threw in a few quotes here and there, but I did not write enough analysis to support the evidence.  The different colors helped break down the components of the essay, and piece by piece I was able to correct some flaws.  In a lot of classes where I have to write essays, my main weakness is straying too far away from my thesis and writing paragraphs that don’t really belong with the rest of the paper.  Highlighting the different parts of the paper after my first draft really helped me with the issue and have my paper structured more efficiently.  

Another part of class that really helped me with the second order thinking part of writing was separating each sentence of a certain paragraph like a poem.  I realized that a lot of my sentences were short, and most of them were the same length.  I learned that having too many sentences of the same length make the writing sound too choppy.  I revised this issue by combining several sentences to make the writing flow.