1/24/2018 2 Comments Project PRocess reflection
My Decisions
When first assigned the Shakespeare drama project I kind of panicked because it meant we had to get into groups and I had also been gone for a week so I was not sure what was going on. I was very happy to find out that the project did not have to be done in a group because although I do see the value there is in teamwork I wanted to learn how to write a good 8-15 page paper by myself. At first, when I heard that we had to watch our movies twice I was outraged and really closed minded about it. I honestly thought it was a waste of my time. However looking back on it now I am not sure how well I would have understood Macbeth after just one reading.
Going Back to the basics
When it came time to actually writing the paper I again panicked due to the lack of instruction because in the years past it had been write this paper in this particular way, with this thesis, and the standard five-paragraph essay. Through this paper, I learned through trial and error. When I went to write the paper the first time I did not do any sort of pre-writing what so ever because in the past years I have been able to get away with just throwing some words together and then fixing grammar for my revisions so, I figured I would do the same for this paper.I'm not exactly sure where but somewhere between second grade and here the pre-writing had become non existent. However, when I tried to go straight to writing it did not work out very well so I spent at least one class period just staring at my computer trying to figure out how in the world I was gonna whip up a paper out of my jumbled up thoughts in my head. After staring for awhile I decided I was going to have to approach this paper in a different way.I ended up making a word document dedicated to organizing my thoughts by character which in the long run ended up shaping the structure of my paper.
When it actually came to writing the paper I had named my document "Macbeth super rough draft" mostly as a joke but it ended up being true but after pre-writing I decided I just wanted to throw my thoughts down. This process is what really helped me improve my paper by leaps and bounds. Once I had written the "super" rough draft I went back through the book version of Macbeth to look for specific quotes and instances for each character. This step really helped me notice new things about Macbeth and helped shape my thesis even more. The main example of this is when I talk about Duncan in my paper.
When editing my rough draft I also decided to go back and put in some points about why Shakespeare wrote some of the scenes the way he did. This was a growth moment for me because I do not usually think about the author's purpose in terms of purpose and usually view that as extra information; however, the guest speaker we had Dr. Smith helped me realize that the author's intention and the audience is important and can help persuade the audience more. I think this really helped me develop my paragraph about Banquo.
Overall I think this Shakespeare paper is the best paper I have ever written. I think I grew leaps and bounds as a writer. I believe the things that helped me grow the most were coming up with a pre-writing strategy, changing my editing process and looking at the historical aspect of the author using a guest speaker. All of these growth aspects are summed up in the writing standards by ILA that basically states that students use a variety of techniques and writing processes to effectively write to the audience, I believe with the skills I learned throughout this paper will help me not be as terrified next time I am assigned an 8 page paper.
2 Comments
Andy Schoenborn
1/26/2018 11:59:15 am
Hi Lenae,
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Andy
1/30/2018 02:43:32 pm
Got it!
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