Reflection on Project 3

dbking. "St. Bernard Puppy." 11/6/2005 via wikipedia. Creative Commons Attribution.

In this blog post I will be reflecting on Project 3 by answering a series of questions posed by the Writing Public Lives reading.

1) What was specifically revised from one draft to another?

I had to work on making my essay more personalized and not just as much spitting out facts but becoming more emotionally involved in the issue. I also had to work on my organization a bit. When I wrote it I just kind of wrote what came to mind but reading it back, it didn't make much sense.

2) Point to global changes: how did you reconsider your thesis or organization?

I went through my main points and made sure that all my ideas from each main point flowed together in one section and that the different main points ended up flowing together as well.

3) What led you to these changes? A reconsideration of audience? A shift in purpose?

Advice from pier review as well as teacher review helped me think about what I needed to focus on. The different ideas were not in order and jumped around, not making it very convenient for the reader to follow along. I also had to make the purpose more personal as well, not just about getting a point across but the specific idea that I wanted to leave my audience with.

4) How do these changes affect your credibility as an author?

If my information seems more organized and well thought out the reader will be more inclined to think I know what I am talking about. If they believe that I am more of an expert in the area that I am writing about then they will be more likely to listen to what I have to say and believe my point of view. If it looks like I have seen all sides of the argument then the points I make seem more justified in my evaluation of the argument and my point.

5) How will these changes better address the audience or venue?

The audience will be more inclined to continue reading if they can follow my argument better.

6) Point to local changes: how did you reconsider sentence structure and style?

I had to shorted some of my sentences so they were not so long. Some of them became hard to follow and also made some a little more informal so that I could connect more with the audience.

7) How will these changes assist your audience in understanding your purpose?

By understanding the sentences better and being able to follow my argument, hopefully what I have to say will have a bigger influence on the audience and they will hopefully want to advocate for stem cell research.

8) Did you have to reconsider the conventions of the particular genre in which you are writing?

I had to do a bit more reading up on the genre to make sure that I got the formatting right as well.

9) Finally, how does the process of reflection help you reconsider your identity as a writer?

I feel like I am the same writer but it made me notice how much I am really using emotion in my writing. When I am looking at an argument I like to know the facts so that I can make my own opinion on the issue and I felt like I did include the fact (hyperlinks) but I also become more emotionally invested in the issue and hopefully I was able to spur some emotions onto the audience.