English-Check-in Activity: Journal Assignments

Please write on some of the following topics:

1. After drafting your essay, explain what you’ve found to be the most difficult aspect of the drafting process.  What’s giving you trouble?  What areas do you feel you need to address during the global revision process?  To get help, what questions should you ask you peer reviewers?


2. After receiving feedback from your classmates, discuss your plan of attack.  How do you plan to go about revising your essay?  What are some ways you can improve your essay with respect to thesis, organization, support/use of examples, and analysis according to your peer reviewers?


3. After revising your essay, consider any feedback regarding your use of written language you’ve received thus far in this class or in previous classes.  What grammatical and sentence structure issues do you need to focus on to clearly express your ideas?


4. After submitting your final draft, what were some challenges of this essay assignment?  What gave you the most trouble?  Do you expect similar difficulties with respect to the next writing assignment?  What can you do in the meantime to work on this issue?  Be specific.

For each of the following journal entries, please write between 200 to 250 words. Remember the rules of freewriting:  there are no rules!  You should not pay attention to grammar, punctuation, spelling, or sentence structure.  If you use Word for your journal entries, turn off the spell check temporarily to eliminate the distraction of spell- and grammar-checker.  Instead, get your ideas down on the page, never pausing, writing if necessary "I don't know what to write" or "blah, blah, blah" until your next thought enters your mind.  Remember, the only audience for your journaling is you; I will simply count the number of words, not read your actual freewriting unlike other writing assignments in this course.