Thursday, February 18, 2016

Self Assessment: Essay 1 Lawend Barzenji

                         When I first began this assignment I thought that it would just be another paper to write, a chore, if that is what you want to call it, but as a I did some brainstorming, writing, and research my idea of this paper changed because I found a topic that really caught my interests. My teacher, Mrs. Thomas, told us that we could go on ted.com and find an issue related to our service learning project. So I went on ted.com and spent about two days finding something I really wanted to research. I found a speech about why we should use blood from young humans to cure diseases that come with age. That is a break through in the medical world so I had to stick with his argument. When selecting this speech I just thought about whether or not it related to my service learning project and if the speaker gave a valid argument including evidence and other point of views.
                      The most difficult issue I came across while writing was mainly how I wanted my topics from my thesis ordered. I didn't want to just mash it all together and go on from one topic to another. I wanted it to flow, I wanted transitions, which I am not the best at. What I did was basically just mash my topics together, I know I just said that I didn't want to do that but I rearranged my paragraphs after I finished my paper.
                      Along with writing my paper I got a few people to help me revise it. My teacher, Mrs. Thomas commented on our rough drafts on Kizena as well as a student from my class that I was partnered up with to for revising and my brother. I was told that my paper was good but that I should clear up my thesis. Also my brother told me to include more quotes from the speech and a few other things. I took everyone's advice because I am not a good writer so any advice I get I put it into consideration.
                    I think that my paper had some typical strong and weak points. The strong points would have to be the parts of me discussing how the speaker used rhetoric in his speech. The weak points is probably my conclusion if anything. I have never been well with ending a paper. I always feel like I have given the information that is needed so there is no need to conclude. Sometimes conclusions feel empty to me and pointless so I hate writing them. For my conclusion I just looked at the sample essay my teacher provided to give me an idea of what will be expected. It helped out a lot. I really like that fact that she gives us sample essays.
                  In the next essay assignment I will probably spend more time with the research and on writing my paper. I want to make sure that my paper is going to be well developed so I will try to do a little of it at a time over a period of days. I will also spend more time on my thesis because I feel that a weak thesis leads to a weak paper.

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