Thloggin' Week 6

My biggest takeaway from Monday’s class regarding how to improve my paper was when we each counted the number of words in our longest and shortest sentences. I realized I did not have much of a varied sentence structure, so it was something I tried to work on. I had not really thought about how different lengths can affect the work as a whole. But it can. However, I definitely struggled with my WP2, much more than I did with my WP1. I think the root of my problem was my lack of a strong thesis. My argument was not as clear as I would have liked, but I couldn’t really quite come up with something better. I wish I had a more “arguable” thesis. My thesis argued that the non-academic source took the most different approach towards persuading the readers because of how a non-academic audience responds. I felt that both scholarly and non-academic sources were equally effective because they utilized different conventions to portray their message. Had the scholarly articles used the techniques from the non-academic source, or vice versa, it would not have been effective. But I just feel like my essay is missing something.

The online class. It was definitely a bit confusing in the beginning. I liked it. But it’s not something I’d really want to keep doing. I think the interactivity in class is really important towards our retention of information. However, it was a cool experience and definitely very unique. The class really forced me to pay full attention in order to not get behind or get off track. I liked responding to others’ posts right after we posted ours because what we wrote was still freshly in our heads, so we could really compare what we wrote. Now, I’m just scared for WP3. Let’s see how it goes!