Expository Writing
I really don't have any idea on where to start this paper, where it should go, and how it should end. It seems that I'm having a slight problem grasping the idea of expository writing. It's like when you were a kid trying to make it all the way across the monkey bars. You want to be able to reach that next rung and you try very hard, but somehow you just can't reach it. I seem to be having that problem. Right now, as I write, I'm not exactly sure I'm reaching the goal of this assignment, but this may be the best that it gets.
All through elementary school, high school, and my freshman year of college, I was taught (and believed it was the only right way) that you must start your paper with a introduction, followed by the body of the paper, and wrap up your main thoughts in the conclusion. Although, in the past three weeks, I have learned that writing can go beyond those boundaries. Now, isn't that a shock after all these years of "formal education". It just doesn't seem right not to construct a paper in the way I have always done in the past, or should I say as this bad habit I've always had. But is actually bad? It always appeared to fit me just right.
I am not planning a career in writing. I only want to add and subtract numbers, things that make sense to me. These are the things I understand, to some extent anyhow. There is no alternate interpretation of fourteen minus seven. It will always be seven, no matter how you look at it or who looks at it. It will always be seven. There is one definite answer and if you get it wrong, you're just plain wrong. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. No one can decide that on some particular day that fourteen minus seven is eight. It is impossible. The answer will, f...
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...convey your message and get the reaction(s) you want, what is there to change? How about leaving well enough alone? If it's not broke, why fix it?
As I look back through this paper, I am not certain I have met the requirements of this writing assignment. I feel as though I am still trying the reach that next bar on the monkey bars as I did when I was young. No matter how much I struggle and lunge for the next rung, it is just barely out of my reach. But in all actuality, is that what I'm really trying to accomplish? Is just reaching the next rung my main objective? No, reaching the end of the monkey bars is my goal. As for right now, I would be happy just reaching that next rung. As my first paper in approximately two years, I hope it is not too terribly bad. As the quarter progresses, I hope to improve in this writing style that is all too new and foreign to me.
During Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, it is apparent to be an absurd time for the wealthy. The shallowness of money, riches, and a place in a higher social class were probably the most important components in most lives at that period of time. This is expressed clearly by Fitzgerald, especially through his characters, which include Myrtle Wilson, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, and of course, Jay Gatsby. This novel was obviously written to criticize and condemn the ethics of the rich.
A more thorough investigation of The Great Gatsby is necessary to uncover a well-disguised theme by Fitzgerald in this work. Upon a simple read through one would probably not notice the great similarities of Jay Gatsby and Myrtle Wilson, but the two characters seemed to have the same agenda for their lives. While Gatsby took the route of acquiring money at all costs to join the upper class of society and to be acceptable in the eyes of a woman, Myrtle chose to make her way up in society at the cost of her marriage by attaching herself to money. The underlying question is who had the most success.
Although Science and Pseudoscience are evidently two completely different topics, what is considered to be classified as a Science or Pseudoscience is a controversy topic that’s still being debated today. While science builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world through the scientific method, pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as science, but lacks support of evidence and cannot be reliably tested. Hypnosis is one topic several psychologists and those in the field of science are seemingly still debating today, in result to its several different uses. Although hypnosis is shown to work when dealing with certain phenomena’s like stress, there are several uses it is considered to be very ineffective and simply not a science.
Through most of my time in high school, I always found myself writing more of exploratory writing for two simple reasons; it took a shorter amount of time, and relating writing to my personal experiences was something I had no need to look up. Exploratory writing is a time to take advantage to relate your own personal experiences and an attempt to make a connection with a certain reading. The experiences you have will not be exactly the same as you’re classmate and might be very enjoyable to read. Lamott and Hairston both use explanatory and exploratory writing in their essays by explaining the techniques of what good writers do and applying their own personal experiences. By applying both explanatory and exploratory in their essay they are able to provide the reader with new ideas they can adopt to improve their writing skills.
- Unfortunatly, all research papers have a limitation to their studies. Some of the limits I may come across is, lack of information, lack of respectable and trusted articles or books. These two will be my biggest concern when writing this paper. The way I plan to try and overcome this obstacle is by gathering all the information I have before hand, and understand the limitations I may occur before I begin writing my paper. This way, I will know my limits while writing my paper and not overstep my boundaries.
Throughout this semester I have written several essays and journals using techniques both important and unfamiliar to me. This class helped me use these techniques and steps that are involved in creating and formalizing an essay. The writing process of an essay includes information gathering, creating ideas, and writing it on paper to create a cohesive and organized paper. In complete certainty I can say I lack many of the skills necessary to create such a paper, but during this course I have learned some writing methods which I believe have improved my essays. The essays and journals in this portfolio reveal both my strengths and weaknesses in my writing and how I have both continued to make the same errors and improved in other areas.
Recently, I have been writing quite a few essays and papers throughout my college experience. This entails, but not limited to, English, History, and Economics. My style of writing and methods have generally remained the same throughout the process. In this assignment, I will be discussing how I prepare to start a paper, what my thoughts are through the process, and my strengths and weaknesses of what my final drafts look like.
...ard sentence structure or maybe even a few contradictory ideas would take our paper from a B+ to a C-. However, no one knew that Mr. M was not grading us solely upon our final draft, but on our ability to embrace writing as a continuous process where there is always room for improvement. Whatever the case, the methods Mr. M taught carried me through four years of college writing with relative ease, yet I never realized that I was adhering to his school of writing until I began to ponder this writing assignment. He did an excellent job emphasizing the technical structure of the process, while focusing intently on the personal or humanistic side to writing. Will my outlook on writing change during my future as a graduate student, straying from the ways of Mr. M? Probably, but I think a part of that process will always be in the back of my head, for better or for worse.
Finally, here I am typing this assignment on the first floor of the library finishing this paper so I’m able to continue onto my college and career journey. I’ve learned so many thing in just the past couple years that’s helped with other situations in my life and I will carry them to help me along with things through the rest of my life; like multitasking, highlighting the important facts, summarizing, communicating, to not be so self conscious, and finally to be successful in pursuing my dreams and going to UNLV and becoming a criminal profiler.
In all my years of going to school I have had trouble writing introductions and conclusions for my papers. All of my teachers would tell me that you would want your introduction to flow and clearly start what you are going to talk about. When ever I would write an introduction it would never flow. It is always fairly choppy and I could not figure out how to smoothen it out. Now that I am in college people have told me to not summarize my paper in my introduction. This requires even more creativity and thought to create an introduction, which I can never seem to think of. This also applies to my conclusions as well on how they must be so complicated. When writing an introduction and or conclusion there are suppose to be all different techniques to help write them but I can never apply any of them to what I am writing so they rarely help me. Also depending on the class I am writing for determines how difficult it is for me to write an introduction and conclusion. For example, English papers and philosophy papers usually give me a bit more trouble then history papers. I have learned from being in college that English and philosophy papers need to be much more elaborate and deep. When writing a history paper you must be direct and right to the point and that is what I seem to do best. It shows because my history paper grades are a bit higher then my philosophy and English papers.
I’m going to stop here, since I am beginning to see small, easily fixable patterns in your writing. You’ve got a good paper going here, only requiring a few revisions to be truly great. Good job! 140/150
In The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald money, power, and the fulfillment of dreams is what the story’s about. On the surface the story is about love but underneath it is about the decay of society’s morals and how the American dream is a fantasy, only money and power matter. Money, power, and dreams relate to each other by way of three of the characters in the book, Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom. Gatsby is the dreamer, Daisy cares about money, and Tom desires and needs power. People who have no money dream of money. People who have money want to be powerful. People who have power have money to back them up. Fitzgerald writes this book with disgust towards the collapse of the American society. Also the purposeless existences that many people lived, when they should have been fulfilling their potential. American people lacked all important factors to make life worthwhile.
At the beginning of the semester, I had a different idea of what is considered as good writing. In my first rough draft for my first essay, “Post-secondary education and cultural backgrounds”, I demonstrated mostly of my preconceived idea of what good writing is suppose to be. I tried to sound intelligent by asking rhetorical questions and using big words improperly. I noticed that there was no harmony and organization on my essay as a whole. I had no idea what MLA was. With the help of the Writing Center and my determination on continually revising my essay, my scattered ideas developed into cohesive statements. I learned the use of topic sentences, thesis, reference page, page number, and other given structures on writing a paper. As I tried to develop my skills to becoming a good writer, my writing and knowledge has slowly grew into the accepted academic text.
For the forty odd pages we wrote for this class, I feel that the overall achievement was getting practice. I wasn’t required to write many papers in high school so for me the constant writing was helpful for me. I can really tell a difference in the way that I write now from the way that I wrote at the start of this year. I’m really looking forward to next year, because seeing yourself improve over a short amount of time really is
Writing is an excellent practice because the benefits gained are essential to an individual’s success in a job, or just conveying their ideas through words. Within the semester we have written three major papers, and have rewritten two of those papers. In each paper I discovered new ways to get information, and have gained more experience in sculpting a paper. Obtaining this new knowledge of how to present my ideas in different writing styles will help me expand my range in how I can write, and essentially allow me to be better prepared for upcoming jobs following my college education. I can safely say that with the papers from this semester and their mistakes that dealt with minor grammar errors, awkward sentence structures, and oversimplifying