Informal Writing
Response to Writing with Style 1/10/2014
I believe that my writings are always personal. I always find a way to include something about myself or how I feel about a certain topic in my assignments, even in assignments like research papers. Also, sometimes my writing can be a little disorganized and straightforward. I don’t really understand why I write the way that I do, but here is a little more about myself. My name is Keondra and I am a freshman here at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte majoring in Pre-Biology, at least for now. I am currently 18 years old and I am the oldest of 6 children. My family is from Augusta, Georgia and we moved here to Charlotte, North Carolina in the middle of my sophomore year of high school. Sports are really fun to me, I like to be active and move around. My two favorite sports are volleyball and basketball. When I am done with undergraduate school, I aspire to be an Obstetrician Gynecologists. Growing up, I had dreams of becoming either a teacher or a Neonatal Registered Nurse. I have always wanted to do something with kids or babies, and finally in the middle of my freshman year in high school, I attended a magnet health science and engineering magnet school, I decided that I would probably enjoy delivering babies more. I hope to get into a great Medical School someday and live out my dreams so that I am able to do the things that I want to do in life.
Blog Post 1 --- Good Writing 1/21/2014
I’d define good writing as a piece of work that evokes emotion, something that provides good detail and helps you to play out the scene in whatever you are reading. Good writing is also simple but understandable. It’s when you are being yourself in and sticking to things you know and not over complicating things. Good writing would also include fair punctuation, spelling, grammar, etc. all of the basics we learn back in elementary school. A writer can achieve this by once again, being themselves and making sure that what they are writing is simple and to the point, but also that it creates a certain “feel” when others are reading it.My example of writing that creates a scene is from the song, “Heaven”, by a gospel artist group Mary Mary. “Can you picture a place where there’s a smile on every face and all the worry all the stressing, all the pressure’s been erased. Walking down a street that’s golden, angels singing, perfect weather. Everybody’s got a mansion, y’all it just don’t get no better.” There isn’t much feeling being evoked from these lines, but they do paint a picture of how Heaven will be. While listening to these words I can imagine happy people walking around care free with nothing to worry or stress about, just enjoying being genuinely happy. I can see street full of gold shining so bright. Though there is not much emphasis on what these singing angels may look like, I can see huge mystical creatures singing on the sides of the street also very happy. Being that there will be perfect weather, I can imagine the sun shining so bright and there being a lot of clouds on a perfectly blue day, the temperature being enjoyable for us all. The last line, everybody’s got a mansion, on those streets made of gold on this perfect sunny day, I can imagine a “rich” neighborhood with everyone having their own house just enjoying life. These verses to me are good writing.The writing excerpt that I chose was very simple in words and but they still created a mood, which was one of my examples of good writing. Yes, it could have been more detailed and used more adjectives, or describing words, but still, even in its simplicity, the point was still clear to me, the listener.
What is Good Writing? 1/13/2014
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5 paragraph essay
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avoid stating your own opinion
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avoid words like, "you", "I", "we", etc.
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good transitioning
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strong introduction paragraph
I think a strong introduction paragraph is the most important because it is a great way to grab your readers attention. It is really easy to get bored while reading a long piece of work so you should start off strong and with a sound of interest from the start
Rules to Good Writing Response 1/14/2014
I don’t really believe that there is any such thing as “good” and “bad” writing. As long as there is correct grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. the writing is acceptable. Throughout school we were taught a lot of the rules from the readings, like writing long paragraphs or no cliché sayings, but rules like that aren’t even followed by professional writers today. Writing should be clear and understandable. Like O’Conner says, be direct, and if a reader finds that your writing doesn’t make much sense, it’s not the readers fault, but the writers for not getting their point across in an effective but also simple way. The assignment that we did in class that included reading different writings and putting them to order from what we thought, according to our rules, helped to show us that not all pieces of writings are the same. Also, not everyone has the same interest in writing, but that doesn’t mean that the writing isn’t good because we did not necessarily like it. In the reading a comparison to todays’ writing verses Shakespeare’s writing was made. Maybe back then, that’s what people enjoyed reading and was something that they could understand, but today, we don’t often read stories like that because it usually causes confusion. That doesn’t mean that his writing is bad compared to a more up to date writer, it’s just not something we are interesting in reading much now.This semester I want to focus on forgetting some of the “rules” that I have been taught all of my life and write in a way that I think will interest me and others. I want to be direct without being afraid to take risks because something is said to be “bad writing”. While I will keep some of the rules in mind, I don’t want to feel bound to them.
Blog Post 4 --- Inquiry Topic & Question
The question, “Why do most childhood stars become deviant as they age?” interests me a lot. I have noticed quite a few times how “innocent” Disney channel stars or stars from little kids movies grow up and attempt to change everything about themselves. I have no personal knowledge regarding this topic. It is just a behavior that I have seen or either heard about through the media. There is a lot of talk about stars like Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan, etc. in the media talking about how they rebel against society’s norms in the way that they portray themselves.I think that I could learn a lot through this topic as well as include my own thoughts about why these stars begin to show deviant behavior as time goes by. In sociology, we briefly discussed the topic deviance and took a look at how some people, who were once idols for people of a younger age, are not even allowed to be watched by those children anymore. I think that some stars do it for more attention, and fear of not having that same attention that they once received when they were the star of a television show, certain music genre, or anything. I also think that some stars become deviant as an attempt to get rid of the “innocence” that they were once held to when they were smaller.In order to find an answer, or make my own conclusion about this topic, I think I need to do research on multiple childhood stars that become rebellious to certain laws and take a look at their actions. What was their purpose for acting out in certain ways? I want to try to find statements from the stars and see if they noticed a change in behavior and if they have given any type of explanation for how they are acting. I do not know exactly where to go to find out the information that I need to collect. I know that there is always the media, but sometimes articles about celebrities are twisted to make things appear different than they are. Most celebrity blogs and sites are usually biased.I came up with this focus, once again, from sociology class. One of the stars that we took a look at is Miley Cyrus who was once known as Hannah Montana, a very country teenage girl who was both a great friend and simultaneously a pops star and no one knew except for her family and friends. In class we watched her video, “We Can’t Stop”, and observed how she has changed her whole appearance since she left Disney Channel. We did not really talk about why we think that change has occurred, so that is what I will be able to do in my own research.There may be different ways that I can approach this topic, but I have not thought of those ways yet. For now I am only looking at this from one angle, and as I continue and go on with my research, maybe I will think of other questions that could possibly tie in with my research.
This was one of my first homework assignments in English 1102, a response to Kurt Vonnegut's, "Writing with style". I think that this represents both me and my thinking because the first part is about me, and then what kind of how I started off writing and what I thought about myself as a writer. I think that my writing skills in general improved this semester because I wasn't afraid to include my opinion, and also my writings seemed to be a lot more organized than usual.
This is one of my daybook entries and what I thought good writing was at the beginning of my journey in English 1102. Reading this entry now, I can definitely see that my opinion has changed. Some of the things that I stated remain the same, but for example, I do not think that in order for your paper to be great, that it has to be in 5 paragraph essay style. That shows part of my growth and some techniques that I have leaned this semester.
This is one of my blog post; entitled Good Writing. I believe the reason that I picked so many posts and daybook entries about good writing because I actually shows what I thought good writing was at one point and compares it to my thoughts afterwards. I never really thought of good writing as something that evokes emotion until we read articles on it and then was abe to actually take what we read and apply it to something as simple as our favorite song lyrics. Good writing includes how you use your words to paint a picture. I was able to use those tips in future papers to make my writing enjoyable to the readers.
This homework discussion is another example of what I thought good writing was at the beginning. This reading in response taught me a lot and challenged some of the things that I had wrote about the first few days of class on what good writing was. It helped me to understand that good writing is not long papragraphs or using words that you wouldn't normally use, but being clear and getting a point across to keep your audience engaged.
This blog post was just the beginning for my inquiry project. I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about, but I had no idea how to go about it. This task on my to-do list shows that I start thinking from the outside on in. I took my took my opinions, and then I went to go find articles to back up what I was thinking. I think that I start like this on a lot of my papers. I grab an idea and then I figure out how to tie everything in together in a organized way.
