This prewriting activity was very helpful for me when I started to write my first draft. It made it easy for me to separate topics based on the sources I chose to use, and allowed me to keep things in order. I like it because, by writing down the claims and quotes that I wanted to use or thought about using, I didn’t have to keep flipping through my sources trying to find “They Say’s” to incorporate into my work.
The revision process for this piece of writing, in my opinion, was a little bit tougher than the last one. What helped me most through this process was the peer comments that I had received on my first draft. Before getting peer comments, I never know what to edit on my paper because I always feel as though nothing has the need to be changed. My peers help me to realize that there is always more that I can do to my essay to make it better developed. One of the things that I focused on most in my revision process was MLA format of in-text citations. For some reason, I always mess them up, therefore, I had to look in Little Seagull a couple times to make sure I changed it to the correct way. I didn’t agree with all of the peer comments that I received, but most of them I did. Another thing that I worked on a lot while revising is trying to make everything flow. Sometimes I jump from subject to subject without any transitional words or phrases. If I hadn’t gone back and added those transitions in, my writing would’ve been confusing to readers. Overall, I think my final essay is much better than my original one was. Though it may not look like I made a lot of changes, all of the little things that I added in or took out are really what makes my paper that much stronger.
