Education

Education
1. Synthesis is a critical thinking skill that you will use many times in college. In a short paragraph (~100 words), I want you to explain how you practiced synthesizing different texts in Writing Project w. Then, I want you to reflect on how this kind of writing project fits into your past writing experience and may fit into your future writing. The following are some questions that will help you reflect:

• How does this way of writing compare and contrast to the writing that you’ve done in the past?
• When do you think you might have to write like this in the future?
• How did this requirement of synthesizing two authors’ ideas change the previous ways you generated ideas and structured your writing?
• What was the most challenging part of writing in this way? How did you overcome these challenges?
• If you had to start this project over from the beginning, what would you do differently and why?

2. In this essay you had to incorporate quotations from other authors. In a short paragraph (~100 words), I want you to explain in your own words how these quotations helped you to strengthen your synthesis. Then, I want you to reflect on how you dealt with the challenge of this new requirement. The following are some questions to help you reflect:
• At what point in the writing process did you insert quotations in your essay? For example, did you put them in your power draft? Did you have them in your revised draft? Do you think would try putting them in at a different time in the future?
• If you need to include quotations in future essays, how can you change your reading method to make it more easy to find quotations?
• What were the best kind of words/phrases/sentences to look for when trying to find quotations to include?
• The authors of our textbook say that “there is a great deal of back-and-forth between your argument and any quotations you select.” This means that you may have to change the quotations that you pick and your own writing several times in order to get get the strongest possible combination of supporting points and quotations. Did you go “back-and-forth,” making changes to both your quotations and your supporting points? How did doing this make your essay stronger?
• Did your partners, teacher or TA find any problems with your quotations? What did you do to solve these problems?

3. Many inexperienced writers are not accustomed to or committed to revising. However, expert writers know how vitally important revision is to creating strong essays. The stronger you become as a writer, the better you will get at deciding what to revise in your essay. For now, I want you to reflect on the feedback you got from other people and on how this feedback guided your revision. Here are some questions to help you write a short paragraph of reflection (~100 words).
◦ What patterns do you see? In other words, what requirements of this essay did you have the most challenges with?
◦ Most inexperienced writers will respond to a comment by just changing the one small part of the essay that comment relates to. Skilled writers will respond to a comment by changing that one part and also searching their whole essay for similar problems. What did you do? What do you plan to differently in the future?
◦ What were the most helpful comments you got? Why? How did those comments help you change your essay?
◦ Were there any comments you disagreed with? Why? Even if you don’t agree with the writers of the comment, their failure to understand you or to agree with you still probably suggests a change that you could make so that your readers will understand you and have a greater chance of agreeing with you. Given this, how can you change your essay based on that comment?
◦ Were there comments that pointed out problems you knew you had but that you didn’t know how to fix? What steps did you or could you take to figure out a solution to those problems?
How much time did you spend on revision? Did you do it all at once or in multiple sessions? Given the number and quality of comments you got, how long do you think you would need to spend to satisfactorily respond to all of the