Ali's Site

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Do you see any relation in the use of words? I noticed that I reused words like “I agree,” “That,” “They,” “I Think and This,” I assume the person reading my essay knows who or what I’m speaking about. I also realized that in body paragraphs, if I’m talking about a certain topic, I use that word a quit often. I’m really good at writing and know exactly what to say.

Do you use certain devices more than others? I think transitions are good devices because it’s easier to comprehend what the writer is talking about I noticed that  I use transition words and key terms that I’m used to in my writing. 

Are there passages that are hard to follow? if so, can you make them simpler to read by using any of the other devices talked about in this chapter? The reuse of words that I use are things I’ve already talked about through my entire essay, just talked about in a different way. In this chapter, it said try to find synonyms of the word you want to repeat. This helps a lot with your essay because it will make the story pull together smoother and have  a much better flow.

In this paper I am trying to improve on my introduction paragraph. This is by putting in the right amount of information without overloading while still making a clear statement about where I stand on the topic. In my revisions I hope to fix all of my grammatical issues, I also plan to add in quotes to support my arguments. Also in the paper I plan to add in stories that can also relate to the topic and the subjects. The biggest challenge that I may face is being able to find enough quotes from different sources to support claims. Another challenge that I can see is addressing counterclaims. This is a challenge because I think it is a struggle to look at things from the other point of view. If the challenges are too hard for me to finish on my own I will probably look at other students work for inspiration. If that does not work than I will probably ask one of my peers to help me get a new set of eyes on the paper.  If I complete these changes then I believe that the paper will start to look more like a paper that is a final product.

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In the essay there are not a lot of changes that need to be done. The only problems that I see with the essay are many small grammatical issues. You did a good job transitioning the paragraphs for each topic. I would just try to say what you will be talking about in the introduction paragraph more clearly.  In the essay the use of quotes to support what you are saying is good. Another thing that I would fix with the paper would be cleaning up your beginning paragraph. I think that there is a lot of information in it which is good but it makes it harder to understand where you stand yourself on the topic. This can be done by just trimming some of the information down and developing a more clear thesis statement. Other than that for a first draft this is a really good paper. If you fix up some of the issues than easily this paper will become much better. 

In her article “Life Stories” Julie Beck argues that the stories of our lives are what create our personalities. She says that when we think about our lives people think about it as a narrative. These stories that we make are what create our personality according to her. She brings up that doing this is neither positive nor negative because when we think of our life as a narrative, we want there to be a good ending. This is something that is not always going to happen in life. No matter what happens one day you will never know what happens the next. The most important part of all of your life stories is what you are able to take from them and learn. In her narrative story Alyssa Ehrenfried talks about how the incarceration of her dad played a large impact on her life and personality. “It definitely impacted my personality not having him around,” is what she says. The impact however was not bad and instead helped make her into a better person who makes good choices in life. The large moments in life like this example are some of the biggest things that form us into the people that we become when we turn into teenagers and adults. If you look at things more negatively than you probably will be affected in a different way than someone with a more positive look on life. 

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When I read the “Life Stories” by Back’s the first time I understand a lot of it and I loved it and I did agree with it. But there were things I did not get in my first reading after we talked about it in class and when I read it again, I understand the things I did not get the first time and I still agree with it. She is saying storytelling it going to help you and help other people and we should keep telling a stories so we can help people.Beck explains how people see and express their narratives is how they develop their own identities. One of the interesting things I found after I read the “Life Stories” the second time was how narrative change depending on age of the person. Also Beck saying how a child has more impotent stuff to pay attention rather then narrative, like growing and development. I am glad that I read “Life Stories” again because I understand it more and give me a good view of people stories and how important the narratives in our life. I think Back nice person and she make the reader enjoy her essay and agree with her.  

After reading “I am not a Story” by Galen Strawson I did not liked his essay because I feel he is making fun of people that they write stories of their life. I do disagree with his essay. Because when I read it does not make sense and everyone how is going to read it not going to like it. Not like the “Life Stories” by Beck’s I understand it more and I do agree with her because she makes the reader enjoy it. And she is saying stories if your life it going to help you and help other people, for example if I did not go to school at all and I did not learn, that is going to affect me by a lot. So, from my mistake I would write a story to explain to people how school very important to use and we should all go to school and learn. That’s is going to help who is going to read my story and they going to fix their future and go to school. In Galen essay he is not helping people to tell story he is making them afraid to tell their life story I think he is a bad influent to people, and he should tell stories like Beck’s. I do disagree strongly with what he is saying. 

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• Read “Life’s Stories” by Julie Beck As always, please post 3-5 legible pages of your annotations. (Make ’em count!) Blog #8: (200-300 words) Julie Beck covers a lot of ground as she explores narrative’s potentially powerful influence on our lives. Identify at least three notable assertions or other moments in Beck’s text that caused you to sit up straighter and take note. Explain what exactly caught your eye. Did you react as a believer or doubter? Did you build a connection between the text and the world or the text and your self?
• “life is incredibly complex, there are lots of things going on in our environment and in our lives at all times, and in order to hold onto our experience, we need to make meaning out of it,”

I think that was one of the best quote she said in her story, and I really liked it, and I do a agree with it. What was she meaning in this quote is that stories is giving us meaning and make us understand people life and what they dealt with. And she was meaning that a story life are large part of our life and we should know that.

• “A life story is written in chalk, not ink, and it can be changed.” 

I liked this quote so much because is so true we can change our life by our hand, and we can make it to be better and better. I know we cannot change something we did wrong in our life in the past, but we still can make it better and tell how we messed up before so other people can have chance to make their life right. I agree with this quote so much.

• “As college literature class discussion sections taught me, you can see anything as a metaphor if you try hard enough.”

I chose this quote because it was related to the topic that we just finished last week. Metaphor is very important in our life and we have to use them in the right way. I know this article is not related to metaphor, but in the Life Stories she was discusses metaphors and explains their impotence to her topic. I agree with this quote because metaphors are powerful and versatile. 

I really loved this article because it held a lot of good things and meaning things that everyone will wants to do. When I was reading this article, I got really engaged to it.  

1. Are your words correctly spelled and punctuated?

       I remember my spelling was big thing in my essay and I lawyers had trouble with my spelling. But spelling become the important thing in my essay I read my essay ever time so I can know where I have wrong spelling. that’s helped me a lot. When focusing on my spelling and grammar. I hope to learn more of my mistakes.

•  Do your ideas move the paper forward? 

 This is good learning because it helps me to keep my ideas nice and clear and focused on my topic.

• adding context to quotes.

Adding context to the quotes it helped me a lot to add more word and expelling to my essay. And make the reader to understand my essay and the quotes from the texts we read.

• The organization 

I feel it good thing to organize the essay.

Because if I did not do that my essay it will be a mess, and no one is going to understand what I’m saying in my essay

Name: Ali Al Beadhany

Class: English 110 C

Date: 9-22-19

First Draft Comparisons

I think that the way that I wrote my paper’s drafts are very similar to how Anne Lamott describes the writing process of her first drafts. Lamont said that when she starts writing her first drafts is it only her fingers moving. This is how I wrote mine because I know that later on I will have to go back and make changes. Being able to write a lot then go back and pick and choose the bits and pieces that are the best is a lot more effective than trying to write a perfect paper for the first time. Free writing a first draft allows me to put all of my thoughts down on paper so when I go back to it it may not be coherent or fully finished but I can reorganize it all to make it into a final draft. This essay surprised me because I did not know that other people used this method when they were writing.

Revision Strategy Plan:

My goal is to write an essay that can get the point across within 1200 to 1500 words. To make this goal I have to first write a first draft. Afterwards the first draft will be organized to make the flow of the essay smooth. After organizing the essay any questions that were missed in the first draft will then be addressed and the previous paragraphs will be improved grammatically. If I run into any troubles my first step will be to have someone else look at my paper to see if they have any suggestions that would help me get through the problem. The biggest problem that I think I will face will probably be making all of the paragraphs flow and to fix that I will have other people read the paper and see which paragraphs would make sense where. Another problem that I can see having in the essay is repetition in the speech that I use. The solution to this problem is that after writing a draft I want to go through and replace my commonly used phrases with other words to make the paper more interesting and to have the flow better. If I do not have enough phrases than I will go to dictionairy.com to see synonyms of the words that I had been using so I can add variation.

Metaphors are important in the English Language.  We use them on a daily basis.  In Khullar’s essay he said “We have to be careful how we use Metaphors” because they might hurt people’s feelings.  Metaphors represent the kind of poetic words which relates to texts or reflections this imply things distinct from their actual explanation. Metaphors have been studied by many of the people we learn about in this class. Khullar talks a lot about and makes you think about how metaphors are used in our everyday life. Metaphors relate to everything in our lives and they can used to teach us different things or to warn us about stuff that could happen. People can be influenced by metaphors without even knowing. This is why metaphors are such an essential part of the writing process. Metaphors are something that all writers use so that the reader can always have something to think about after the book. This gives the reader insight to where the author stands and it can control some of what their decisions are in life. This also means that metaphors are some of the most powerful parts of writing because of the power that they have over people and that if they are good they can leave the reader thinking about them long after they finish reading.