Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

November 2006 Dear Brian,

  	Hello again. I see that you have continued to improve and continue  your work here at the University of Massachusetts. You have improved in your proofreading abilities, word choice, context, and structural writing. However you have a lot further to travel to becoming a solid college writer. 

    In the two latest papers you have had to examine a piece of another persons work, as well as write a letter advocating for change. These are far different from that of your first piece concerning your identity. Both papers had many different problems in them, due to their different styles of writing, but within them both there was still a common thread of problematic areas of language. 

     To begin with, the paper examining Anzaldua's “How To Tame a Wild Tongue” had problems with both its language and content. There were copious errors concerning grammar, spelling, paragraph indentation, and punctuation. These problems are unacceptable in college writing, especially when it is both your final draft, as well as your second and third paper that you are handing in to be graded. This problem can be easily avoided by proofreading better, giving the paper to a peer, and other copyediting. One trick that would be helpful is to  take a paper and read it upside down to check for spelling, or grammar. This helped me because it slowed down my reading, and instead of looking for ideas and flow, I would knit pick on the details. Perhaps what you need to do is continue to slowdown your reading, and do multiple read through for grammar, and a different read through in which you look only for content and flow. When you break these up you will be able to catch more mistakes and clean up your reading. With fewer mistakes you will have more effective papers, because more people will be paying attention to your thoughts and ideas rather than silly grammatical mistakes. Once you fix this idea that you don’t need to proofread multiple times you will be halfway on your journey to becoming the ultimate college writer. 

     Along with the grammatical mistakes in your piece on “How to Tame the Wild Tongue” their were also some structural, and language issues that came into play. Perhaps one of the biggest issues was word choice, or diction. One word that is chosen wrong can change the entire meaning of an essay. In this particular essay there was one point in which you were trying to describe Anzaldua’s struggle of race and ethnicity, however, because of word choice, ended up sounding as if you believed that she had an absence of a race, rather than the absence of others accepting that race. 

    Perhaps the biggest problem in both of my works, as well as my writing in general is ending sentences in prepositions, as well as using common connective verbs such as “is” in the majority of my sentences. These were two of the biggest issues with both my analysis of “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” and my call to Congress for an enforcement of monopoly rules concerning media conglomerates. When proofreading a paper, I should go through and circle each time I use the word is, or one of its tenses, and try to eliminate it from my writing. With these tenses being constantly exploited, my writing can get repetitive and boring. Changing the sequence in which you describe something, or in which you word them can change the entire feel of the paper, and keep readers interested. 

     Although you have relived many of the same mistakes from your first paper that you have found in your second and third paper, you can see vast improvements in other areas, as well as steps in the right direction to eliminate some reoccurring mistakes. An area in which you have shown a great improvement in is your elimination of run on sentences. In your identity piece you had numerous unnecessary run on, which ended up distracting the reader and fogging the message you were trying to get across. In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” and your letter to Congress you were more precise and clear on your message, and the reader was not distracted by run on sentences and crisscrossed ideas. 

     The one issue that I noticed after reading you new writings that was not identified in your identity piece would be your use of negation as a writing technique. Often time’s negation can be a confusing tactic. In your writing, which was especially noticeable on your Anzaldua piece, it did not add to the meaning but rather confused the reader. Next time try to not use negation as a technique to describe something unless it is clear that you are trying to do so, and use support to further this negation. 

    Finally, one thing that you have to do in all your essays is to make clear your message that you are trying to convey, and stick to it. Perhaps the best way to do this is write your thesis first. Walk away from your paper, and go back to write it. Once you have written your paper, step away and give it some time. After coming back to it, read each sentence and see how it relates to your thesis. If it has nothing to contribute to it in the end, it is superfluous and can be deleted. Without these sentences and ideas that do not contribute to the overall picture, your essay will be more fluent and concise. 

     In writing my final paper for the class, I hope to take the most time and detail with this paper. Probably my biggest downfall is taking the time to write a paper, and walk away for a while. I believe time away from a paper is probably the most important thing in writing because it lets you examine it as not your writing, but as an unbiased proofreader. Overall, to perfect your college writing, what you really need to do is have more focus and time put into your paper rather than be concerned with the small details. If you do this, the details will fall in place for themselves and you truly will be a good college writer. Good luck with the rest of your paper and remember to just take your time. 

Sincerely,

Brian Donnelly

--72.19.101.223 22:46, 4 December 2006 (EST)