Reading Ch.1 - 3 Post #1

Summary:
After reading the first three chapters of The McGraw-Hill guide I got a nice introduction on what writing for college is going to be like. In chapter one they discuss the four writing areas of life. Writing as a college student, as a professional, as a citizen, and as a family member or friend. There are four learning goals in this course. Rhetorical knowledge is writing for a specific purpose or audience. Critical thinking, reading, and writing is when you examine the idea from many different prospectives. The writing process is learning how to write an effective paper through so many steps. First you generate ideas then relate them to the assignment, then research and begin writing an inital draft, finally ask for advice and revise, edit, and polish the paper. As for the knowledge of convertions, it's the table manners of writing. When to use the correct grammar and mechanics. In chapter two they talk how to help you better understanding of readings, visuals, and websites. By scanning or skimming the text before actually reading it can help give a better idea. To annotate a reading effectively you should underline the main point or thesis and the key supporting points using the margins. While reading visuals find words that can describe it and ask yourself questions and for reading websites make a journal and list questions from research and keep a summary of everything you have read. They also talk about steps to writing a good summary. To write a summary you first read the text quickly and get a good sense of what it's saying, then read it again and write down the main points of each paragraph, after label the major sections, then write a statement that captures the writer's main point or thesis, and lastly work backwards from step four, writing a paragraph in your own words. In chapter three they discuss ways to discover ideas for your writings and keeping journals. Using lists, freewriting, questioning, answering the questions, brainstorming, and clustering are all ways to help you come up with ideas for a paper topic. There are many different journals a writer can use while in the process of writing their paper. Using a dialectical journal can help you to write notes about the topic then on the facing side write questions and comments about the notes you took. A vocabulary journal is used to write down words and definitions that you discovered when reading. Using concept maps, flowcharts, timelines, and pedigree charts can help you to discover and learn more about your topic.

Reaction:
My reaction to this reading was that it was very informative and gives me ideas and ways to get started, draft, and revise and polish a paper. The concepts of these chapters gives me a good insight on what its going to be like in composition two.

3 Questions:
1. How did you come up with an effective writing process?
2. How well does the writing process you have talked about work?
3. What were the main reasons for coming up with the this writing process?