Throughout high school, all every student wants to do is work in a group, that is until it's an essay; at least that's the case for me. Sure, I don't mind working alone, in fact I thoroughly enjoy it. It's just that working in a group on that boring worksheet your teacher gave you can make it so much more bearable.
However, a group essay is much different. Everyone has a distinct writing style that varies greatly from person to person; so how do you mesh all those styles together to make a cohesive essay? My groups has struggled with that the whole week, but I think we have it down now. In the beginning, we knew that each of us having our own paragraph to write was not going to bring us the results we wanted; so instead we started writing it all together. With our prewrite out, we went paragraph by paragraph, laying out the basics of what we wanted to say. It was difficult because we all had ideas about how we wanted to say things, but we compromised by someone just typing out a sentence and we would discuss it and make changes if necessary. Once our body paragraphs were "done", we went back and added details to make the essay more indepth. Next on our list to tackle is the introduction and conclusion. Our group decided to leave them for the end so we would have a better idea of what our essay would be about. Working in a group
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“Do the prewrite” Andy said to the class, “you won’t regret it”.
We learned that doing a prewrite would prevent us from writing unnecessary pages before you get to your point. However, a prewrite is something I wouldn’t have normally done before AP Lit and I had no clue what a “prewrite” entailed. I am the type of person who jumps right into a paper and words just flow out. After the prewrite was explained to my group, it made the world of difference in how we approached starting our essay. Our prewrite contained each chapter we chose from the how to book, Fosters explanation, and examples for Beowulf and Going after Cacciato. We knew exactly what was going to be discussed in the paper and how each book compared/contrasted with each other. I feel much more confident and prepared about our summer reading paper. I am still a little leary of the format of the essay and not making it sound repetitive since the paragraphs follow the same layout. However, I’m glad we are in groups for this essay, being able to discuss the books and gather information from others helps to clear up confusions we had. Prewrite is important for all writing Going into AP Lit, I was prepared to do a lot of writing and reading. And from the first week I can tell I will be a doing my fair share of both. However, what I wasn't expecting was how much my writing style would need to change. The Harvard writing video we watched really opened my eyes as to the type of writing I would be expected to write in college. Harvard freshman who had excelled at writing in high school, were told that their writing needed a lot of work by their college professors, that's a scary thought.The video taught me that college professors don't care about obvious facts, they want your thought and feelings about the topic. "Say what you mean in writing, not what you think your reader wants to hear" was a great quote from the video; I believe that most high schoolers can agree they haven't been writing for themselves, but for the grade. I can't recall ever writing something meaningful to me. I feel as though we've been taught up to this point to state the facts, use the standard 5 paragraph essay format, etc. I am up for the challenge of changing my writing style, but I fear that it is going to be a hard transition from high school writing to college writing in order to be prepared for the AP test.
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March 2017
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