My favorite revision strategy would be the peer discussions we are fortunate enough to have during class. By having fresh eyes on my paper, as well as reading my peer’s papers allows me to generate new ideas and expand my range of thought. There have been many times this year where I have struggled with the flow of my paper. I would get suggestions from my peers to change up paragraphs or move and add sentences. By editing my peer’s papers, I have gotten better at finding errors in my own paper as I write it. By errors, I don’t mean grammatical errors, I mean errors in my writing like word choice, sentence flow, the lengths of paragraphs, etc. Peer revision is a tool that I have been able to improve during my time in this class. Because of peer revision, I have improved my writing and revision strategies in not only this class, but other courses as well. My philosophy class involves a lot of writing. Once we write passages for homework, or big essays, I will have my friend Mitch look over my homework while I look at his. We share our ideas and at times even interpret our ideas into each other’s papers.
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Goal: My main goal during the revision process is to narrow down my thoughts and make them as specific as possible. I feel that I have a good thesis in my rough draft, but after that I kind of go all over the place. I mentioned beauty in terms of sports and cars in my rough draft. If I can stray towards one topic, that will make my argument clearer and easier for me to meet the required word count.
Plan: To construct a strong essay, I need to incorporate one of my classmate’s “let’s talk about art” project. By using that, I will have a stronger argument for my essay. By having someone else’s opinion back my own, my argument will only grow stronger and I will have constructed a solid essay.
Challenge: My biggest challenge I am going to encounter is the flow of my essay. As I previously mentioned, I need to narrow my topics to help make my argument clearer to understand. Whichever direction I choose to go, I also need to somehow incorporate a classmate’s project. Relating those two things together, while keeping a consistent flow in my essay will be a challenge.
Resources: “Let’s Talk About Art”
Photos of things that are beautiful
In society today, things that people identify as beautiful seemed to have narrowed down. The media is a big influence on what society views as beautiful. Society sees beauty in the photoshopped model that is plastered on the billboard on the highway. Times have changed, which has also caused our values and our definition of beauty to change. Armstrong stated “To regard beauty as a luxury adornment or a social signifier was to miss the true potential of the experience.” Beauty doesn’t involve luxuries or your social standing, that is what I believe people are misunderstanding. There can be a beauty in everything, as Armstrong states, “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.” Everyone has their own stance on beauty. Somebody who loves cars would see a shiny luxury vehicle as beautiful, not just because they have an expensive car and show it off, but because they appreciate every little part about the car. That is what beauty is. Being able to appreciate the appearance of the final product and the parts and pieces of the product. It works the same with a significant other as well. You see their appearance as beautiful, but you also appreciate the little things they do for you. Once society can learn to appreciate those little things, then we will have a real understanding of beauty.
For my essay, I plan on using pictures to help develop my argument, because the pictures can support my ideas. By arranging the pictures to go along with quotes or claims I include, the reader will have a better understanding of my argument. I also intend to use hyperlinks to similar articles to add more credibility to my argument. I plan on using the suggestions from my other two essays to make my writing and formatting stronger.
To start my essay, I will introduce what beauty is in my own definition, which will lead me to my thesis. My first paragraph will expand on my definition and pictures and hyperlinks will be used to help that expansion. My other body paragraphs will include quotes from Armstrong to help support my argument and I’ll include another opinion to show why my argument is correct. I will then restate my thesis and conclude my essay.
The presentation I enjoyed the most was Alexis’s presentation on the song “Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith. This presentation stood out to me, because it was one of the only presentations that were personal, and I couldn’t imagine how hard it must’ve been to write about and present her project. Many people, including myself listen to music to help cope with hard times, get excited on game day, and anything else you could think of. I thought it was really cool how her entire family comes together through that one song in remembrance of her sister. There are a few songs that I’ll listen to and I’ll be reminded of certain memories from the past, but I have never dedicated a song to someone, and my entire family doesn’t share a bond through one song like she does. I believe by choosing the essay, Alexis was able to say exactly what she wanted to say and deliver her presentation the best way she possibly could. You can put more emotion into your writing, because it’s easier to put them on paper, rather than speaking into a microphone or staring into a camera, especially with such a personal topic that Alexis decided to choose.
Immediate Context- The immediate context of this article is that it is titled “Necessary Edges; Arts, Empathy, and Education.” The article is written by Yo Yo Ma and was originally published on the World Post in January 2014. Yo Yo Ma is a very decorated cellist and songwriter. He has won several Grammy Awards and has produced more than ninety albums. Yo Yo Ma attended and graduated from both the Juilliard School and Harvard University.
Imposed Context- My purpose for reading this article is because it was assigned as a homework assignment. I need this information to be able to complete this assignment and participate in the upcoming class.
Internal Context- In his article, Yo Yo Ma talks about how art is important to the STEM and STEAM systems. He believes that the arts and sciences should be crossed to educate people better and make the world a more innovative place.
Unfamiliar Words-
Lascivious- feeling or revealing an overt and often offensive sexual desire (Google)
Virtuosos- a person highly skilled in music or another artistic pursuit (Google)
Lemmings- a small, short-tailed, thickset rodent related to the voles, found in the Arctic tundra (Google)
Quote 1: Referenced in Southhan’s article is Peter Singer’s pond analogy, “Suppose you saw a child drowning in a pond: would you jump in and rescue her, even if you hadn’t pushed her in? Even if it meant ruining your clothes?” (435)
Revised: The EAs believe that art and artists aren’t doing enough to help improve the world. They back this belief up using Peter Singer’s pond analogy, “Suppose you saw a child drowning in a pond: would you jump in and rescue her, even if you hadn’t pushed her in? Even if it meant ruining your clothes?” (435). The EAs believe that if you would save the child from drowning, why can’t you help the impoverished people?
I decided to fix this quote, because I gave no detail about the quote. In order for my readers to get a full understanding of the quote, they need a more detailed context about the beliefs of the EAs and how if connects to the quote. I also decided to follow the quote with a question that the EAs ask to get my readers to be more engaged.
Quote 2: As for Titus Kaphar, he wanted to amend historical artwork when his son asked, “How come he gets to ride while they have to walk?” This caused Titus Kaphar to take action and attempt to amend history.
Revised: Titus Kaphar, an artist who amends history through his artwork was inspired by a simple question asked by his son when they visited the Natural History Museum and came across a statue of Theodore Roosevelt riding a horse with an African American and Native American walking behind him. His son asked, “How come he gets to ride while they have to walk?” This inspired Kaphar to give those characters in the background more of a voice through his paintings by bringing them to the front of his paintings and making them more noticeable.
Like the first quote, I needed more context to introduce the quote. The readers needed to know what provoked Kaphar’s son to ask that question and how he responded to his son. I also needed to explain what actions Kaphar took to give those characters a voice in his artwork.
My strategy for finishing my final draft of my writing prompt is full of many different steps. First the most easy step I need to get done is finish writing the rest of my paper. That is number one on the list of my goals. Once I get the rest of my paper done, I usually quickly revise it myself looking for small things like grammar and any typos I may have missed. Then I will have a peer also review my paper and have them go through and look for the global edits I would have missed if I read my own paper. As they revise my paper, I will take notes about their suggestions and ideas that I think will help strengthen my paper. After this I will go back and add in my peer’s ideas in my paper and reread it again. If I feel there needs to be more ideas or quotations in my paper, I will go back and read through the assigned readings again and try and pull more out of them. I find when I do this that there are things in the reading that stand out to me that didn’t stand out the first time I read it. Once I shuffled around some sentences and added some new ideas, I will go to a different peer and have them revise my improved work. They will add more ideas and suggestions to my paper, and like in the previous steps, I will go back and them where they suggested or where I see fit. Once I do that I will reread my work and by this time, I think the paper is perfect, but I play it safe and I’ll have one more person read my paper. If they say it’s good and give e a thumbs up, I go print it and hand it in. The revision is the most important part of the whole process, because without it I’d still be stuck on square one.
Ideas- In Jeff’s paper I liked how he decided to connect all forms of art to each other to show how inspirational art really is.
“Music inspires fashion, painting, transforms directing, dancing can be connected through drawing, art as a whole is truly something amazing that many of us take for granted.”
Evidence- In Jacob’s paper, he pulled a quote from Southan to help further his argument.
“In Southans words, “ does your good deed make as much of a difference as simply handing over the money? If not. How good of a deed is it really ?” the message is clear, but is there movement limited to people who have a large enough income to support donating to a cause?”
Organization- In Jayke’s paper, I commented how he connected two quotes that were used earlier. This could be used to help continue the argument against the EAs.
“Sometimes artists paint the world burning, however sometimes they paint houses and change people’s world.”
Reviewing my peer’s papers only focusing on global edits was more challenging than I expected. Students, along with myself have always been pushed to have perfect grammar, spelling, etc. so having to completely ignore that and dive deeper into the writing was a challenge. However, I hope my comments will help the authors further their arguments and strengthen their writing. The idea of global edits will also help me with my own writing, since I will be able to use my own comments on other papers to help push my ideas in my own paper.
After reading the intro paragraphs of my peers, I can say I saw a lot of things I can potentially include in my own paragraph. I liked the different ideas and stances different people had on the TED Talks and Southan. I also liked how some people started their paragraph with a quotation or a question to hook the reader. That is something I may consider doing for my own intro paragraph. Reading other people’s intro paragraphs opened me up to new ideas that I never would have thought about if I never peer reviewed other writing, and I hope it will improve my own.
Link to comments: http://elishaemerson.uneportfolio.org/2018/02/06/stakes-and-the-introductory-paragraph-2/#comment-350
