Your English 110 Learning Log
Now that you have received your first paper, feedback, and grade, it’s time to check in with our learning outcomes. It is increasingly important for you, as college students, to take agency (or take charge of) your own learning. This can mean anything from looking up words and references you don’t understand to creating and following strategies to help achieve your educational goals. For this homework assignment, I’m asking you to “Log your Learning.”
First, create a page on your ePortfolio menu called: My Learning Log.
Next, I would like you to sit down with your first formal paper and learning outcomes, as listed on your class syllabus, and reflect on these learning goals, one by one.
You will revisit and revise your learning log after each major paper assignment, but feel free to update it throughout the course. I am looking for a balance of reflection and evidence. You can use quotes, photos of, and links to specific places in your work. I would like you to reference at least one writing sample outside of English 110.
Learning Outcomes
- Demonstrate the ability to approach writing as a recursive process that requires substantial revision of drafts for content, organization, and clarity (global revision), as well as editing and proofreading (local revision).
(200-300 words) Please discuss how you are working to achieve this goal. Use specifics. Point to changes you’ve made to a paper throughout your writing process. You could use a before and after. Please indicate specific global changes. You could describe a changed habit or shift in your perspective. Maybe you’ve developed new writing strategy. Don’t forget to back these descriptions with evidence. You can use pictures of notes, outlines, or index cards. You may point to specific moments in your revision strategy. If your revision process does not lead to major changes in your work, how do you plan to continue to pursue this goal?
- Be able to integrate their ideas with those of others using summary, paraphrase, quotation, analysis, and synthesis of relevant sources.
(200-300 words) Please discuss how you are working to achieve this goal. Again, I’d like you to use specifics. Have you changed the way you view summary, paraphrase, quotation, analysis, and synthesis? Perhaps you could point to a rhetorical move you made in your paper that took effort? You may reference homework—quotes you have added and justified. You may reference a shift in how you use summary. What else could you do to pursue this learning goal?
- Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.
(150-300 words) Reflect back to the beginning of class, and how you approached reading an essay. Please discuss how you are working to achieve this goal. Again, I’d like you to use specifics. Perhaps you could point to a time when you used a quote critically. You could use reading assignment photos as evidence of your deep reading. You may point to a photo of your annotations. It’s possible while reading you generated interesting questions or reflection you pursued. Provide evidence of that pursuit. If you feel like this is an area that you want to improve, where could you start?
- Be able to critique their own and others’ work by emphasizing global revision early in the writing process and local revision later in the process.
(150-300 words) We have one peer review down and several more to go. Please discuss how you are have pushed yourself to notice and comment on global changes in both your own and your peer’s papers. Have you developed any reading techniques? What do you look for as you read those first drafts? Please feel encouraged to point to specific comments you may have made. How can you further improve?
- Document their work using appropriate conventions (MLA).
(150-300 words) As we have discussed in class, a large part of learning to follow appropriate MLA conventions involves knowing where to look. What references have you found and used while documenting your sources. Another part of appropriate citation involves knowing how to identify your source. For example, is your source a book with one author or two? Is it an anthology or is it a scholarly article? In what areas do you lack confidence, and how do you plan to take agency for your learning?
- Control sentence-level error (grammar, punctuation, spelling).
(150-200 words) Have you noticed any patterns of error in your work or those of others? Do you feel motivated to learn better grammar, punctuation, or spelling habits? A cleanly written paper, email, blog post, or professional report empowers your voice. Use this space to identify an area in which you have improved or would like to improve. What is your strategy to achieve these goals?
Your honest self-evaluation will become a tool you can use to direct and motivate your own learning. We have only just begun, and I don’t expect you to have mastered these learning outcomes right away. Remember, learning is a process, and you will return to these learning logs and revise your reflections and the evidence you use to support them.
Your Completed Learning Log should be completed by Friday: October 13
