blog #12

Part 1

This week in the writing internship we helped a guy get started on a paper for a communication major class. It was to be written as a news article. He had interviewed three people and was supposed to write using those people as a source. We helped him start on a thesis to get him started. Unfortunately I had to leave before the tutoring was done since I had to leave for class but I learned the different parts of a thesis and that even though the source of a paper may change but the style is still the same even though it’s not the normal text or articles we are used to drawing our writing from.

Writing internship reflection

  Overall my writing internship was a good experience in that I learned where common mistakes are made in witting. And recurring issues people had the biggest one that I saw was grammar and misuse of past tense and present tense. But this may have been due to the fact that majority of the students that came in during my hours there were foreign students and English was their second language. So that could have been another difficulty for them getting lost in translation when writing their thoughts down. The most helpful thing that I noticed in the internship was the need to put the thesis early in the paper and make sure to have one to tell the reader what is going on in the paper. I applied this to my own writing by making sure to have the thesis right off the bat in a recent paper about disturbances in a landscape for my landscape ecology class. This helped with my issue of origination in my papers.

Part 2

 Thing I worked on this semester (there’s more but these are the things I thought I had the biggest issues with prior)

·         Organization

·         Passive versus active writing

·         Use of punctuation (colons, semi colons, apostrophes, ect. )

·         Cutting out extras (streamlining)

·         Flow of sentences (sentence connectivity)

Some pieces of writing I might include for the writing portfolio are the cover letter, a recent piece of writing from my writing in the major course since I’ve been enrolled in English 304 and a piece form my junior writing portfolio that we revised in class. There are probably more I could include I just can’t think of them at the moment.

blog#11

this week for the writting internship we looked at a paper for a ploy sciencence class on the iraq war. thier was alot of gramer issues and puntuation errors. the only thing that needed to be fixed structure wise was putting the thesis in the first paragraph becouse it was located deeper in the paper originaly.



part 2

Our Brief History

Georgia Martinell, founder, worked for several years in animal shelters and private veterinary clinics all over the West Coast.  In 2006, she moved to a rural Northern Idaho town and realized a  need for action:  With no other animal rescue groups in the immediate area, the stray population was large and people had nowhere to go for low-cost spaying and neutering services.  

. A[BB1]  Board of Directors was formed and Second Chance Animal, Inc. was made into a legitimate 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization[BB2] . .

To date we have helped more than 560 animals in need, supplied over 55 dog houses to those with no shelter.  We have given away thousands of pounds of kibble to hungry pets.  This was all done in the last 3 years with less than 20 volunteers[BB3] [BB4] .

From second chance animal web site with some revision

About Us[BB5] 

Second Chance Animal, Inc.  committed to promoting the humane treatment of animals, preventing animal cruelty, and ending over-p[BB6] opulation of domestic pets . We’re striving to reach this goal by educating the public on the importance of responsible pet ownership and preventing the next generation of homeless pets.

EVERY animal deserves a good life and a loving home. With the support of the community, we have already helped thousands [BB7] of pets in our local area. We hope, with continued support, we will be able to grow and fight for all [BB8]  animals.

Our mission is to improve the lives of all animals[BB9] , end domestic pet  over-population, have an aggressive spay/neuter program, and compassionate stewardship of resources[BB10] .

We depend on volunteers and donations to maintain our funding and help us end animal suffering.

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blog#10

This week I did not attend the weekly writing internship due to other obligations. But here is what I’ve been working on for the tri fold.

Our History

Georgia Martinell, founder, worked for several years in animal shelters and private veterinary clinics all over the West Coast.  In 2006, she moved to a rural Northern Idaho town and realized a the extreme need for action.  With no other animal rescue groups in the immediate area, the stray population was large and people had nowhere to go for low-cost spaying and neutering services.  

Georgia started holding yard sales to earn extra money, so she could help out.  As people heard about these new animal programs and services, more and more families started providing assistance. A Board of Directors was formed and Second Chance Animal, Inc. was made into a legitimate 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization.  Fundraising efforts got a boost, and a thrift store was opened to create more revenue for the charity in 2009. The thift store was sold recently and is no longer bringing in revenue so donations help more than ever now.

To date we have helped more than 560 animals in need, supplied over 55 dog houses to those with no shelter.  We have given away thousands of pounds of kibble to hungry pets.  This was all done in the last 3 years with less than 20 volunteers.

From second chance animal web site with some revision

About Us

Second Chance Animal, Inc. is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit committed to promoting the humane treatment of animals, preventing animal cruelty, and ending over population of domestic pets over-population. We’re striving to reach this goal by educating the public on the importance of responsible pet ownership and preventing the next generation of homeless pets.

EVERY animal deserves a good life and a loving home. With the support of the community, we have already been able to  helped thousands of pets in our local area. We hope, with continued support, we will be able to grow and fight for all for a better world for all animals.

Our mission is to improve the lives of all animals and end domestic pet  over-population, an aggressive spay/neuter program, and compassionate stewardship of resources.

We depend on volunteers and donations to maintain our funding and help us end animal suffering.

Review

So far these two sections seem to work well for telling the goals of second chance animals and the background information of the company. Although the two sections, history and about us. Are overlapping in information a bit; to me anyways.  another thing is that text  from the web site that was  copied over to the tri fold had some outdated info like the thrift shop making profit even though its sold. For revisions mostly was order of wording that needing changing to make it sound better.

blog#9

Part 1

This week for the writing center internship I helped on a paper involving grammar correction and word placement, he had the right words they were just out of order. Also gave input on how to connect sentences together so that they would flow together and connect to the prior sentence. This writer was multilingual so I think the grammar and word placement issues were correlated to that because I’ve heard English is a difficult second language with all of the different grammar and writing rules.

Part 2

So far I’ve mostly have worked on getting the pictures together and using Photoshop to fit them  for the tri-fold. But as a group the majority of the writing has come off of the web site. With that said I think over spring break I might take an hour and go over the writing and edit for content to better suit the tri-fold.  Questions for Georgia would be what format she wants or colors or organization/ placement of topics on the tri-fold.

blog 8

Part 1

This week for the writing center a guy came in needing help making a paper reach the page requirement.  The tutoring process involved showing areas where more detail could be put in, along with adding a better intro and conclusion to help organize the paper and add length.  This kind of deals what with we have talked about in class by the organization of a paper and its flow; from chapter 6, with every sentence being consecutive.  Its good to see other writers with this problem because this topic of organization is my weak point, and seeing other writing helps on how I can fix my own papers.

Part two

 In class our group figured out that the educational tri fold will have to include: who second chance animal is? What they do? Address spaying and neutering.  Free dog food where and how it can be obtained. The audience is pet and non-pet owners.  Have their logo on the front page with all their contact info on the back of the tri-fold; face book, twitter, website ect. Then put the topics mentioned above in the middle to fill the space. For dividing up the writing between the group we decided we should each take a topic and go from there. Then combine it all into the tri-fold. Things we need to do are get the old pamphlet and pictures along with doing some research on the topics.

blog#7

Part 1

This week in the writing center internship one person came in needing help with grammar, English was their second language so a lot of the sentences were backwards or mildly out of place kind of how yota from star wars spoke. Also helped them with past and present tense. along with conecting sentecnces.

Part 2

As an audience member for the next writing project I like animals but don’t own any myself and am more of a dog person over cats. The current media materials I found to be most effective are the digital media like face book and twitter because everyone seems to be glued to their computer or smart phone these days . some places for revision could be radio or television or actual people and animals fundraising out in public. Some questions that could be asked, who is main audience? What is the main message you want to convey? The thing I hope to get out of this is to widen my writing experience because mostly my writing has been for school papers or projects.

Part 3

Chapter six talks about making connections in your writing; so that a paper will flow and connect to the previous sentence. Otherwise a paragraph is just a jumbled mass of sentences. If a paragraph is torn apart it should be able to be put back together in order, from the use of those connections between sentences. This is important in writing because unlike speaking; the reader of a piece of writing cant ask questions to fill in the gaps.

For this week’s revision I chose to focus on the use of colons and semi colons

blog 6

Writing center

This week for the writing internship a girl needed help with grammar. The major things were, improper use of past tense and present tense. Along with plurals being placed in wrong areas. The other thing was format for journal article citation.  This seemed to be something the writing center doesn’t do, fixing grammar, but I guess they made an exception.

Part 2

This was a piece from a assignment in landscape ecology

Landscape ecology has many different aspects to it; the most important aspect of landscape is the linking of patterns and space. The spatial context is important in the function of habitat and dispersal of organisms due to the fact that, fragmented habitats are restricted  with things like edge effect- even if there is a vast amount of land- because of distance between sections of land.  Another part of landscape ecology is heterogeneity, at some scale of the landscape each section is homogeneous and make up the heterogeneous landscape; similar to that of a mosaic. Patterns are created and repeated within intervals of acres to hectares. Heterogeneity is changed by and made up of different factors; which include biota, human activities, disturbances and geographical templates. These factors influence one another and are all intertwined affecting the heterogeneity. To sum it up “landscape ecology is the study of the entire complex cause-effect network between the living communities and their environmental conditions which prevails in a specific section of the landscape..[and] becomes apparent in a specific landscape pattern or in a natural; space classification of the different orders of size” –Carl Troll (1939).  Landscape has structure which includes: patch, ecotone, edge, matrix, corridor , and pattern. These patterns make up the landscape and differentiate the area.   Processes in landscape are disturbance, fragmentation, percolation, and linkages. The processes are the factors that change the structure of the landscape.  Reciprocality occurs through cause and effect between the processes and spatial patterns   

I didn’t see many spots where the sentences didn’t logically connect , all seemed to flow into one another with conncetions. But it may be because this is a subject that I kno in my major and could be mentally filling in the gaps in my head while reading this paper

Part 3

Chapter six talks about making connections in your writing; so that a paper will flow and connect to the previous sentence. Otherwise a paragraph is just a jumbled mass of sentences. If a paragraph is torn apart is should be able to be put back together in order, from the use of those connections between sentences. This is important in writing because unlike speaking the reader of a piece of writing cant ask questions to fill in the gaps.

The anti paragraph as the book refers to it is something that has no transition or connection between sentences. There are a few ways to fix this, first adding new and given information. Add ne information to the first sentence then tie the next one back to the first by using given information. Another way to achieve this task of connection is to use nominalization.  To do this reverse the process of converting nouns to verbs to animate the sentence. Then use the verb in the following sentence to give cohesion between sentences.  The third way is to use antecedents which are word like he, her, that.  This ties sentences together without using the same word over, just referencing the previous object or person.

blog#5

Writing center internship

This week for the tutoring internship in the writing center one person had come in wanting  help on their paper a couple hours before it was due. It was a short length paper and the only thing that was wrong with it was organization. The writing tutor had suggested that by adding a thesis and conclusion it would round up the paper better and would have a better organizational flow. He also suggested that the person read the paper out loud or have someone else read the paper to catch grammar errors.

Chapter 5

In chapter five it talks about  how in normal conversation we hedge are words and predictions to soften the blow. With words like sort of, kinda, maybe.  These are not used in college writing and makes the paper  more forceful.  When they are needed there is informal and formal “the judge was somewhat irritated.” Is formal but can be replaced with words like irritated or furious.

Hedging also acts as a throat clearer and muddies up the water with uncertainty. By removing words like may, seem,  or can. Will clear up the writing.  Another thing is overstating the claim that we are over confident in the claim and overstate the argument and bring in skepticism. Not to be confused with supporting information. This chapter was mainly based on making a writer less timid in his or her writing.

Revision

·         And this space can vary from a small patch of forest to regional scaling

·         And this space varies from a small patch of forest to regional scaling.

I removed the word “can” to un-hedge the sentence to remove imprecise writing.

·         , but as you move from a regional scale to a finer scale the inner-patch variation can be noticed. “

·         , but as you move from a regional scale to a finer scale the inner-patch variation will be noticed. “

the can I noticed is used a lot in my writing and that is the only hedge word that I’m finding in my writing.  So I replaced it with “will” to make it a more compelling argument.

blog 4

Writing center

This week in the writing center two people came in wanting a seconded set of eyes to look over their paper neither person had any major or critical errors in their paper just minor things that would affect the read. But they were more of just surface error type. One just needed to break up the paper by adding paragraphs at natural breaks and the other only had minor grammar errors.  The tutors only offered changes to style not content.

Reading response

The difference between passive and active voice is that active has a simple for of the verb and is more direct while passive is a past tense mixed with the verb.

The section of writing is from a landscape ecology class:

“Spatial scale is very important concept in landscape ecology.  It is the magnitude at which we view a piece of land. Also scale is distinguished by grain and extent. The grain is the finest scale available and extent is the size of the study area.  There are two varieties to scale, temporal and spatial scale. Temporal being a place viewed over an amount of geological time. For example seasons, decades, or centuries.   The second type of scale and the focus of this paper is spatial scale which is distinguished by three dimensional spaces. And this space can vary from a small patch of forest to regional scaling. In the instance of land sat images the finest scale is the individual pixel which is 30 meters by 30 meters. At this finest scale the landscape is homogenous. It’s not until the picture is zoomed out that patterns and heterogeneity can be seen. In the instance of large scale landscape the variety in pattern will be less because the patches are larger, but as you move from a regional scale to a finer scale the inner-patch variation can be noticed. “

This piece is active writing and fits well in my opinion because none of the facts represented in the paper or in the field of landscape ecology are old out of date things. They are currently happening. Also there is less confusion when using active form sentences.

Revision

·         Transitive verbs are those that need complements within the sentence

·         Complements that support a verb are transitive

From active to passive

·         The modifiers were removed. 

·         Modifiers  can be cut if a sentence becomes too wordy

From passive to active

blog 3

This week’s tutoring  session

This week for the writing intern ship  I sat on the comfy couch and waited for people to come in needing help with their writing, and that was about the extent of my intern ship. I caught up on come reading and chatted with the writing tutors: I don’t think ten o’clock on a Thursday is a popular time for students to come and talk about their writing. Not to mention its still the beginning of the semester and students will most likely wait till midterms start to loom overhead, until they seek help.

Chapter 3 review

In chapter three they talk about transitive and intransitive verbs. Transitive verbs are those that need complements within the sentence, words like suggested need a thing and what to accompany the verb.  Intransitive verbs are those in which the verb can stand alone. Extras can be removed from the sentence and the verb will be able to stand on its own.  So to go along with these transitive and intransitive verbs we also have modifiers and complements. Modifiers just add some flare to the sentence rather than complete it: a complement on the other hand is needed to complete the sentence and is related to the verb that is used.  When using a modifier it can be cut if a sentence becomes too wordy; by shaving weight a sentence can take a stronger direction, but on occasions the modifier can make a sentence great and would be ill advised to remove it.  The book has three things to look for when making revisions: do we have the right verb? Are the complements compatible with it?  Do the modifiers add anything important?   This question set shows that there is a good systematic way to go about revision process and to always have these types of questions in your head as you go about your paper.

Revision of sentences

·         So to go along with these transitive and intransitive verbs we also have modifiers and complements.

·         To go along with transitive and intransitive verbs we have complements and modifiers; respectively; to have a comprehensive sentence.

For this revision I chose to remove some of the modifier words to reduce wordiness and added “respectively” to have some clarity added to the sentence.

·         Not to mention it’s still the beginning of the semester and students will most likely wait till midterms start to loom overhead, until they seek help

·         Not to mention, it’s the beginning of the semester and students will  likely wait till midterms loom overhead, to  seek help

In this sentence I chose to remove modifier words to avoid confusion. And the sentence now fits all the questions  the book has about verb choice in chapter 3.

Blog 2  

Resume

I am applying to the position of timber manger. I feel like I would be the perfect candidate for this job.  I work well in groups or alone on individual projects.  My back ground is in the field of natural recourse sciences and a bachelor’s degree from Washington state university. My passion is the outdoors, so I will take pride in my work with regards to timber management.  I Have been trained in remote sensing and the program GIS, along with in field measurement techniques.

Reading response

The first chapter has a few good points to make but the most important one I feel is the guidelines. The first guideline is to be relevant. Staying on topic is a key thing to do when writing; it keeps the reader interested and easier to follow when the topic on hand is relevant to the paper. When people start going all over the place with their ideas it makes it hard to understand and the reader may get frustrated. Not to say you can’t go off on a tangent but it needs to be tied back into the paper.  The second guideline that came up was to measure the information.  Just the right amount of information must be presented because too much or little can kill a conversation and the same go for writing.  The last guideline is to be clear.  When writing one must think about all the questions that will be raised and try to answer them in the paper because unlike conversation you can’t go back and tell the reader the answer to a clarity issue.

Chapter two dealt with verbs and moving them more toward the beginning of a sentence to give the sentence more power and to remove wordiness. Streaming the sentences to make them more concise and to the point will help with clarity issues as brought up in chapter one.

Revise

·         The first chapter has a few good points to make but the most important one I feel is the guidelines. The first guideline is to be relevant

·         The first chapter makes good points, but the most important are the guidelines. The first guideline is to be relevant.

Toni-Lee Capossela's Peer Tutoring & Assessment 1.0

Toni-Lee Capossela's chapters on Peer Tutoring

From reading Toni-lee’s chapters on peer tutoring my perspective on a tutor, or peer consultant as he refers to it, has changed. I had always thought that to be a tutor you needed to have a complete knowledge of the said subject. But in writing it seems that an incomplete skill set will help the tutored in the overall process.  He or she will not absorb the consultant’s ideas because you’re not sitting their lecturing and changing their paper but rather helping them come up with their own stuff. One of the big things with writing that Toni-lee touched on was distancing one’s self from their own writing because it may seem complete to the writer but when someone else reads the paper it may not make sense or flow and when writing for the public it’s important that the target audience can easily comprehend the writing.  Another idea the author  talked about, that seems important is that writing is self taught, and that is definitely true. you cannot become a good writer by watching.  Only actual writing can show your weaknesses and strengths and show you where improvement is needed. This concept must also be taken into consideration when peer consulting.  The tutor cannot lecture or show how to write better but rather only guide the writer to the right path.

Assessment 1.0

My current writing consists of school work involving research, scientific papers, and lab reports along with emails and job applications. The context of writing that matters the least to me is emails and other similar writing. Right now the context that matters the most is school papers and job applications or resume because they can have the biggest impact if written poorly. My current revision process is reading over the piece of work and looking for sentence structure and spelling and superficial errors that will hinder my writing. But I have someone else proof read my papers, most of the time, because I miss sentence structure issues at times because I read what I want it to sound like and not what’s written down. My strengths in writing may be flow of ideas through the paper and transitions but my weakness is definitely sentence structure, grammar and spelling. And when put together can make a paper hard to read, but this usually disappears after the revision process. Some of the things I want to work on this semester are making sentences flow better. Working on different kinds of writing style and become better at revising my writing.