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fits well in my opinion because none of the facts represented in the paper or in the field of landscape ecology are old out of date things.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.