Writing Log 5A

Alex Plantinga
Writing Log 5A
4/25/2011
Graysmith

While reading chapter seven in The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing book, my knowledge as a writer began to expand. Within the first page I learned what an exploratory essay was. I was a little unsure what the essay outcome was as a whole, but after reading I had a better understanding. On page forty I found my first hot spot. “An exploratory essay narrates a writer’s research process. When you write an exploratory essay, you pose a question or problem and dwell with it even if you can’t solve it.” I chose this as my first hot spot because I was confused on what was an exploratory essay even was. Now with reading this I know have a better approach to write essay number two.
My second hot spot was also found on page one forty seven. “In an annotated bibliography, a writer summarizes and briefly critiques the research sources he or she used while exploring a problem.” I had no idea to create an annotated bibliography. It later on states that an annotated bibliography encourages exploration. Also, the example exploratory essay on page 163 has benefited me. It shows how a finished essay should look like. I can see how the annotated bibliography can help and give the writing more details. After reading chapter seven, I definitely have a better understanding on how to approach my second paper.

Writing Log 5A Ellis Battista

Chapter seven in “the Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing” was a very helpful chapter to help complete essay number two. It gave a lot of ways to help you research and expand on topics. It also gave great examples of parts of and a whole exploratory essay. The first hot spot I found is on page 156. My hot spot has to do with two topics. The first is strategies for composing an exploratory essay and the second is framework for an exploratory essay. On page 156 there is a table that describes the two strategies for composing the essay. The first strategy is called real-time strategy and the second is called retrospective strategy. Basically, the real-time strategy says you get the body of your essay during your research and thinking. The other strategy, retrospective strategy says that you look back on all your research and notes and you compose the body of your essay while you look back on it all. There are advantages of both strategies. The advantage for the real-time strategy is that you get rapid ideas and different ideas very quickly that you can expand upon. With the retrospective strategy, it allows you to have more selection after you have done all of the research and is better for shaping the details of the essay. The reason why I liked this hot spot so much is because it is a great guide on how to start your essay and get your big ideas. I think that I will most likely use a little bit of both strategies. I like the idea of getting spontaneous ideas throughout your research because I think that a lot of ideas you get that way could be useful. I also like the idea of gathering all of the research and notes and then making the decision on what goes into the essay. I will most likely get ideas and expand on them during research but in the end I will get ideas during research and compare them to ideas I get after research and see which ones I want to add to my essay.

My second hot spot was on pages 163 to 167. There was an example essay on those pages that was very well written. The reason why I liked the example essay so much is because it will be a great tool to use when I am writing mine. I am the type of person that likes to see how something is done, then try to use that as a framework for my essay, so I know I am formatting and using the information and arguments correctly. I feel like it will help me construct my essay and give me a good direction on where to go if I run into trouble. It will be a nice backup to have to double check that I am doing everything correctly.

Hotspots 5a jen f

The first hotspot I found is on page 153. “ To develop the kind of academic research skills you will need for success in college, you should take purposeful notes as you read.” This hot spot is saying in order to do your best possible to take important notes as you read. It only takes five extra minutes and will help you retain extra information that will help you succeed. I chose this as my first hotspot because I need work taking notes when I read. I think if i take the time when reading and I take notes I will be able to remember the information longer. I think it will also help save time in the long run because if I take notes I can look at those instead of taking time to re-read my whole paper. This is important for learning tips for all of the essays we will be writing for english and in life for the long run. It will help me to remember things, and it will also help me when writing papers to look back at notes and make sure I am doing everything correctly.
The second hot spot I chose is found on page 155. “ Your exploratory essay records the history of your research and thinking process.” This is telling what an exploratory essay is, the main focus is to not persuade and audience but to record information. I chose this to remind me I am not trying to persuade an audience, I thought that was what I was supposed to do before reading this. Now I know to only give information about my topic I will be researching and to teach my audience about it but not to be biased while doing it. This new insight is important in order to stay on task during this essay and to get the best grade I can . This will keep me on track and always remind me the task at hand is to inform the audience not to try and persuade them in anyway during the exploratory essay I will be writing in the near future.

Writing Log 5A

When I was reading I cam across my first hotspot pretty quickly on page 149 and it stated, “The essential move for exploratory thinking and writing is to keep a problem alive through consideration of multiple solutions or points of view.” This idea was important to me because it will help make my paper more developed. This idea focuses on the fact that instead of just “settling” on a your thesis and only talking about that, it is still important to give numerous points of view. To do this you identify a problem, consider a possible solution or point of view, explore its strengths and weaknesses, and then move onto another problem. I believe that is concept helps to give your paper more depth and credibility. The more sources and information you have, the better you a paper is going to be.

“The key to this assignment is to choose a question, problem, or issue that truly perplexes you” (152). I choose this hotspot because I believe this is one of the most important points to know about your essay. If your audience can sense that your truly engaged and excited about what you’re writing about, chances are, they’re going to be just as excited to read your paper. When you write about something that interests you, it helps make your paper better too because you want to write about this topic. Writing the essay may also be more fun if you get to choose what you write about. This can make your paper less of an “assignment” in ways if its something that interests you. You may also learn something new.

Megan Vaccarella

Writing Log 5A

When reading this section, I came across my first hotspot, “As we have noted, however, inexperienced writers sometimes truncate this process, closing off the period of exploratory thinking” (pg.147). I feel ad though, this is what I did when selecting my topic for the second essay. When I heard that out thesis had to be a posing question, I was thinking to myself what to write about that exact day. I came up with two questions, but sometimes when jumping the gun and picking the thesis early prevents a writer to know all of the knowledge about the topic and its complexity. When reading this statement, it made me think about my own thesis. I thought about all of the different viewpoints somebody could have over my topic. The second hotspot that stuck out to me was, “The essential move for exploratory thinking and writing is to keep a problem alive through consideration of multiple solutions or points of view” (pg.149). This hotspot stuck out to me because when I was talking to my step-mom about my topic, she was listing all of the angles I could talk about. This hotspot also has a connection to my previous one because they are both talking about how when picking a topic, you have to realize that there are many solutions to each problem. When someone is developing a thesis or a problem in our case, the writer must think of a solution to the problem, and then continue to think about another solution, this then makes the problem alive throughout the whole essay. When a writer is writing an exploratory essay, they too have to be creative with what they are talking about, so the essay doesn’t seem boring.