My writing has not improved much. I can't whip out an essay in ten minutes like most of my classmates do. This is perfectly normal for me because writing has never been a strong point for me and my writing grade proves that(I have a B-). I can see that I need to elaborate more on some ideas. If I don't elaborate, I fall short of the minimum requirement which I expressed I hate in one of my blog posts. An example of this disaster is when I did a post about leg cramps.
The title is very long because I want to be very clear what I will talk about in the post. If I just ask what the pain in the leg is, I would just say cramp and that would be the end of it. If I just mention how we treat it, the audience would not know what i am talking about. It's kind of a long sentence clause and I mentioned how long it is so I could have something to talk about. A cramp is a very simple topic and there is not much to talk about.
I went off topic just to meet the 350 word requirement which is the last thing I want to do, but I had no choice. I hope to solve this problem by expressing more opinions rather than facts next semester. This is because I can write more when it comes to opinions. Facts are boring because I just state them and that's the end of that. Not much to them. Another way I didn't improve is I get stuck a lot in the midst of typing a blog post. I think for half an hour or somewhere around that just to come up with one idea. In extreme cases, I think for an hour and it sucks.
Of all the topics I have written about, I liked the one about America's struggle for independence. I knew a lot about that topic, so writer's block wasn't a problem there. It was written in chronological order from when Britain invaded New York to Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown. My inspiration came from school and Wikipedia. I learned about the war through school history textbooks and randomly searching battles in the war on Wikipedia. My least favorite blog post was essay number thirteen. It was written as a response to an article I read over the summer and was purely opinion, but it wasn't an interesting topic to blog about. The one that surprises me the most is the NFL prediction post. I thought I was going to receive a lot of criticism and disagreements, but it worked out fine. I wrote this like any other person would. Look at each division and determine which team is the best. This is what the format looked like for this post:
To the nfc east, the giants take this one. Eli Manning (quarterback) brought his team to the Super Bowl within the last five years. The criteria to win the nfc north is huge, but I take the packers. They're building a great team around Aaron Rodgers. The afc south isn't such a hard choice. I choose the saints. They were champions last year. The nfc west is possibly the weakest division in football. The 49ers will be the team to beat. Mike Singletary will lead them to the playoffs.
My inspiration came from my love and knowledge for football. I watch the games on the weekends.
I have learned that writing isn't just picking up a pencil. There is thinking involved and you can't just dive into an essay and finish it. Plannings, like prewrites, help you come up with more ideas. This makes writing much smoother. As I noted above in the second paragraph, I get stuck because I can't come up with ideas and I just state facts. I get unstuck by talking about random stuff, but that will change next semester. Instead I will use more of my opinions to get unstuck like this quote:
I believe that Luis is right about college being fun. He is correct about being able to choose classes and what time to take them. Being able to choose classes is brilliant because personally, I don't like writing essays and I will explain about that in my next blog post. Having the power to choose what time to go to class is a big plus. If you are not a morning person, you can pick classes in the afternoon or at night and vice versa. Also, the option to do that enables you to attend class around your schedule.
I think you can notice what all these sentences have in common. They are all my opinions and I easily elaborate on the topic. No facts can be seen in this quote.
My first writing goal for the next quarter is to write about sports more. I seem to be interested in athletics and it's a wide ranging subject, so I will never run out of things to write about and I tend to not get stuck on these topics. My secondary topics would be about the world and news. I wouldn't be talking politics. All I would be discussing are disasters, milestones, etc., just things you see on the news. I would work on not procrastinating because I'm a slow thinker and I don't type that fast, so I need more time. In addition to that, there will be more posts required each week so I will start posting on Wednesdays. My other goals are pretty straight forward. Learn how to get unstuck and how to post a blog faster. Discuss more opinions than facts. Be more informal so I can connect to the audience who are ninth graders like I am. It would just be weird if I spoke to them in an adult or business like tone.
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