Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Grammar Mistakes
In class today we talked about grammar and common mistakes. I identified my most common mistake as the ambiguous pronoun reference. I have a lot of trouble with making sure that the pronouns that I am using are clear. I always think: well it makes sense to me so why shouldn't it make sense to everyone else? I just hate it. Why do I need to make it clear which he I am talking about. I think it is pretty obvious if you read the sentence. Oh well, at least I know that it is something I need to work on, doesn't mean I have to like it though. We also talked about the thesis statement and how central it is to a paper and how important it is to have a clear thesis. I think ambiguous pronouns can definitely contribute to making a thesis unclear, so I'll try to avoid that. Specifically, we talked about how a thesis should make the reader question some previous belief they may have had, but they shouldn't have to question what you are trying to say in your thesis. We also discussed whether your thesis should be the most precise accurate thing in your essay or whether you should leave some room to explore and maybe go off in a different direction. Our discussions definitely gave me some things to consider further.
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Sarah, after today's class I also thought a lot about what a good thesis statement is. I have a paper due on Tuesday about health care, and my professor stressed the importance of the thesis statement! I know I work the longest on my intro paragraph to try to make it as perfect as it can be. What part of the essay do you feel you focus the most on?
ReplyDeleteI have two phases to my creation of the thesis statement: a "working thesis" phase" to create focus as I work though the analysis, and then a "reader phase" where I throw out the working statement, and then consider how I need to shape the statement to prepare the reader for my argument. I just can't do it in any fewer steps!
ReplyDeleteLauren, I definitely work the most on my intro paragraph. Sometimes I will take 4 hours just to crank out a good intro. I always think that if you have a good intro and a good thesis, everything else sort of flows from there and I can write the rest of the paper rather quickly. Prof. D, I think that is a good way to go about it and I try to do the same though a lot of the times I spend hours and hours doing the analysis in my head and sort of skip the working thesis phase. It might be helpful to not skip that though to work out my ideas on paper more, and avoid the awful headache that usually comes from doing all that in my head.
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