Kruckenberg Final Project

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Gabrielle Kruckenberg

English 101.002 W

Ms. Angela Kennedy

December 12, 2010

Writing Matters to Everyone

Through this class I have learned many things. I think the most important thing that I

learned though is that we all write even if we do not believe that we do. We write when we are

sitting and typing emails. We write when we are planning our days in a planner or calendar.

We write when we are texting and instant messaging even. The world that we live in revolves

around writing because of technology. I mostly write emails, lab reports and proposals and text

messages. Before I took this class I did not think of any of these things as writing because I did

not realize that they fell under the tab of literacy. There are many more types of literacy than I

ever thought existed. According to Princeton University, literacy is being able to read and write.

This is a great definition but most people in our country know how to do that so most do not see

literacy as that. Princeton also says that literacy is being well read in literature and when people

deal with literature a lot. This is the definition that I thought was the meaning of literacy. In a


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sense, that my opinion of the definition of literacy has not changed, but my perspective on what

literacy entails. I also thought that once I was out of school I would be done writing for good,

but this is clearly not the case when everyone has to do some sort of writing in their field of

work, even stay at home moms. Because I am a physics and a teaching major with an emphasis

in physical science major, my papers are very analytical. I am not too good at analyzing

information from a fancy literature novel, but if you give me an experiment to type a lab report

on it will be very detailed and precise. I love to do research, so I generally will have facts in my

papers. I do not really like to write fiction or even about fiction because there is no fact

involved. I cannot look up the background information and determine what is going on, I have

to think critically about the novel. Creative thinking and writing is what I thought English and

English papers were before this class and I hope that after you read this you will think differently

about what the meaning of writing means too.

Before this class I absolutely loathed writing because I was horrible at it. I got the worst

grades of all of my honors classes in English. I was good at everything else including math and

sciences. I did not like history because I am not a huge fan of memorization but I was better at it

than creative writing. In high school, we had to write a certain way or we did not get the grade.

I had to make that good grade because I wanted to work for NASA, even though now I want to

be a teacher, so it was important. All we did in high school writing was analyze the latest book

that we read and the very rare research report. I did think it was quite strange that we could write

a research paper on a piece of literature but my research paper on Shakespeares King Lear and

Macbeth. All of my classmates thought I was crazy for choosing such hard books to analyze, but

it was a lot of fun and I excelled on the research report. My day to day wrinting consists of many

different things. For school, I write my lab reports and notes from my classes.


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Look at those notes, dont they look like fun!

When I am at home I write emails to my friends, although most of the time they are school

related and I write texts to them. When I am at work, I write notes to my employees to convey

the results of the day and what is going on with our jobs. It is very crucial to be particular in

most of my writing because I work in a print shop and we cannot let customers be unhappy and

for school because the results are everything and in some of my classes if you get the wrong

results, you do not get the grade. Because of these things I am very detailed and a scientific

writer. I developed this style partially out of necessity and out of love of the subject.

Over the course of this semester, I do not think my writing style has changed that much.

I still am quite detail oriented and do not think that will change. I have decided that the kind of

writing that we did in this class was much better than analyzing books. We did have to analyze


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some short essays and incorporate them into our papers, but they were more information than

not. I love to learn new things, so this was right up my alley.

Literacy is very important in my field of study as in most peoples. I have to write many

things that need to be both accurate and precise. They need to be well thought out and follow all

of the directions. I use quantitative literacy every day for school because I need to do math

problems in my physics classes and my math classes.

Math Homework

I have to also use prose literacy to read my textbooks that have a lot of continuous information in

the form of text. I do not use document literacy as much because that is more related to maps

and non-continuous text. I do not use document literacy because I am very good with directions

and memorization so I do not need to use it very often, once I visit a place once, I can get back

home and there again with great ease.

Also, my field of study requires me to write all of the time. When I am awake I write all the

time. I spend most of my time not at school or not at work writing for school because my classes

are quite demanding. I might have 6-8 hours a week of free time away from school, but they are

precious hours that I greatly need and enjoy.


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I do see myself as a writer now, but I did not at the beginning of this class. It is sad that

in high school they do not encourage kids to have fun and express themselves in the way they

know how. They stuff everyone into a cookie cutter shape and if they do not fit they must

conform or fail the paper or even the class. When I took the TAKS test in high school, I barely

passed the writing part of the exam. If you fail the writing section of the English TAKS you fail

that entire subject test. If you make a 100 on all the multiple choice questions and all the short

answer questions but fail the essay, you will fail. That always seemed unfair to me and I always

worried about them. I realize that we need to be able to write well in high school, because in the

real world you cannot survive without it, but they should give a little leeway. I think it is quite

clear that if someone can ace the rest of the exam and write a bad paper, they are still good at

English, or at least understand the basic concepts. I also thought in high school that it was very

unfair that test writers for the SAT were making it 2 parts English and only 1 part math. I think

that math is just as important as English because every job requires a person to know basic math

skills just like they require the person to know basic English skills. If someone cannot balance

their checkbook or cannot count change back correctly, they could lose their job too. This is

where the great American literacy crisis comes into play.

Because children are discouraged in school, they do not want to learn. Maybe one time

they tried to do well on an assignment and just ended up doing bad. In high school, the teachers

had to have good numbers of passing rates for the course and good numbers of passing rates for

the TAKS tests. Teachers must keep failing rates below 15% or they are considered bad

teachers. Because of this fact, teachers must teach to the TAKS test currently. This also causes

students to become discouraged because many people are just not good test takers. Even though

these tests are not timed, there is a certain pressure from your peers to finish the test when most


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in the class are done. Some people are also slow test takers due to a disability or even just slow,

but they are also punished for this. When I went to UT Dallas straight out of high school, I was

not prepared for the level of difficulty that I would face. I took AP classes and was great at

them, in fact the only B I ever got on a report card was actually in English because they made me

think differently than normal. I was number 20 of 564 students in my graduating class, so I

assumed I would do well in college, but I did not. I struggled all of freshman year, even in the

classes I made high As in in high school. I had to retake several classes from that first semester

of college because I was not prepared. I did not realize that we had to take such extensive notes.

I did not like the fact that we only had 5 grades that contributed to our final grade and that if you

failed one of the five you would do badly in the class. Also, because homeworks were not grade

that first year, I did not want to do them. Why would I want to do extra work? I learned quite

quickly and the hard way that those assignments that were not grade or not turned in were the

most crucial to the learning process. I did not understand why college was so different and it

definitely did not help that the professors were foreign and had very strong accents. I believe

that if the teachers in high school were able to teach the material from the textbook and not for a

test, I would have been more prepared for college. I also believe that we were not prepared for

the workplace out of high school either because we had not learned essential life skills besides

how to socialize with our peers. Sure, there were those classes that focused on different

categories in the job place; the people that I took classes with did not take the vocational classes.

We believed that we were being prepared to excel in college and learn the skills for our jobs

from there.

It is interesting to learn though that in Wisconsin, where my fianc David went to high

school is from, they did not have stantdardized tests. We met in college and he did not seem that


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much smarter than me but he did seem to have his act together more. I think that because they

did not have standardized tests, the teachers were able to teach the important information so he

did better initially in school. I do not think that the people in charge of standardized tests think

that they are hindering students in learning, but because some students are clearly more advanced

than others, maybe they should make a different test for the students in gifted classes. They

could also make the tests significantly harder as you progressed through school so you would

ensure that the students are learning the needed material. I do think it is goof that students

cannot graduate if they do not pass the 11th grade exit level test, which they have the chance to

take 9 times and many tutoring sessions. It is not right that the most math that students need for

the 11th grade exit level test was learned in 8 th grade. This means that the teachers need to

reteach information from 3 years prior but they also need to cover all of their information from

the curriculum for the year so the students are prepared for the next grade. This is a clear

problem because reteaching is not usually in the curriculum. This could either cause the students

to not be taught all the information at all or maybe it will be abridged and rushed. Either of these

choices are very bad ones. Even in one of my physics classes this semester, the professor was

not prepared for some things taking longer than he had planned so now I have three chapters of

seven chapters for the semester that have not been taught but I am still required to know their

contents. This is a challenge for me and I am a senior in college, just think of the challenge that

this would cause to a high school student. I want to be quite clear that I am not putting blame on

any particular group, especially teachers. I am going to be a teacher in a couple of years and my

best friend, my mother and my fiances best friend are all teachers. They are wonderful people

and care about their students. They want them to excel and do well in both school now and when

they leave high school to be prepared for college. My mother, probably the most, is trying to


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prepare them because she knows how much I was unprepared and how it killed my spirit. She

tries to go beyond what is on the TAKS test, but she is making sure that they are prepared for it

as well. They all keep their failing percentage much lower than other teachers and are not just

passing them so they can play sports. They push the students that are not doing well to try harder

and to come in and talk to them. I know that this amount of accountability is not there in college

but most students are not as mature and definitely do not manage their time well. The latest

episode of Glee is much more important than the chemistry or math homework that will be due

the next day.

Taken at my parents house, where it is generally noisy. Taken at my house where it is messier.

Most of my writing process I learned in high school and I think it is quite refined. When

I write for an English or Humanities/Art class, I take the paper in smaller sections. I have to be

in a comfortable space like my kitchen table, but it is generally better if it is clean. For a paper, I


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normally look at the topic and think about it. Then I write down some ideas about the topics.

After I decide which one I will cover, I write a first draft and then look it over. I try to make sure

that my paper will cater to the audience that I intend on reading it. If a paper is not interesting to

your audience then it is hard for them to finish it. After I look it over I try to revise the problems

that I see and edit anything I can find. This is where I would begin typing the paper. Some

people have peers look at the paper now to proofread, but I prefer to type the paper first because

sometimes handwriting is hard to read and I like to keep my proofreaders happy so they will

continue to help me out. Before I let my proodreaders read the paper, I make sure I pick people

that would be in the audience I am trying to reach out to so they will not be bored. After they

proofread the paper I look at it again and see if I like their opinions or think they are not valid.

Most of the time the suggestions are good because they are English people and not Science

people. So after I look over the second draft with their comments, I start typing the third draft.

Finally, I begin typing my final draft. After many hours of tedious work and thinking, I finish

the final draft and let a couple of the people reread it. If they believe there are still problems, we

sit down and discuss them so I can get a more accurate perception of what they are thinking

instead of trying the read their comments. Then I make sure that all of my citations are correct

because if that information is wrong then the reader might think you plagiarized. I sometimes

like to look at the citations to get a better perspective on the paper. Sometimes it also helps me

get the context on the subject they were writing on. For this part of my writing, I have learned

that sometimes I need to look over my paper a few more times. I am definitely not used to

taking pictures and putting them in papers, so I need to out more thought into those. Overall

though, I think that my writing process is quite good for a person who did not like to write, or at

least think she did not until this class.

For English For Chemistry Lab


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When I write for my science classes, first I read the actual lab. As I read the lab, I take

notes and try to find the important parts of the lab and write them down. Then I have to make

sure that I have all the directions and that I am ready to work because this process normally takes

about two hours. I then begin with why we are doing this particular lab and how it will help us

learn what we want to learn. I then start with the way we will conduct the experiment with very

detailed steps. Sometimes I think I am too detailed, but being too detailed is much better than

not being detailed enough. When you are in lab and only have the procedure that you wrote

down to go on, you want to make sure that it is complete and thorough. Then I have to find the

properties of all the chemicals we are using so we will know how they will react with each other

and others, in case of an emergency. The last and most important part is our theory and our

calculations. Sometimes we are not told how much of a starting compound we need to use so I

need to figure it out through stoicheometry. The theory is how we think the experiment will turn

out and why it will do so. This theory is directly dependent on how much research we did on the

physical constants. Then, after we do the lab, we must record or data and a come up with a

conclusion. The conclusion includes if we did the experiment correctly and if not what we did

wrong. We must also do a discussion on why we did the steps we did and if they worked

properly. It is quite clear that both of these writing styles are quite different but both are very

important in their own ways. We must learn to write in many different ways, especially since

people in the job market want applicants to know how to do more and more things by the day.


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The picture above that has a table is from an actual lab report that I did this semester that

involves a reagent table. If this table is inaccurate, the experiment could go horribly wrong. In

the science part of my writing, I do not think I need any improvement. I do need to learn to cite

sources in APA style since that is science related where MLA is more English related, but that is

the only thing I need to work on. This aspect of my writing has not changed over the semester

because we do not focus on that in this class. I do focus on it in my other classes, but the process

for scientific lab reports is much more adaptable to the cookie cutter shape than the English

literature analysis paper.


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Overall this semester I have learned that writing can be fun. We do not always need to

follow out cookie cutter shaper that was taught to us in high school, but sometimes it is

appropriate. We need to be able to enjoy our papers because we are able to express so much in

them. You can learn a lot of information in just a two or three page paper about someone. You

learn what people really think and then you can predict how they will react to other situations in

similar context. I also learned that I need to look over my papers before I submit them. I need to

not procrastinate in my writing so I do not feel rushed even with all of the homework I have from

other classes. That all classes are weighted equally and that one should not get more attention

than the others.


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Works Cited Page

Malin, David. Personal Interview. 17 October 2010.

"The National Institute for Literacy Stats and Resources." CA Literacy. N.p., 2008. Web. 8 Dec

2010. http://www.caliteracy.org/nil/.

"Wordnet Search 3.0." Literate. Princeton University, n.d. Web. 10 Dec 2010.

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=lliterate.

"Writing Process." Web. 8 Dec 2010.

http://teach.beavton.k12.or.us/~jonathan_stoner/writespell/writeprocess.html.
http://www.caliteracy.org/nil/http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=lliteratehttp://teach.beavton.k12.or.us/~jonathan_stoner/writespell/writeprocess.htmlhttp://www.caliteracy.org/nil/http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=lliteratehttp://teach.beavton.k12.or.us/~jonathan_stoner/writespell/writeprocess.html

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Kruckenberg Final Project

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