Semester Goal

My Goal for 2nd Semester


My first goal is to find new, better ways to revise my work to have stronger voice and organized thoughts that are easy to understand for the readers. To achieve this goal, I am going to be highlighting main ideas and check if I am clear about what I’m saying. Also, I want to choose one specific voice before writing and then highlight individual voice when editing, to check if my voice is what I wanted in detail. My method for this goal would be working hard on D.O.L. during class. I think D.O.L. really helps me a lot to edit writings of my own and others.
To make my writing more stylistic and rhetoric, I will use a variety of transitional devices. Until now, I felt several times that I am a little weak at connecting all of my paragraphs together as one. I tried to work on it, but it was pretty hard. This semester, I want to be satisfied at my paragraphs connected fluently with smooth transitions so that my whole writing flows like water and becomes easy to understand. My method to succeed in this goal is keeping a little journal to carry with me to write down transition words or phrases that I find in any kinds of writings I read in class and at home.
Just like the transitional devises, using conventions of punctuation in correct forms is another problem I had during my first semester. Therefore, I want to learn specifically how I can use colons, hyphens, semicolons, dashes, and others in my writing. I am going to find out how to use and understand these marks from the Internet and use them wisely to support and clear my ideas in essays and also my readers to understand well.
Most of the time when I find sources for my research, I usually use the Internet, and sometimes books as well. I knew that the wider I look at and search for, the more information I would get. However I always chose the easy way. From 2nd semester, I want to use a variety of sources to gather information for my research. For example, I want to try new, different ways to find what I need, like interviews, videos, or educational radio programs.
From six traits of writing, the one that I had most struggles with was voice. Generally, this didn’t really matter because my writings were mostly informative, objective, and it had no special tone I needed to use to gain my readers’ interests. However, I was reading a book one day and realized how voice can affect the mood of both story and the readers so much. Therefore, my goal is to read as many books as I could to discover different styles and moods of writing to get an idea of what kind of voice I can use. After I have full of knowledge about voice, I want to write to make my readers nod their heads, cry, and laugh out loud as they read along.