Writing a personal narrative actually turned out to be a pretty helpful assignment for improving my writing. My story was about an experience I had while I was living with a host family in Mexico. As I was writing my story, a lot more changed then I expected between my first and final drafts. I honestly thought I was a really good writer until I read my personal narrative out loud…ha! Forget being good at that! There were so many places that were awk. And run ons, and wordy sentences, and ideas that didn’t fit together and just on and on. It amazes me how much different the story seems when you read it out loud. Something about hearing yourself speaking helps you realize what does and doesn’t work. I definitely had a little trouble with the grammar part of things, so I guess I should learn a little more about that. But I feel like at least one of my classes every year re-teaches grammar so my brain customized and every time I learn it I just forget it again ha. Pretty pathetic but it’s the truth. Something that really helped me a lot was after writing my first complete rough draft I didn’t read my paper again for a couple days and then when I came back to it, it was like I was reading a different story ha I seriously noticed so many things I needed to change. Over all, I feel like I learned quite a bit about the process of writing, writing itself and also about me personally as a writer.
I agree with you about the problems with grammar. We learned it every year from around third grade and onward and yet no one seems to understand it except those few kids born to be editors. I don't understand why grammar is so hard to grasp. I don't think I ever read my paper out loud except for bits and pieces but I probably should have. The problem with writing I think is that you can't hear the inflection in the authors voice and I don't like that for nonfiction stories. I hope I can read your essay soon. I wrote on Cory's blog that we should all post our essays so we can each read each others.
ReplyDeleteWell said Becca. I read my paper aloud to and i sounded like and idiot. So i began to read it over and over again until it sounded somewhat decent. I feel like if you read it aloud you catch what might not sound like you and then you can change it to sound like something you would say. That happened to me a lot in catching myself. And i don't know if you agree with kelsey and we should post our essays for us to read because.. well, thats a lot of writing. but if your up to it then lets go for it.
ReplyDeleteokay yeah lets do it! just here on our blogs?
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