Tow #27: TOW Reflection

After reading through some of the TOW's I wrote throughout the year, I noticed that I have made a lot of progress in improving my writing. First of all, I got much better at introducing my topic. With my first marking period TOW's, I went right into information about the author or evidence from the article. Towards the end of the year, the TOW's started with a general statement to better introduce my topic. I also noticed that my TOW's gradually became less formulaic. Although I never fully got the grasp of breaking away from a certain structure, I think I at least improved in that my writing became more natural. Overall, I think I mastered identifying the purposes of texts, whether it was a short article, a full length book, or a picture. At the beginning of the year, I struggled a bit with misidentifying the purpose of what I was reading, especially with the visual texts. As the year went on, I definitely got better at finding the purpose of texts, and I started to find it more quickly with practice. I could still use a lot of improvement with other aspects of writing TOW's. For example, when I analyze rhetorical devices, I find myself repeating a lot of my analysis. I will say that one rhetorical device gives the same effect as another, when in reality the effect may be similar, but I need to make the distinction between the two devices. It is important for me to work on seeing each rhetorical device as an individual tool that helps bring together one single purpose in its own effective way. While these TOW assignments often seemed tedious, I think that I benefited a lot from doing them. It was good way to practice writing analysis type essays throughout the year. This helped with the AP exam because analysis was the first essay we learned, so when we shifted into argument based essays, we could still practice our analysis skills. I also think I benefited from these TOW assignments because it improved my writing. With so much practice, it is almost impossible not to improve. The only problem with the TOW assignments was that I think we did them too often. Had we done them once every other week or once every ten days, I think I would have written better TOW's and benefited even more from them.