Over the course of the semester in English, I was able to improve my skills on citing, using MLA sources, and making changes to local concerns. My ability to do this shows that I completed learning outcome #5 and #6. In high school, I had learned about MLA format and used it in essays but in this class, I was able to expand my knowledge on it and use it more confidently in my papers. In my chosen work sample, project #3, I was able to effectively use sources for evidence in my writing. I then cited these sources for in text citations and a works cited page using MLA formatting. The first part of MLA formatting on the paper is the heading. This includes my name, the professor, the class name and then the due date on the left side of the page and my last name and page number in the upper right corner. Before this class, I was only required to put the date we started but then on project #2 I received a comment that it was supposed to be the due date so I was able to make those changes on project #3. On the last page of the paper, a works cited page cites the sources I quoted or paraphrased in the paper. By using the websites given in class, I was able to cite the essays/papers used in class as well as my peers narratives in project #3. In my works cited page on my first drafts of project #3, I was unsure how to cite my peers. After Professor Miller sent out a guide on how to cite our peers’ work, I was able to fix the citations to what I turned in on my final draft. In class we also talked about local concerns in a paper and how to prevent them. Things that I have learned that work for me to prevent these errors include reading my essay out loud and having another person peer review my paper. This semester along with peer reviews, my friend Kaleigh and I read each other’s papers after we made the peer review changes. We did a peer review but not as formal as class since 2 or 3 people had already read our essays and we looked for local concerns such as sentence structure, awkward sentences or words and adding or deleting commas. My work on my chosen work sample, project #3, shows my improvements in MLA citing and how to prevent local errors in my writing and allows me to feel confident in completing learning outcome #5 and #6.
