English 111D: Freshman Composition and Introduction to Library Research

ENG 111D

Weekly writing journal prompts:

Week 1 (due 1/17)

Briefly evaluate your writing process. Where and when do you write best? Do you have writing rituals? Do you write by hand? On a computer? Do you make drafts? Is writing easy for you? Fun? Torture? Think about your history as a writer and describe your process as it is right now.

Week 2 (due 1/24)

Evaluate your relationship to rhetoric. We’ve talked about how everything is an argument; what arguments have you participated in (as either rhetor or audience) recently? Were these arguments successful?

Week 3 (due 1/31)

You are completing your first draft of your first essay this week. Thinking back to how you wrote in high school, do you see any changes in your writing process? Where will you write as a college student? Describe your writing space (and perhaps compare and contrast this with either your previous writing spaces or your ideal writing spaces). Other than location, what changes are you seeing?

Week 4 (due 2/7)

You have turned in your first essay. What did you differently in writing this paper than in your papers for high school? What worked really well for you? What didn’t work so well? Have you identified parts of your writing process that you can, will, or want to change?

Week 5 (due 2/14)

Are you writing in your other classes? Are you writing outside of class? How do you think of writing at this point in the term? Is it getting easier? Are you sick of it? Do you do more or less of it than you expected? Now that you’ve started to get into the swing of college writing, how would you evaluate yourself as a writer?

Week 6 (due 2/21)

Now that you have received at least one paper back from your professor(s), consider how you respond to your grades and comments. When you got the paper back, what did you look at first? Why? What was most important to you? Did you expect to see a different grade, more comments, fewer comments? Did you read the comments? How did you (or will you) process and respond to the comments and grade?

Week 7 (due 2/28)

How are you managing the workload of college? Are you getting more adept at completing things quickly, or do you feel you’re falling behind? What tricks are you finding to streamline your writing and studying? Now that you’ve been writing so much and so often, are you finding that the process gets easier, or do you struggle with the volume of words you are expected to produce?

Week 8 (due 3/6)

Congratulations—you’ve made it halfway! At this point, reassess your writing process. What has changed since the beginning of the semester in terms of where, when, and how you write? Is your process effective for getting writing done? Are there changes you probably should make but haven’t yet?

Week 9 (due 3/13)

Evaluate the  drafting and workshop process you’ve experienced so far in class. How many changes do you make in your drafts from the first to second workshops and from the workshop drafts to the final draft? Do you find your peers’ contributions helpful? How do you think reading and responding to your peers’ essays helps make your own essays better (that is, how does being a good editor make you a better writer)?

Week 10 (due 3/20) 

Why do these journal prompts ask you the same questions over and over? Read over your journals from the beginning of the semester to this point. Do your responses change? What is the purpose of evaluating and re-evaluating your writing process so often? What are you learning from it? Anything?

Week 11 (due 4/3)

You’ve received several papers back from your professor(s) at this point. From your grades and the comments on your papers, do you see any progress in your writing? Are you getting more adept at making arguments and making them well? Are you stretching to try new strategies, or are you sticking to what you do well? What do you do well at this point? What would you like to try to improve?

Week 12 (due 4/10)

Who reads your writing? You have peer reviewers in your draft workshops, but does anyone else look at what you write? Do you take it to the writing center or to a friend? Does you mom proofread your essays for you? What do you look for in a trusted editor? Who will read your essays next semester? Anyone? (Alternatively, would you rather no one ever read your essays?)

Week 13 (due 4/17)

You’re getting ready to revise a previous essay. What does revision mean to you? Have you revised in the past? Did that revision mean just minor editing changes or a major overhaul? What is your relationship to your writing after it is complete? Do you put it away and never look at it again, or do you like to re-read it after you finish (either before you turn it in or after it comes back to you)?

Week 14 (due 4/22) Note: Journals are due on Tuesday because of the end of classes!

Now that you’re in the final weeks of the semester, what are your goals for finishing? Have you changed your expectations on what you might accomplish in this and your other classes this semester? What do you have left to achieve and what are your strategies for making those things happen? 

Week 15 (due 4/30) Finals week

Now that you’ve reached the end of the semester, review your writing process as it was in high school and compare that to your college writing process. What has changed? What still works well? Are there things you will do differently next year?