TOW #27 Reflection

My TOWS at the beginning of the year were extremely formulaic. I wasn't sure exactly what was expected, and was anticipating being graded randomly. So I made sure to cover all of my bases. There was very little flow, however, and my writing came in the form of one dense paragraph without transitions. Content-wise, I accomplished what I needed with analysis and background information. As the year progressed I added more and more rhetorical devices and spent much more time with the analysis portions of my TOWs. Also, my TOWs became significantly more cohesive. I stopped relying on jargon and the rigid formula and wrote in a more relaxed style that flowed and established better analyses. The assessed TOW really helped initiate that.

I think I mastered the ability of establishing context. I did solid research before my TOWs to figure out who the authors were and where their point of view would be coming from. This helped a lot in my APUSH essays actually, where I would quickly establish context in my introductions. Also, I think I became good at identifying effective examples in the text that illustrated the analysis I made. Throughout the year I used direct quotes in my TOWs and I think they worked well.

My analysis cold definitely be improved. Sometimes it wasn't clear and other times I rambled about too many devices. Additionally, my organization could still improve. I don't think my TOWs are quite as unified as I would like them to be and still appear a bit formulaic. Writing as a simple, organic analysis would be more comfortable and possibly even take less time.

I think I definitely benefited from TOWs, though I think the assessment came too late in the year. My TOWs got much better after that and were easier to write because I tried to do it less formally and without looking directly at the requirements. But writing analysis essays throughout the year helped me to identify strategies in a variety of different articles and figure out how to analyze them. I think I should have used more prompts like those seen in the exam, but the process of developing two to three sentences of coherent analysis per each device was invaluable. That is the hardest part of an analysis essay and I spent all year preparing. Given that that is the purpose of the TOWs, I think they were successful assignments.