Monday, September 21, 2009

Metacognition

Reading and writing are two of my worst subjects. So when it comes to my organizing my thought process it is a bit difficult. When I begin to write I usually start by thinking about what I am going to write and just start writing whatever comes to my mind. This is how my first draft usually goes so it is basically just a jumbled mess. I then go back over what I have written and move things around so they make sense. I then have someone else read over my paper to look for any spelling or grammar mistakes (which there are usually a lot of) because I do just rush through and write whatever comes out of my mind. I don’t feel that I was ever given a good writing strategy when I was in elementary or middle school, and even into high school, we had one semester of Comp and it be honest I cannot remember anything I was taught in that class. So I feel if my teachers in elementary school would have started me out with a better understanding of formal writing I would not have such trouble and bad strategies today.
When I am reading I start by going through and reading the chapter titles or if it is a text book the bold print. In text books if the topic is something I feel I know a lot about I just skim through that part (which is probably a really bad idea). I am not a very fast reader so I eliminate as much as I can. Reading the chapter titles in books helps me to get an idea of what the chapter is going to be about. After I read the chapter I kind of quiz myself. I go back to the chapter title and see how that and the whole chapter related and maybe another name the author could have used. If I don’t see a good connection with the title and the context I reread the chapter, there may have been something I missed. Once I am done reading the entire book I read the back cover and see if I got all the main points that where in the description.

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