TOW 27

For the first two marking periods my TOWs were subpar.  I think this is due to the fact that I would simply write them to get them done and not for the purpose of practicing them.  At first I tried to follow the guidelines that you handed out.  I would write a TOW while going down the list checking off what I did.  Then, when I started to realize you were not as thorough with your checking of our TOWs my work started to sag even more.  I tried to write posts which barely covered the word restrictions and had little skill involved.  I just threw as many words on the page as possible and had little point behind them.  Since the third marking period however I have improved.  The threat of having one pulled and looked at made me actually try lest one of my poor attempts be pulled.  Also, at that point I realized what you wanted.  I realized that you wanted an actual mini essay and I tried to do that.  Since we did fairly little TOWs after that point I did not really grow.  Doing TOWs did help me master the ability of finding a rhetorical device from nothing, but there are still many areas where I am lacking.  I still barely know the rhetorical devices and my essays are often formulaic.  To be honest I really did not benefit from these assignments but that is not from the assignments but from my personal work ethic.  I think though it may be beneficial to students to make them due less often and to actually grade them more.  This would make them seem like less of a tedious task to just get done and more of an actual task to get better.  Also the threat of grading some of them may spur more students to put in the work to get a good grade.