Throughout the course of the semester, I have found that my methods in the recursive process have remained unchanged for the most part. Often when I write my papers, I attempt to make my rough draft as close to the final draft as possible. In my opinion, people often write anything that sounds like it makes sense in their rough drafts, simply so they can complete the rough draft on time, and then will focus on converting this into a proper final draft. Personally, I benefit the most when I try to effectively portray my final draft in my rough draft. When I add lots of new material into a rough draft, I often feel discombobulated and make lose flow and context in my paper.
When revisiting my significant writing project, I noticed these trends in my recursive process. In my Introduction paragraph, I made a few minor tweaks such as transition words or phrases to improve the flow of the paragraph, but nothing major. The major changes I make in the final draft consist in the body paragraphs. Through the recursive process, I took out a whole body paragraph which I felt did not have a proper place in my paper and created a new one. My new body paragraph compared the “abstract” section of a paper and Gee’s “significance” building task together. With this new body paragraph in my paper, the overall level of my paper greatly improved as I felt this was one of the strongest paragraphs in my paper. In terms of reorganization, I rearranged the order of my body paragraphs in my final draft. In my rough draft, my shortest body paragraph was ordered last right before the conclusion. Through the recursive process, I realized that having the shortest paragraph at the end was not a proper way to end the reader off in the paper, thus causing me to rearrange the paragraphs. I believe this increased the overall flow of the paper as a whole and helped my paper reach its true potential. Although the recursive process may seem repetitive and mundane at times, it is an essential step in the writing process that must be taken seriously by writers in order to maximize the level of their paper.
