Week 2 Reflection Prompt: What kind of self-reflection experiences did you have in your freshman English class? What have you learned (related to self-reflection or writing in general) that has stayed with you and supported your writing?
Response:
During my freshman English class, I had a plethora of different self-reflection experiences. For instance, we had a group presentation to do and after presenting we spent time critiquing each group in accordance with a rubric. Another time we were tasked with revision of our own writing for a non-fiction piece. These are just some of the self-reflection experiences from those first semester freshman English classes.
What I learned that stayed with my writing was making sure that I complete rubric requirements thoroughly. Usually, I wouldn’t touch upon rubric points noticeably enough but now I overcompensate to make it clear that a rubric requirement is being completed here. Another thing I learned would be that I tend to make grammatical mistakes on my drafts. I rectify these mistakes by revising my drafts more often now.
Week 3 Reflection Prompt: Analyze the rhetorical situation of your Freshman Portfolio. For those few students who do not have one only: analyze the rhetorical situation of your Freshman English research paper/project.
Response: For the purpose of my portfolio, I created it as a representation of the work I did over the course. Additionally, it was to convince my freshman English composition professor or my audience of my proficiency in writing over the duration of the course. Some genres include research critical analysis of fairy tales. In this piece I took the situation of sibling rivalry and blended families in Cinderella and related it to real life using a variety of sources. Another piece was my Literacy Narrative where I had to reflect on my past experiences reading and writing. I had to explain how these experiences shape me today. For stance, I wanted to convey that I am a deep thinker when it comes to analyzing topics. Lastly for the Media/Design part of it all, I made use of MLA format through all of my pieces of writing. This showcased the professionalism in my writing.
Week 4 Reflection Prompt: Analyze the rhetorical situation of your Product Review essay.
Response: The purpose of my Product Review Essay is to explain all the qualities that make the Swingline Stapler Model #545xx good according to a set of criteria I define. I am writing this as a customer to any fellow potential customers of Swingline or anyone who is planning on buying a stapler in general. It is to report its performance as well as explain how it matches up against other Staplers. Considering I am a customer, the genre this essay belongs to is User Review.
Week 5 Reflection Prompt: What have we done so far that has been helpful to your writing process? How might you apply this helpful information or tool? What has been confusing/What would you like to spend more time on? If the clarification/additional focus does not occur during class time, how will you acquire the knowledge?
Response: What we have done so far that has been helpful to my writing process is peer feedback. It helps me see how I can approach writing differently through the lens of others. I would apply this helpful tool by asking a peer for their aid and then seeing if I can apply it to my writing. What I would like to spend more time on in this class is establishing what the professor wants additionally to what is on the syllabus. I would have to ask the professor to state what they want in a list after class.
Week 6/7 Reflection Prompt: To be completed after you have received feedback on your essay: Analyze the rhetorical situation of your Lab Report Analysis essay. Include textual detail to support your claims.
Response: The purpose of writing my Lab Report Analysis essay is to inform the audience about the similarities and differences between the formats of three lab reports and the reasons for their existence. For example, when analyzing the abstracts of the three lab reports, I wrote that Lab #3 had the most quantitative data, Lab #1 had the second most, and Lab #2 had none at all, which was consistent with all of their objectives. I wrote this report such that the general audience can read it with not much prior knowledge. To accomplish this, I strayed from having many technical terms be significant in the understanding of the essay. What motivated me is to explore the strategies that different authors use in writing Lab Reports. The genre is scientific or technical writing.
Week 8 Reflection Prompt: How are you doing with time management? Are you balancing the multiple needs of this course? Your other courses? Are you making time for reading, writing, studying, and collaborating? Explain your yes/no answers. Include how if yes or your success plan if no.
Response: When it comes to time management, I am doing well. I am utilizing Google Calendar to manage my tasks of the multiple courses I am taking this semester. This helped me prioritize which assignments I have to do during the day. To be more specific about this process, alongside my Google Calendar, I have the tasks menu open. In that task menu, I have 5 different main tasks that are named after each of my classes, then, I add a subtask for each assignment. I can choose to add a date for these subtasks or not to.
Week 9 Reflection Prompt: What experience have you had working in groups before this class? How has the group work we’ve done in this class been for you? What are you doing/will you do to optimize your experience completing the collaborative project for this class?
Response: Prior to this class, I have only worked in groups once since being in college. It was a good experience since we collaborated on a presentation that ended up being high quality. The group work in this class has been great since I do get good feedback from my peers upon completing an essay. To optimize my experience, I simply have to fit the collaborative work into my schedule whenever I have the time.
Week 10 Reflection Prompt: Analyze the rhetorical situation of your Technical Description. Include textual detail to support your claims.
Response: The purpose of my Technical Description is to inform my audience about the components and function of the Stanley Power lock 25 ft Tape Measure. I explained the form and function of many components such as the Belt Clip, where I mentioned its dimensions, shape, and its function being for a user to equip it to their belt for ease of transportation. This is a technical piece of writing and what motivated me to write this is the common sight of a tape measure in many situations when building takes place. My targeted audience is the general audience or someone with not much background in engineering.
Week 13 Reflection Prompt: Select one learning objective or one component of a learning objective. When, where, and how have you learned it? How have you developed in this arena?
Response: One course learning outcome that I developed was strengthening my source use practices. Through certain assignments, such as the Lab Report Analysis essay, and Technical Description, it had forced me to get better at sourcing certain information. To be more specific, I became accustomed to using the school’s online library as well as writing APA citations. Prior to this, I usually would not bat an eye at the school’s online library, but I have realized it is extremely useful when it comes to accessing certain articles that are not available publicly.
