Self Reflective Writing

Downs & Wardle’s “Teaching about writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re) Envisioning “First Year Composition” as “Introduction to Writing Studies” talks about several ways to refer to writing and our response to it. As well as the misconceptions students have towards the proper way of writing and how they have managed to break the “college writing” stereotype and discover their own way of writing.

Upon entering Columbia College, writing was one of my weaker areas. It was very important that I gained the necessary knowledge and confidence to become a better writer. I didn’t know how to express myself and felt as though my writing was not my interest. As a result of taking English 101, I have gained a better understanding on how to properly research and build a satisfactory paper. Every paper that was assigned seemed like a struggle to complete. Before entering this class, I did not know the meaning of a thesis or why it was important, however, I obtained this skill quickly. I noticed that every paper has an argument and the thesis helps clarify the rebuttal. Now, I have a new outlook on writing. It’s a way to express my thoughts and allow others to see things through my eyes. There is no doubt that I still have a long way to go, but I know if I continue to write, I will get better. Just as I developed more skills in class, the various papers assigned helped to better structure the writer in me. In addition, the subject areas were not only interesting, but very informative and made it much easier to write about my experiences.

Writing is one of the most important skills that I have learned throughout my years in school. I have learned that no matter how much I love or hate it, writing is a necessity; I might as well try to be good at it. Writing has been in my life for many years. There are many types of writing, educational writing and personal writing are two that I will mention in this essay. I have learned how to allow writing to help me in my daily life. When I began writing I hated it, however, I have learned the many uses of it, and it has become a huge part of my life.

The survey result Berrett includes shows that students see writing as “basically a performance”. Berrett also introduced an argument from the “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing” report, which claims that writing is not a “linear process”. The author states that successful writing requires various processes, habits and experiences, such as “curiosity, flexibility, persistence and metacognition”. Since for most highschoolers, writing is ‘’framed as preparation of tests”, they do not have the opportunity to “develop ideas or raise prose”. The author suggests the students require change in their mindset of writing. However, the only evidence the author provides is from a students’ self-reported survey, instead of actual writing assignments. This rather subjective evidence results in a less convincing argument. Despite this flaw in logic, I personally agree with the author. I find the transformation of writing from high school to university is challenging. The main reason is that my writing experience back then was more about “following directions”. The format and structure of the writing assignment was provided, and all the information I need was spoonfed to me. As a result, there was no researching and developing my own idea, and in the first week of university, when I was asked to write a lab report with my own theory, I brainstormed for hours before eventually generated one. Nevertheless, I hold onto the hope that improvements on creativity in writing can be made as I gradually develop my “curiosity, flexibility, persistence and metacognition”. In general, although I agree with the author’s opinion, I felt his claim lacks

Everyone on the planet has a goal set in life, but only a handful attempt to improve to obtain their goal by studying the subject their goal is in. In my English class, English 101 this quarter I was astonished by how much I had progressed as a writer sharpening my writing skills and also learned a lot about writing that I hadn’t learned before. In my writing portfolio for this quarter I had to write an autobiography essay, a research essay, and this reflection essay to develop my writing skills better. The writing assignments were fun to do because it challenged me to work on essays of different styles that were new to me. The essay assignments helped me grow as a better writer that gave me the self-confidence and skills to take on the world on my own.

While attending writing class, I learned about the 4 steps in writing, bases for revising, organizing, and connecting specific information, and I also learned about the different types of essays such as descriptive, narrative, process, cause and effect and argumentative essay. I have been a student at Milwaukee Area Technical College for 1 semester, and over the course of my enrollment I have grown and learned more that I knew prior to attending this writing course. Participating in this writing class has taught me so much more than stuff about literature and language, it has taught me another way of expressing myself. I have learned here how to write and express myself, how to think for myself, and how to find the answers to the things that I don 't know. Most importantly I have learned how important technique, outlines and organization are. My goal in this paper is to inform writers about how my writing skills have improved.

In the article, Fernsten and Reda (2011) explore the relationship between writer self-identity and academic writing. They assert that self-awareness of writer identity can improve academic writing for disadvantaged student writers, those described as basic writers due to socio-cultural differences from the dominant culture, or from previous educational evaluation experiences (Fernsten and Reda 171). The rationale is that writing skills can improve through the practice and informal (non-graded) evaluation provided through self-reflective exercises regarding writer identity (Fernsten and Reda 171). The article introduces the subject matter by explaining

To many people, writing is either considered a task, or an activity. There are also different types of writing for people to enjoy. In Josh Keller’s “Studies Explore Wether the Internet Makes Students Better Writer”, Keller describes how the internet has made students far better writers. He also describes how many students have described their dislike for academic writing but prefer their own personal blogging and/or journaling. This essay describes why struggling students often fail to write effectively because they find academic writing hard because they are not able to put their own thoughts and experiences into their essay. The idea of this essay was to describe the problems with students writing and the possible solutions for the problem. Keller mentions that the solution, that is not being pursued, is to combine academic writing with personal writing. He describes how many students write far better in their own personal writing and that these student’s personal writing

In the article “Best Practices in Teaching Writing”, Charles Whitaker outlines eight points on helping students succeed as writers. The first

Writing is a practice that most of us were taught when we were young. We were taught the basics of grammar, how to form a sentence, conjunction words, how to write paragraphs and more. Although we have learned this skill while growing up and have used the skill every year after entering kindergarten, this does not mean our writing process will ensure the best work. The authors that I chose each encourage their audience to excel in the art of writing in their own way to help with the writing process.

Coming into this class, I wasn't sure what to expect. Of course,I expected to be writing a lot but was unsure of the type of writing and the style. I was looking forward to writing challenging pieces that stretching me creatively as a writer. I wanted to explore how to express myself in my writing because it had been a long time since I'd written a creative essay. One of my main hopes for this class was challenging myself to become a better editor of my own papers. I often find it a tedious and laborious process to find and edit the grammatical errors in my papers. However, this is an important skill that I need to develop for my future as a successful writer.

During this semester in English 107, I have progressed more as a writer. Before I went to University of Arizona, my writing was rigid. I wrote five-paragraph TOEFL style essay all the time in my high school life. After I attended in English 107, I was not confident about my writing skill. Throughout these three projects we have done, I become more and more confident about my writing skill than before. The Student Learning Outcomes also helped me to grow as a writer a lot. In these goals, I did well on several of them, but I still need to work on the other goals.

In my English 1010 class, I have learned to do a number of things through writing essays. I have written a Literacy Narrative, a Discourse Community Analysis, and a Writing Research essay. Firstly, I have learned to identify how an author’s purpose, audience, genre, and context determine effective writing. The purpose of the literacy narrative was to help me understand myself better as a writer (Jones 1). My teacher was the intended audience of the narrative. The genre of the narrative was non-fiction because it was about my experience as a writer. The context of writing made my writing more interesting and more effective. All those things make effective writing because you have to know what you need to write about and who is receiving your writing. I displayed these skills by going into detail of my experiences with reading and writing through my life. In the narrative I shared how fun and exciting it was when my second grade class got the opportunity to write a book, A Book of Future Astronauts (Writing is Good).

Prior to entering class, I thought that I was a competent writer. However, I quickly learned that my writing was conversational and that I had little experience in academic writing. I became aware that much of my poor writing was like an old habit that I found humbling to admit and hard to correct. Passive voice, unneeded words, long sentences, were just a few of the obstacles that resulted in ineffectual writing. However, using peer reviews and an editing checklist I slowly began the journey to better writing. I also found that reading about writing provided supplementary methods to improve my writing. Implementing these new techniques, I slowly began to understand what scholarly writing entailed. As I learned through giving criticism

‘Helping students meet the challenges of academic writing’ by Fernsten and Reda is an interesting study how reflective writing practices can be useful for marginalized students, who are struggling with “negative writer self-identity. The possible causes according to Fernsten & Reda are, “issues such as race, class and gender that are marginalized factors for many basic writers”, in addition to the expectations of the dominant academic culture. However, even though Fernsten & Reda illuminated the ‘potential conflicts’ within the academic world, they have failed to provide conclusive evidence that supports their argument regarding their solution. Their reliance on dated research that provides a one sided historical perspective, may