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Haley Furguson
Professor Olivia Rines
UWRT 1101-02
9 April 2015
Final Reflection
During my semester of taking the course University Writing 1101, I have noticed much
improvement in my writing and research skills. This course had much to offer for improving
skills for future college classes that are writing and research based. Before taking this class, I
would not expect to have a better outlook on research at all, but I have gained a great
understanding of the process of research through my experiences. With the process of research
came the process of writing, drafting and revising the different essays we were assigned in this
course. This course stressed how important it was to not only have a strong final written piece,
but to have much improvement throughout the writing process. I believe that my writing pieces
have vastly improved because of the amount of feedback that was offered from peers and the
professor.
This course required many different types of writing and research ranging from writing
personal experiences to learning about different communities. Every day in class there were
writings called daybook entries. These generally include personal opinion, either about our
experience in class or answering a what if question. These daybook entries allowed me to
expand my personal opinion through writing with a less structured and formal format. When
writing the daybooks, it allows me to write without limits and warm up my writing skills. For my
portfolio, I included the daybook entries that stood out to me either because they displayed the

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progress I made through learning or entries that I have very strong opinions about. Daybook
entries are also a way to begin class with a discussion starter.
Class discussion is a big part of feedback for understanding concepts we covered in class.
Since participation is part of my final grade in the class, I made sure to try to put in my opinion
at least once a class period. I think class discussion has been the biggest struggle for me in this
course. I am not quick to respond to peers and I generally like to keep my thoughts to myself. I
think I have lost a significant amount of participation points this semester because of the fact that
I am quiet in the classroom setting, but I do enjoy listening to what my peers have to say and
learn material through their perceptions. Listening to my classmates opinions and ideas helped
me a lot especially when it came to brainstorming for papers throughout the course of the
semester. We had many essays to read over the course of the semester and had to base our papers
off of the concepts we read about, so many things were hard for me to immediately understand.
During class discussion many of my classmates had known more about the concepts we had read
about and shared their opinions, which greatly helped my understanding. When I shared my
opinions and findings for my research and readings, the feedback I got from my peers helped
improve my ideas greatly. I think that as simple as the class discussions were, they were a big
part of learning new concepts and contributed a lot to the early stages of the writing process.
Since feedback and class discussions were a large apart of the writing process, discussion
forums online were also helpful in utilizing feedback from peers. I think that the discussion
forum helped me develop more skills in responding to peers in a written setting. The forums
were also a way to keep up with my writing skills and write persistently throughout the semester.
I included discussion forums in my portfolio that would show my understanding of each new
style and topic of writing that we were presented in class. Discussion forums were where we first

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became aware of many new concepts through reading articles and I think it is very important to
display these forums to show the progress of understanding new terms. Even though writing
before every class became tedious, I became aware that it slightly improved my writing. Because
of writing constantly, I noticed the simple mistakes I made in my writing in general, even
conversational writing. Noticing mistakes that I usually wouldnt is a skill that I have gained
from this course.
Another skill that I have gained it research methods, both the genre analysis and micro
ethnography for this course were pieces of writing necessary of utilizing different methods of
research. The genre analysis was one of our main writing projects required for the class which
included searching for a certain genre and analyzing it through research and writing. I think that
since the genre analysis was one of the first assignments for this class and required more library
and paper resources, it was the weaker of the two main projects I wrote for this class. My ghost
grade for this paper was a C, which in my eyes was not acceptable. I have much improvement to
do before I submit the final draft to my portfolio. The process of collecting, organizing and
writing out data I found was very tedious. Since I wrote about the genre of commercials, I did
not know the many elements that were involved in a general commercial before I started my
research. Because I wrote about different types of commercials, I had to include multiple
corpuses; finding research to support these corpuses was the toughest part about constructing this
paper. Another big struggle throughout this semester was supporting all of my claims with found
facts. I think that through the process of peer workshops and having a ghost grade from the
professor allowed me to view my mistakes and understand what I needed to improve upon for
my future pieces. The genre analysis was probably my least favorite piece just because I did not
enjoy collecting the research and also because it was the piece where I made the most mistakes.

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The assignment also required more formality in writing, limiting the ability of including my style
of writing. Regardless of how I had felt about the genre analysis, it was the most productive
piece throughout the semester because it pointed out the faults I make in writing, mainly through
my research techniques. I hope to show this progress through my portfolio by including my early
drafts versus the final draft, which has evolved very much after learning from my mistakes. I
would say that this piece is my greatest success in this course mainly because of the vast
improvement I have made from the first draft to the final draft.
The piece of writing I enjoyed most throughout the semester was the micro-ethnography.
This paper allowed me to research a community with firsthand experience. I chose a community
of football players, which is close to me at heart because I am close friends with football players
at UNC Charlotte. I really enjoyed getting an inside look on the discourse community that
outsiders of a community would not have the privilege of experiencing. With the research of this
paper being more observational and hands on, I enjoyed the process of research much more.
When including this piece in my portfolio I hope to show the versatility in my writing. This
assignment allowed us to move away from the typical five paragraph essay and also allowed our
voice to be heard in our writing because of our first hand experiences. I also would like to
display my improvement of research methods and understanding of the concept of a discourse
community. I think that I learned more about what a discourse community was throughout the
process of producing this piece, rather than learning more about writing and the writing process.
Even though there was much to the writing process for this piece, I learned more about the
concepts this paper required me to be aware of. Terms like discourse community will help me
with future classes and gain more perspective of terms that I was not aware of before this class.

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Along with writing the micro ethnography, I had to present my findings in front of the
class. The presentation was a good way for me to practice my presentation skills, which I do not
get to practice often. I will probably have future presentations during college that are much more
critiqued and in front of larger audiences; this opportunity let me prepare for the possibility of
future college research presentations. I included this presentation into my portfolio because it
shows a more organized arrangement of my ethnography findings. I also think this was another
assignment great for feedback in the classroom. I enjoyed hearing what my classmates had to
share and seeing their take on what a discourse community qualifies as.
Overall, this semester has been very productive; there are some things that were tedious
and tough, but also some things that were more enjoyable and helpful. I really enjoyed having
the many different forms of writing offered through this course and having the opportunity to
strengthen my writing through these different forms. I have made much improvement during this
course and I would like to show that through my portfolio. Since I have struggled with writing
and research, I am happy to display improvements with these main issues from beginning of the
semester to the end.