Ayla Elledge

Professor Thomas
UWRT 1102-007
20 April 2016
Final Reflection
1. Choose a song or musical composition that communicates your experience
with writing and UWRT 1102. Consider including a video of the song. Explain
your choice.
I searched through my music forever to find a song that could actually
reticulate my experience in UWRT 1102 this semester. I thought the song Id
choose would be one close to my heart and very meaningful to me, but
strangely enough, I feel only luke-warm about it. I Dont wanna Be by Gavin
Degraw has a very strong message that being who are and where you come
from is what you should try to represent. This semester I was in a very weird
place of just getting healthy enough to be allowed in public places after my
bone marrow transplant last September. A trauma like this quickly put my selfconcept (and self-esteem) in jeopardy because I was forced to have others to
take care of me almost 24/7. In gaining back my ability to do things, I was able
to learn more about who I was at the core, even when I couldnt go out and
have fun or go to school and learn. I cant say that Im completely satisfied
without those elements in my life because at points, I was a miserable asshole;
but sometimes when life isnt going your way, youre given a pass to feel that

way. Degraws song assisted me in accepting whoever I was or what I was

feeling at that point in time. Some weeks I couldnt get any schoolwork done
because of the cognitive effects of chemo. That struggle could have led me down
a path of failure if I got down on myself about my lack of productivity, but

2. If you were to teach this class, what ideas would you emphasis?
There are so many important elements to teaching a college writing class
it would be difficult to find one place to start at. Since I would be new to the
class, I would want to break the ice by having a quick free-writing assignment
about their interests, hobbies or anything else they want to write about; and
then everyone would share theirs. Its very critical for every writer to be able to
put their work out there and receive feedback. Id emphasize that trying to be a
better writer is a constant process. No writer, not even those who are wellestablished, is finished perfecting their craft of composition. To illustrate this,
we would read Shitty First Drafts. This piece gives really good insight to the
simple fact that the rough drafts produced by most writers are just that: rough.
We must get our ideas out on paper in a way that works best for us
individually. Some people like to free-write their ideas, some like to make an
outline before they write a paper, others just start writing their paper from first
to last paragraph. This diversity shows the importance of being aware of
composing processes and how they can affect the writing you produce.

Touching on rough drafts again, one thing is almost completely certain: no

ones first draft is going to be the best representation of their writing. I make
that strong assumption because our writing can always become better with
critical reflection. Many people have the goal to complete something to the best
of their ability. To do this, you must reflect on the rhetorical choices you make
and the reason you made them. It is imperative to know the audience/reader
youre writing for along with their preconceived expectations. To help my
students practice this skill, I would introduce their first paper early on. This
assignment would require them to choose a book/film/song/some other type of
media etc. and explain what genres and conventions it employs. The rest of the
paper would delve into what rhetorical choices they could make to transform
their chosen media into a different genre. They would need to defend the
choices alterations they made. Most of the students probably arent English
majors, so its vital that they start learning early on how to adapt their
composing choices to fit lifes ever-changing expectations. To fully emphasize
this point, they would work on a major project for the second half of the
semester. Although our main final assignment in my current UWRT 1102 class
is a final reflection, Im preferential to more spread out reflections. Id rather my
students use the tools theyve learned frequently. I strongly believe in civic
duty, awareness, and advocacy. The prompt for their term project would be for

each student to find a social issue they wanted to research (similar to the
inquiry question we had this semester). It could be anything from global
warming, to abstinence-only sex education, to the out-of-control pet population
and no-kill animal shelters. They would have to describe the issue and cite
evidence that the issue exists. They would also need to posit an explanation for
why they think the issue is still occurring and find a way to back it up. After
exhausting the research/detail portion, I would want them to be able to have
some fun and freedom with the rest of the project. The last section of the
project would involve them using some creativity and trying to come up with a
possible solution to the social issue. They would have to attempt to convince
the reader of how and why their solution could resolve the social ailment. It
should go without saying that a couple of drafts would be due periodically in
conjunction with a few peer-review sessions. After such a cerebral undertaking,
Id like their reflections to be succinct and non-taxing. It would need to include
only a brief summary of what learned through writing and researching; and it
should include which SLOs and other areas of writing they think they could
still improve on. Learning never stops, especially in writing. Its very important
for students to be looking toward the future and seeing how they can apply the
knowledge they learn today to tomorrow problems.

Above, I wanted to get very specific about how usage of the SLOs are
instrumental in everyday life, but it would not have been cohesive and clear to
do so. Being a student and a member of society involves many skills to be
successful. Critical reading is a frequently used skill needed to comprehend
instructions of any kind. Composing processes are necessary to organize and
implement plans of action, writing or otherwise. Knowledge of conventions will
be used EVERY DAY for various contexts. For example: You wouldnt (I hope)
send your boss or professor an email saying something like Hey dude, Not
gonna be able to make it into work/school today. Catch ya on Tuesday. Later.
Your boss would either discipline or fire you and your professor would probably
lose all respect for you. As I mentioned earlier, rhetorical knowledge is
important to having your skills transfer to different areas of you r life
accordingly. After you have completed any writing or task, youre always going
to need to go back and reflect upon it. What if the references you cited are
actually defending an opinion completely different than the one youre trying to
convey to the reader? Your paper wouldnt be very cohesive and you may end
up appearing very unintelligent.

3. Explain how your understanding of rhetorical knowledge has changed

over the course of the semester using at least three examples from your
writing. Ex. Did you shift an assignment to better fit a particular genre
like a proposal?

i.

When I first started this English class, to be honest, I kind of thought I was
hot shit. I was quickly humbled when I struggled with the ability to my
voice into my papers. Id become so accustomed to writing formally (APA)
that inserting my I say didnt come naturally to me anymore. To reacquaint
myself, I had to read and re-read inquiry assignments of students who had
previously taken this class. Though it was frustrating, I did get insight into
expanding and retaining my rhetorical knowledge.

ii.

I will say that because of the amount of writing/research Ive done in the
past, I didnt feel very nervous about finding sources for the assignment. I
took strategies that I had learned when I was younger about research
resources in the library and used them to my advantage when writing my
annotated bibliographies.

iii.

Even though I was forced to write in the first person (which Im not fond of),
I found a way to insert some of my concise APA-style writing into paper
without boring or confusing the reader.

4. Explain how your critical reading has improved during the semester. Ex.
In what ways did you read across texts for connections and patterns in
your inquiry?
I never want to come off as arrogant, but I feel that my critical reading
abilities have been excellent since I was young, though there is ALWAYS room
for improvement. In the Inquiry/thesis, I had to read into something I was

pretty unfamiliar with so that I could reference what was being distributed to
popular culture on the topic of health. Im speaking of Womens/Mens health
magazines. I never trusted advice from magazines so Id spent most of my life
overlooking them. Upon doing my research, I had to be critically aware of the
prevalence of these magazines and the possible impact they could have on
people. Because so many people DID buy them, it would be important to pay
attention to what kind of message the magazines were trying to convey to their
consumers.
5. Discuss your composing processes. Ex. Did you conduct additional
research while revising or after consulting a colleague? Provide at least
three examples to support your assertion.

6. Provide at least three examples of your knowledge of conventions

i.

A good example of my awareness of conventions is my recent experience of

having to see-saw back and forth between MLA and APA formatting this
semester. In UWRT 1102, we use MLA, but in almost every other class of
mine, we use APA. It has been a good learning experience to stay flexible
and industrious because of contrasting demands from my classes.

ii.

Another convention Is consider quite necessary to good writing is the

urgency in stating your thesis or main idea early on. If you wait too long to
make a solid point, you risk confusing or losing the reader. Another possible

problem with waiting too long to declare your opinion is that you may end
up providing the reader too much evidence against your point.
iii.

To me, one of the most important conventions in writing is having good

spelling and a mostly consistent formatso you dont look stupid. In the
past, Ive read books that were being narrated by one character, and then by
another character, with no indication that the person or context had
changed. In one particular book, this scenario confused and pissed me off
so much that I stopped reading it and threw it away. Readers want to be
engaged and able to comprehend what theyve read. For this to happen,
uniformity is key.

7. Critical Reflection: A) Explain the importance of reflection in learning

processes. B) Explain what you think is important in providing
commentary on others work and receiving commentary on your own. C)
Provide at least three examples of your nuanced use of commentary in
your writing projects.
A) I went into this a bit earlier, but critical reflection is what we do to see where
were at. You may think something you wrote sounded great, but when you
re-read it aloud, it sounds silly or garbled. To critically reflect is to assess
what youve done and be able to rationally understand why you made the
choices you did. When designing my portfolio, why would I use a picture of a
girl looking in the mirror and seeing a drastically larger reflection of her

body then it actually is? This image can be tied back to a portion of my
thesis about girls in Fiji experiencing body shame just like the girl in the
cartoon.