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Jacelyn Thomas

Professor Rieman

English 1101X

21 February 2010
Mid-Term Reflection

The semester is halfway over and looking back at the work I’ve done so far, I

realize this course is not what I thought it would be. Judging by the name, “College

Writing,” I assumed this course would primarily consist of students receiving many

prompts and writing many essays, one after another, throughout the semester. However, it

hasn’t been quite like I thought. Up to this point, the class has done a lot of reading, brief

writings, and reflections. Instead of writing countless numbers of essays like I imagined

we would, we have focused more on doing exercises to help us learn how we go about

writing, our thought process, and habits we have developed in our reading, writing, and

note taking that we may or may not realize we do. You could say the class is based more

on “quality not quantity!”

In order to improve our weak points, we have done various reading and writing

activities to help us examine how we write so we could go back, reflect, and get feedback

from other students through peer response groups. One of the first exercises we were

introduced to, and use every day, is our day books. We use daybook writing as our

personal journals to jot down our feelings about material we learn in class, group work,

and questions we may have about anything being discussed. At the beginning of the

semester, we wrote in our daybooks how we felt about the syllabus, such as things we

were excited about, and concerns we had about the course material and expectations.

Many days like these were considered our free writes. Some days we approached day
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book writing in a different form. For instance, we were shown a picture and wrote about

what we saw in the picture, how it made us feel, and what we thought the picture was

showing. Later, we wrote on the same idea, except given a quote instead of a picture.

This type of day book writing was interesting because afterwards the class would discuss

their opinions on the picture or quote and it was fascinating hearing the different

prospectives and ideas that everyone would get from viewing the same thing. In a way, it

teaches you to open up your mind and view things differently. Along with those, we also

use our daybooks to reflect on how working with other students that day went, such as

topics or concerns that came up during peer workshop. Overall, the use of daybooks is

one of the areas of writing so far in this class that I feel comfortable with because it

allows us to express our feelings the way we want and to get our thoughts flowing at the

beginning of class.

The first big assignment we’ve done was reading an essay out of our Writing

Conventions book called “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work,” by Jean

Anyon. As we read, we took notes on important information, definitions, and questions

we had. We also wrote a reflection on the essay that allowed us to jot down our feelings

concerning the essay, and things we found troubling, surprising, or important. One of our

assignments was to post two questions we had about Anyon’s essay to the Ning website. I

liked how we were able to see other student’s questions because it not only helped me

realize points in the essay I may have overlooked, but seeing what other students have

written sometimes reminds me that I’m not completely clueless and share the same

questions and concerns as other students. Once we read and took notes on the essay, we

were asked to go back and take notes again, but this time using a method we learned from
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Writing Conventions called reverse underlining. We were supposed to pay close attention

to parts we previously overlooked to find out if it contradicted or strengthened our ideas

on her essay. This process actually helped me because it encouraged me to consider other

points of view I didn’t think about or even notice at all the first time around. We finally

wrote a “critical interpretation” and “critical inquiry” on “Social Class and the Hidden

Curriculum of Work” so that we could present our own analysis, while discussing

Anyon’s main point, important background information, necessary definitions, and a

brief summary of the text. After our first draft was done, we brought our papers to peer

workshop to get feedback from other students to help improve weak spots, and eventually

used their suggestions to create a final draft. My main concern on the critical

interpretation was when I gave what sounded to me like reasoning and analysis, it

actually sounded to other people like I was simply writing a summary of Anyon’s essay.

After receiving that comment in peer workshop, I went back and tried to revise my

writing so it didn’t sound as much like a summarization.

At this point in the course, I feel writing critical interpretations and inquiries are

where I feel least comfortable. Knowing how to pinpoint exactly what it is I’m supposed

to be writing about and how I should go about organizing and getting my point across are

places I would like to improve. Fortunately, I have already begun to feel more

comfortable in that area now that I know a little more about what to look for. I also need

improvement on starting introductions and conclusions, as well as minor things like

grammar and punctuation. I do feel comfortable with some of the practices in this course

such as taking notes and doing our day book writing. My notes have always been clear

and detailed; therefore note-taking isn’t a big issue of mine.

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The course description of College Writing states that the main point for this

course is to recognize your own writing, reading, and thinking processes and to make

meaning through reading and writing. Furthermore, the goals of this course include

considering what it means to be an academic writer, understanding that writing is a

complicated process, and learning how to make better writing decisions. I feel like the

work I’ve done so far has had a good emphasis on following the course description, as

well as helpful towards pursuing the course goals.

The work we’ve done has helped me realize poor habits I’ve developed in reading

and writing, as well as given me other ideas on how to go about analyzing material. I

have also had the chance to learn from other students through class discussions, peer

responses, the Ning website, and examples the teacher and other students have shared

with the class. Like I said, this course took me by surprised when I realized it didn’t

consist of writing a thousand essays like I thought we would, but more for learning how

to improve our writing strategies and thought processes, and use good note taking and

reflection skills to write a well organized paper and to get our thoughts across clearly.

Over the past few weeks I have not only began to understand the reasoning for the goals

in the course description, but the work we’ve done has helped me learn how to apply

these things to my writing so I can better accomplish the course goals.