Allison Hampton

Professor Marcum
28 April 2016
PART 4:
Rhetorical Knowledge
Before this class I used much of what I had been taught in school about
writing in order to compose and complete a draft. Most of my rhetorical
knowledge came from what I had been told by teachers throughout my
years of schooling. When writing, I focused a lot on the rules and regulations
that had been seemingly set in stone by all of my previous teachers
throughout middle school and high school. I was always very hesitant to
break out of this box of set rules that governed my writing out of fear that
my writing would be wrong or not good enough compared to my peers
writing.
I feel like our Inquiry Remix Project best utilized the rhetorical
knowledge skills that we have learned throughout this semester in this class.
Because our inquiry project required us to research for our respective topics
while creating our project, when we were to work on our remix projects we
already had a wealth of knowledge to build our projects with. While creating
this project I was able to utilize information that I already knew.
Critical Reading
In high school, we focused a lot of our time and attention on critical
reading. Much of my junior and senior English curriculum was focused on
reading and analyzing different texts and writings in order to fully
understand them. Critical Reading was also of huge importance as far back
as middle school and elementary school. Because of this, I had a lot of
previous knowledge and experience pertaining to this topic before entering
this class.
Any of the group discussion we have done in this class where we have
analyzed and talked about an assigned text has been very helpful in
furthering my knowledge and abilities within the realm of critical reading.
Composing Processes
Before college, my composing process mostly consisted of cram writing
all of my papers the night before they were due. I never wrote them within
the span of several days or a week where I allowed myself several times to
sit down and write with breaks in between. I never had more than one draft
and I rarely went back and edited. This is because I would not allow myself to
continue writing my paper if I was not satisfied with part of it.

The assignment that I used composing processes skills the most for
was our literacy memoir. Because we were given so much time to work on it
and required to create several different parts in the process, I was able to
experiment with how I went about writing and composing my paper. Instead
of cramming all of my writing into the night before it was due, I created
outlines, several drafts, and spent several days editing until I was happy with
the product.
Knowledge of Conventions
Prior to this class I focused heavily on the different rules and
regulations of writing that had been taught to me by many of my English
teachers throughout school. I was usually very hesitant to break away from
these rules and not follow them because they had been so engrained in me.
Since entering this class, I have been able to allow myself to
experiment with my writing and not necessarily follow all of these rules
perfectly. One assignment that I experimented with this a lot was the literacy
memoir. I allowed myself to play with my writing a bit more because I wanted
my memoir to be interesting and not boring.
Critical Reflections
In school before college, I was rarely asked to reflect on my writing in
English or writing classes. We were asked to do very few revisions and
reflecting on our previous work was not focused on much. So, up until this
class, I had not had much experience with reflecting on my work in order to
make it better or improve my future writing.
One of the most helpful activities we have done in this class that has
helped me to understand the concept and importance of critical reflections is
the Literacy Memoir. Because this assignment included many separate parts
and required several drafts, I was able to reflect on my writing every step of
the way. I feel that this definitely improved my writing and helped me to
understand the benefits that come with reflecting on your work.