Midterm Reflection

1. Graphical representation of your writing/composing process

2. A reflective cover letter that addresses how you are meeting the following student learning outcomes completed to date:

-modes of blogging and informal writing: academic, political/community-based, and personal

            My means of blogging consists of more or less on a personal note, a pathos appeal. At the beginning of the semester I wrote a blog containing information about myself for my peers to be able to figure out more information about myself. Than attached is a link to another blog I wrote with more random information about myself and how I feel by midterms. All of my academic blogging for class consisted of writing for the videos we watched and the novels we read.

-situating your writing: Analyzing, synthesizing, and composing with sources

            Sourcing my pages has mainly been based off of Wikipedia and being able to hyperlink certain aspects of my writing to other web sites. However linking pages caused me to be worried about sources on the internet that were not exactly legitimate or not.  

composing processes: argument and persuasion

            When choosing a topic for argumentation and persuasion, I find something that I know I feel strongly about. I may not necessarily KNOW everything that there is to know about that subject, but something I feel strongly about. Then by the process of research I begin to learn and expand my knowledge on that actual subject. I do not necessarily like the idea of having to persuade because I believe that people will have their own opinions and I do not care to persuade them if that is how they necessarily feel. I choose to take my opinion and clearly get my point across with a slight hint of aggression in my writing. For them to be persuaded in my writing is the audience’s choice. Therefore a lot of my writing will always consist of a pathos appeal because it is my strong, personal opinion.

-multimedia: visual analysis and composition, aural analysis and composition

            I am not one in particular to use images, pictures, or videos to correspond with my writing. It was not for any reason in particular. I would just rather the audience really understands my point through my writing then the images or videos of other people. Then again, I do source from others work to really understand. I am just more for writing than for picture books.

-collaborative, coordinated, or distributed writing: linking, interacting, and responding in writing to/with peers.

            I have attempted throughout this semester to communicate with others throughout the wiki, but it has never quite worked out as well as I had hoped. The only means of learning from my peers and communicating with them is during peer revisions and editing. This has been very helpful for me because I really do enjoy hearing what others have to say about my work. I do not mind people even being a bit brutal. It is all about improvement from here on out.

-writing in the disciplines: connecting your writing to research and scholarship in a specific field

            Writing has always been one of my favorite things and I hope to one day fulfill a career that involves writing. What that is exactly, I am not quite sure. This semester I have been trying to improve my means of writing and being able to do more of a research style of paper as opposed to my usual “free lance” type of writing, more ethos and logos appeal as opposed to my usual pathos. I have also been trying to improve my rhetoric, composition, and diction when writing because I feel that when I really go into detail about something that I could use improvement in those particular areas.

Community Writing (outside of academia)

            Outside of academia, I write like there truly is no tomorrow. I do indeed own a journal which I write daily. It contains every means of writing such as poetry, personal notes, or short stories. It all depends on my mood. I normally do not make my writing out for the community to read, all for the soul reason that I do not want my writing to be compared to others. I want my writing to be not necessarily original since no piece of writing is original, but I do not want my personal writing to be judged on that level.

This cover letter should directly address our 4 primary modes of evaluation: rhetorical knowledge, critical thinking/reading/writing, process, and knowledge of conventions. The following questions are meant to be heuristic to help get you thinking in a reflective mode:

Rhetorical Knowledge

            When determining who your audience is, you have to be very particular. The audience is what begins where and how you want to start you writing. Both of my main papers that we have had to write so far in the semester I directed it towards a smaller crowd, my peers, and a larger crowd, society as a whole. Once you have your audience you can then move on to your purpose of writing. The purpose of writing is to overall get a point across to your particular topic or purpose. I have always had trouble staying on focus and staying on point with my purpose because I tend to go on these tangents that lead off and slowly come back onto topic. I have tried my hardest in fixing that issue.

            What I write about indeed changes my style of writing. If it is a more serious notation then I will more or less write more structured and specific. When I simply had to just blog or write about how I felt when it came to a certain subject, I was more free and my style of text was a lot more laid back. This would ultimately affect my readers and if they found my writing to be more personal or to be straight forward and to the point. Either way, I needed to find a balance and make it so that my audience would want to continue reading. Such as now in this midterm reflection, my tone and approach is not to persuade, but to provide an understanding of how I approach writing in particular discussions. It allows whoever would be reading this to relate on the same level. The context of my writing all in all is used to get a point across, bluntly stated.

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing

            Deciding on my focal point in my writing derives from things that interest me or things that I feel I have a lot to say about. If I’m not interested in something I would not be able to branch off and blossom my work into something meaningful, maybe even beautiful. My favorite part of the writing process is the editing and revising from peers. These people are on the same level as myself, Composition II. Some have more experience in writing than others and I want to be challenged. I want to my buttons to be pushed to I can then strive to make my work even better. There really is no least important part, because you need every part in the cycle of writing to really complete your work. I strive to fulfill my responsibility to my readers by giving them something that makes them think. Something that strikes them and leaves them wondering for more. Throughout the semester I have done research through Wikipedia, books, and even professors. I feel that you need to get a little bit of information from personal and factual sources. As a result of writing I have found that I have grown as a writer. Never in my life have I written something that consisted on 2504 words, as sad as that sounds. I never found the strive in me, but something in this class makes me want to continue writing and growing. I hope to keep growing and developing on this track that I have been on so far.

Composing Processes

            When organizing my thoughts, I make categories which may seem very elementary but it works for me. I choose to have main topic, than I branch off into topics that consist with the main idea and support my thesis to back up the point that I am trying to get across. It has helped me work on my staying-on-topic issues greatly. A revision that I made that I felt was very important was when I was writing about recycling and one of my peers advised me to be more specific and expand on a particular point that I was bringing about. It helped me to expand my essay and make more sense to my audience. In my casual argument I felt that my strongest points were the ways to control population because it was not necessarily book and factual evidence, it was from the perspective of my professor and it intrigued me to learn about these possibilities. So because I felt so enthralled in these discussions I was able to write more efficiently. The weakest thing I have probably written in this class was when we had to write about the video about religion. It was a very controversial issue especially for religious people such as me so it was hard to be able to write without fighting for religion and mixing it with education.

            There was really only one point where I felt that I was truly helped in my writing by a peer. I did get positive feedback from my instructor how I do use a pathos appeal in my writing which I now realize that is what it is. Certain comments were made on my writing that really helped consisted in helping me better connect my conclusion to my body paragraphs and how to actually wrap up my paper without necessarily restating a chunk of what I had previously stated. I received a lot of positive feedback on my paper with just simple grammatical revisions stated here and there for most of it. I would like to see my peer reviewers to be more aware of my thesis to see if I hold true to what I am trying to get across overall in my work. Because I now know what I want out of these peer reviews I can be a better reviewer myself by becoming more specific on every aspect of the editing process. The only form of visuals I used to go along with my essays was this past casual argument and it was nothing more than a good laugh because it had to do with population control, however it was not anything too serious. I have learned a surprisingly large amount about the writing process and being able to build off of something so small since this semester has begun. I will change only by learning more.

Conventions

            I tend to use a lot of repetitive words in my writing along with run-on sentences because I feel that I need to get my point across in one elongated sentence. That clearly does not need to happen. I will just be more aware in the future of my point and how I can separate my thoughts more clearly.

Writing Technologies

            We actually had a discussion in class about how since all of our society is revolved around laptops and the connection of the internet, that our presidents should at least know how to use the basics on a computer. Although I find the wiki to be insanely confusing, I still know the basics. The power of technology that I used consisted of, what else accept the internet and my grand old laptop. I use them to do research, connect with my peers to build on my writing, and to finally construct my paper. I truly have not a flaw when using technology accept for the fact that I have found that some resources online are not necessarily truthful. This is why I have to be careful with what information I do gather for my research papers.