Kutztown University of Pennsylvania Reflection Essay

Make it better and more interseting

In this class, we have explored writing, language, and communication in great detail. We have written in various genres (think about your unit 1 and unit 2 projects), engaged with others’ ideas and experiences, communicated in digital and print contexts, and practiced drafting and revision. You also have a world of personal experiences related to your writing, school work, and professional work. This last assignment is an opportunity to showcase all of this!
You will bring together the different views about writing/language we’ve explored, put them into conversation with your own experiences as a writer and rhetorician, and communicate them to a specific audience. You will be creating your own personal definition of writing!

Another way to think of this assignment is that this is your opportunity to join the conversations we have been exploring all semester. In Unit 1, you reflected on your own experiences with language and discourse. Then in Unit 2, you read several texts about language and writing, listened rhetorically, and then put those voices into conversation with each other. Now, in Unit 3, you are going to enter the conversation by creating your own original text for a public audience–that is, a specific audience beyond this classroom.

Task:
You will write a text for a public audience that covers at least 4 claims about writing/rhetoric/language and a thorough explanation for each claim. You can frame these 4 claims as “lessons” you learned in the class, or as advice you have for other people based on your experiences (note: the advice should not be about passing the class, but about writing/rhetoric/language). Look over our reading assignments this semester and you’ll see that many of them explore lessons the author learned, or advice the author has for other writers. That’s what you are going to do here. How you decide to frame your claims will largely depend upon the specific audience you choose for your project. For example, if your audience is comprised of incoming 1101 students, then your claims will look/sound different than if your audience is made up of professional writers.

Your project should have at least an introduction or a conclusion and a title. Depending upon the genre you choose for this project, you need decide if you will include an introduction, conclusion or both along with your 4 claims. You might use an introduction that frames the claims and prepares your reader for what follows and/or a conclusion that helps tie up loose ends and provides closure–it depends on the genre (see below). Either way, you should frame the 4 claims/lessons you discuss and/or explain your reason for writing (in a way that makes sense for the genre, audience, purpose–again, see below). In other words, how can your audience make sense of your 4 claims together? Since your introduction or conclusion should be written to your specific audience, you should clearly describe what you want them to do, see, or believe as a result of reading your claims. What do you want them to do with these claims? That should be addressed in an introduction or conclusion–which genre you choose will impact whether an introduction or conclusion (or both!) is more appropriate.

You should also choose a title that interests your audience and gives them an idea of what to expect from your work. The title of your project does not need to mirror the title of the assignment (so, not “My Personal Definition of Writing”). What title is appropriate for the content, purpose, genre, and audience of your work? Remember, titles often forecast what a document is about, so you’ll probably want to write the draft before you settle on a title that describes what your draft is about.

Purpose:

• To a degree, you will get to choose your purpose. Similar to what is explained above, your purpose will largely depend upon the specific audience you choose for your project. In part, this depends on whether you want to talk about lessons you’ve learned, advice you have for beginning writers, thoughts that relate to more advanced writing or professional writing, or something else. You might think of your purpose as debunking common myths about writing, or you might choose to demystify the writing process for your audience, or you might provide advice to your audience. In other words, you have to write about 4 claims, but “why” you are writing your claims for your audience is up to you. But you do need to name your purpose for writing in your topic proposal and stick to it.

Audience:

• You get to pick your audience. As explained above, this is a very important decision because your audience impacts what you write and your purpose for writing. Who do you want to write for? Maybe incoming freshmen? Maybe this is a text you see being distributed to 1101 students on the first day of class? Maybe it’s a text that will be distributed at the writing center? Do you want to write for students like you–first-generation college students, Black students, multilingual writers? Maybe you want to write to students in your major, professionals in your field of study, or middle school students? Just remember that whoever you are writing for is a public audience–meaning that it is an audience beyond our classroom and there will be people in this audience that you don’t know personally. This might be an audience that you have some familiarity with (i.e., incoming 1101 students or an audience related to your culture) or an audience that is more unfamiliar to you (i.e., readers of FIU News or elementary school students). Whatever audience you select, your audience can’t be “everyone” — pick a specific group of people that will be interested in and benefit from your perspectives and then write for them.

Genre:

• You also get to pick your genre, as long as it’s a written text and it is at least 1000 words long. You also want your genre to make sense given your specific purpose and audience. The genres that will be most effective for an audience of incoming 1101 students might be different than the genres that would be effective for a younger audience or an audience in a non-academic space. You can look back at texts we read in Unit 1 and Unit 2 and choose to use one of those genres, including op-eds, articles, and blogs. Whatever genre you choose, you should write a text that looks and acts like that genre. (In other words, you can’t write a 5-paragraph essay and say it’s an article–what do articles look like? What do they do that 5-paragraph essays don’t do?) Use examples from the genre you’ve chosen and use them as a model. In the past, some example genres students have used include a blog, an article in the FIU newspaper, a magazine article, a “how to” article, a review, an open letter, an essay, a narrative, etc.

Consider the visual aspects of the genre you choose and make appropriate rhetorical choices. Will you use subheadings? Bulleted lists? Would it be effective to incorporate different colors or font types? Does the genre you chose typically include images? Will you organize your writing into paragraphs, columns, or something else? Similar to the choices you will make regarding your claims, your purpose, and your audience, the visual design of your project requires you to make purposeful, thoughtful decisions. Put simply, you want your purpose, your audience, and your genre to make sense together and complement one another.

Other Requirements:

• Claims + Explanations: As explained above, your personal definition of writing should include at least 4 claims about writing/rhetoric/language. Along with each claim, you need to include an explanation that expands upon that claim. While your genre will inform the choices you make, your claims should be explained and/or defended using your experiences in this class along with your personal perspectives and/or experiences beyond this class. A minimum requirement of this project is that you make at least one reference to a class reading or assignment in support of each claim. In other words, you must draw connections between the claims you are choosing and the experiences you had in this class. You are also invited to bring in personal, cultural, and/or professional experiences as they relate to each claim.
• Make sure that your claims work together in some way. This will better serve your audience and purpose. It’ll also help you make connections between your claims. Your introduction and/or conclusion will help your reader see those connections, too.
• Since each claim will be clearly stated as a sentence before, after, or alongside each corresponding explanation, place that sentence in bold so that I can clearly find the 4 claims.

Don’t know what your claims should be?

The following questions are designed to help you consider your specific claims. You do not need to use these questions–they are just a list of questions to help you brainstorm what your four claims might be about.

You could focus all four claims on one question and really dig deep, or choose a couple different questions. Try to make sure that all of it works together, though, so that your document works as a whole.

• What writing activities or projects from this semester were especially significant for your understanding of writing?
• What is something you thought about writing at the start of our semester that you now understand differently?
• What personal writing experiences do you regularly engage with and what purpose/role do they serve in your life? (e.g., social media, diary/journal writing, letter writing, scrapbooking, poetry, etc.)
• What is the role of peer review in the writing process?
• What is the relationship between reading and writing?
• What is the relationship between linguistic diversity and effective communication?
• What do you believe constitutes good or effective writing in the classroom?
• What should be the role of digital writing in the classroom?
• What practices should be central to the writing classroom?
• What do you believe constitutes good or effective writing in your professional life?
• What is the relationship between writing and social action?
• What is the relationship between writing and personal expression?
• How do writers construct ethos/credibility with their audience?
• What is the role of giving, receiving, and responding to feedback in writing?
• What is the importance and purpose of drafting in writing?
• What is the importance and purpose of brainstorming and/or planning in writing?
• What attitudes and habits do successful students have?
• How does language/discourse affect our writing? Or identity as writers?

Criteria for Success:

This writing project will be evaluated based on the following questions:

• Purpose: Are the chosen audience and genre appropriate for the message? Is the purpose for writing clear to the reader? Does the purpose remain consistent throughout the entire project? (15%)
• Genre: Does the writer effectively employ genre conventions? Does the genre the student chose for this project make sense given the specific audience and purpose of the project? Does the writer use an introduction/conclusion/title in accordance with chosen genre conventions to frame the four claims? (15%)
• Audience: Does the text effectively appeal to and meet the needs of the chosen audience? Is the audience consistently addressed throughout the entire project? (15%)
• Explanations: Is each claim stated and explained so that its significance and meaning is easily understood? Does each explanation provide examples and/or ideas that would be relatable and understandable to the chosen audience? Does the project provide detailed, in-depth, thoughtful ideas writing, language, and/or communication? Does the project contain 4 claims/lessons, which are all easily identified? (30%)
• Support: Does the project bring in specific and accurate references to ENC 1101 texts and assignments to support claims? Does the student use their own words, ideas, and experiences to support each claim? (20%)
• Mechanics: Does the project show evidence of thorough proofreading and editing? (5%)

Reflection is an important part of any learning we do. You’ll often be asked to reflect in your college career and in the professional workplace. Reflections are a space where you can think about what you learned, what you did, and what you’d do differently. For example, if you play sports, you know that teams often meet to discuss how a game went, what you learned from the experience, and what needs to be done differently next time. In the work place, you may be asked to explain the work you’ve done in the last month to your boss, what challenges you faced, what solutions you found, and what you recommend going forward. In the school setting, reflections not only help you, the student, consider what you learned, but they help the teacher understand the unseen work that you did.

You’ve worked hard to learn new concepts, understand a new genre, write and revise your essay–and I want to know how it went. I’d like you to write a short 250-300 word reflection about this project and the revision process.

Importantly, I want you to organize this reflection to paragraphs, and have each paragraph focus on ideas you want to share.

Here are some questions your reflection might address:

• Comment on the process of writing the first draft. What was the most challenging part of writing this project? In what ways did genre inform the decisions you made as you wrote? In what ways did your audience and purpose inform the decisions you made as you wrote?
• Comment on the revision process and your attempts to improve your project. What did you work hardest on to revise in this project? For example, was there a comment readers gave you that you worked especially hard to address? What comment or feedback did you get (and from whom) that helped you understand something about this project or your own writing? What did you change as a result of the feedback?
• Comment on the final product or the unit as a whole. What do you hope I will notice about your essay? Is there a section or element that you want to point my attention to? What would you have changed if you had more time to work on this? What skills do you think you learned most during this unit? (This can be something new you learned or a skill you improved.)

You may be honest in your reflection. Anything you say here will not affect your grade on the project at all.

Note: There are two new questions that you haven’t had to answer in past reflections.