Brendan McKelvey

Sills-Mullineaux
4/28/14
Reflection
For my major, I need to take English 104, and Ill be honest, I was a bit
nervous. English 103 was a difficult class for me; I didnt do very well in it. I was lazy before, I
never did any of the revisions, and I would start typing all of my papers only a few hours before
the paper was due. When I got my grade for 103, I was very dissatisfied. The next semester
though, I came out strong, I used the writing center for my advantage, I would revise my papers,
and I would do my work. College writing for first semester was difficult, I would ramble on
about pretty much nothing, and I would just fill up the paper with words. Now however, I am
proficient at analyzing pieces of work, and I can find different fallacies.
The paper in which I did the best job at addressing my audience was my paper that was
about propaganda. For my paper, I wrote about how evolutionists and creationists would battle
each other, and their different techniques on getting them to believe in their side. Going into
detail on what each side was about was beneficial for my audience because the reader might not
know what each side would know This theory explains how random mutations in DNA can
influence an individual, and overtime, the mutations that work out for the better stay, and then
over a long period of time, an improved or a new species is created (What is evolution). The
paper also was good at addressing how each side did a good job with their propaganda.
My paper with the best genre was my Objective Summary. In this paper, it was just
summarizing the article in our text book about college, and we werent allowed to include any of
our personal opinions in the paper. This was difficult because I did not agree with the author of
my article, but I had to learn to put that aside, and just state all of the facts, and put his opinions.
My Final Research Paper was where I showed the best evidence. This paper was filled
with so much information, which was all evidence that would try to help prove my thesis
statement. I believe that I did an adequate job at proving my thesis. There are many different
alternatives that can be drunk instead of soda. One option is fruit juice. This here does a good
job at helping my thesis, because it was trying to help people eat healthier and it has people stop
drinking the soda.
The paper that had the best analytical skills was my Rhetorical Analysis. This paper, I
had to read an article in the text book and then analyze the paper to find different fallacies and to
find different stylistic techniques. This paper too, we were unable to put our opinions into the
paper, we simply had to analyze the piece of work, and then report our findings. Duncan tells
this to the American public because he wants all people to support his opinion that disabled or
not, these children deserve a world-class education. Here it talks about how Duncan, the
author, expresses his opinion, and here it gives the reader information, but here it is not showing
my opinion in any way.
The Research presentation was the piece of work that I believe that I showed my best at
process. In this project, we all got assigned into different groups, and we had to present our
research question. My project was about soda, and we showed our knowledge of process
because we all first came up with a big list of different ideas of things that we can research.
Once our list was finished, we then divided all of these ideas and assigned them to each of us to
research. Once we had all the research done, we got together and then combined all of our
information. We then discussed what was important and what was not and then added the
important information to our poser board.
My best piece of work was undoubtedly my presentation. My group and I had countless
hours invested in this project. All of this work paid off in the long run, because it was an
excellent piece of work. I prepared my speech very well, and my group and I worked very hard
on our visual aid. We ended up getting a 97% on the project, which then qualified us for the
school wide showcase. Looking around at all the other projects, we thought we wouldnt last
very long, but we kept moving on to the different rounds. In the end, the person who was
organizing the showcase came up and told us that we placed third. Out of the 100 best projects
at Northern Illinois University, ours was the third best according to the panel of English teachers
voting.
Overall, looking at my past reflection, I had grown immensely as a writer. Last semester
was very hard for me; I was learning writing techniques that were nothing like I have ever seen
before. This semester it was just generic writing styles, but we were analyzing more than last
semester. Last semester I had unfortunately got a C in the class, while this semester, with the
added hard work, with many visits to the writing center, and not cramming my papers until the
last day, I had earned a B or hopefully an A.