Reflection Blog 1

My writing process does not exactly follow the normal writing process. I usually do
not do the prewriting stage. When given an assignment I usually spend some
thinking to myself about what I know about the topic and then immediately begin
writing my first draft. I found that if I actually attempt the prewriting stage I
experience writers block. Personally I do not like the prewriting stage. To others the
prewriting stage helps to organize their thoughts. When drafting I find it helpful to
write the whole assignment at one time in order to keep my thoughts together. I
also tend to write with the subject in mind most often to make sure I am achieving
what is being asked. For revision I like to give myself at least a day. I first like to
reread my own paper and correct mistakes I catch and spice up my wording. Then
I have someone else read my paper such as my father. I think that after reading the
article I might start attempting the prewriting stage to see if it has any effect on my
writing.
I do agree with the What Makes Good Writing? article about the five Cs and
three As. These are vital when you are writing because it makes sure that your
document is easily understandable to anyone who might read it. I think I struggle
with the concise and attractive areas. I tend to repeat certain phrases throughout
my paper and my documents are usually very academic and boring looking. I am
very good at making sure my information is correct and that I cover the topic
completely. I like to think that any of my work is easily readable and understandable
to anyone who might look at it.
I found my both of these articles to be informative and helpful in some areas. After
reading them I plan to try the prewriting stage more often to see if it has any impact
on how well my work is. In addition I am also thinking of ways to make my work
more appealing to others instead of it just being a boring educational paper. The
What Makes Good Writing article brought to my attention that I do tend to use
the same transitional phrases throughout my papers so I will try to switch those
around as well. While I believe that I am already a decent writer I think that these
articles will to make my writing superb instead of decent.
Reflection Blog 2
I will first start with the mini lecture and sentence structure and purpose. I would
the mini lecture to not be useful. It was already common knowledge to me and was
easily understandable. However, I actually struggled just a little bit when it came to
the assessment on the mini lecture. There were maybe one or two questions in
which I struggled for a minute about whether it was a complete sentence or a
fragment. In the end I got a 100 on my first try but I was surprised that I had to take
a little bit of time on a few questions. Overall the mini lecture was easy and a good
refresher.

Before I talk about the chapters I will answer the other questions. I am extremely
confident in my writing skills. I can easily put together a well formatted and
informative essay and get a decent grade on it without too much struggle. The only
problem I believe I have when writing is a few grammatical errors throughout the
paper otherwise it is a fairly good document.
After reading the chapters for this week I feel like I can still improve my fairly good
writing skills. When writing I am usually pretty good about keeping in mind what I
am writing about, who will be reading it, and how it is important. On the other hand
I have never really thought about when will they be reading this and where. It never
occurred to be that when and where the document is read would influence how it is
perceived and how well I do on the document. The prewriting section of this weeks
readings was not helpful to me. I usually do not prewrite. Normally I just jump right
into writing my first draft and I work from there. Chapter eight on organizing and
drafting was mostly just a refresher to me. I feel that I am fairly good at organizing
and drafting essays. However I do not normally outline my essay unless the outline
is a required part of the final product.
Overall I found this weeks readings and mini lecture to be a refresher before any
big writing assignments. The information would be considered the basics of writing.
In the end it was not new information but it was important old information to keep in
mind when writing a document.
Reflection Blog 3
The genre analysis assignment has been a little tricky for me. I had difficulty
understanding the matrix but after just reading the questions that needed to be
answered from the RWS Guide I better understood the assignment. After getting
past that the assignment went pretty well. I chose a scholarly article and a televised
debate as my two genres and they worked out great. Both provided me with enough
information to compare and contrast the two genres.
I found the Writers Diet to be interesting. I submitted my discussion from last week.
My use of nouns, prepositions, and adjectives/adverbs were rated as lean. However
my use of verbs and the words it, this, that, and there were rated as flabby. This was
surprising to me because I have always thought that I was a pretty good writer and
understood basic grammar fairly well. Overall my discussion was rated as fit and
trim. After doing this test I realized that I need to be more careful when I am writing.
Although my results were not bad they could still improve.
I found the chapters this week to be helpful with the genre analysis assignment.
Chapter 4 helped with the rhetorical issues part of the assignment. It provided a
refresher on ethos, logos, and pathos and also covered persuasion. The persuasion
part of the chapter was useful to me because one of my genres was trying to
persuade the audience. I also found chapter 9 to be helpful. This chapter helped me
to remember that I was writing an academic paper which requires a professional

tone. Overall the chapters were a refresher and helpful when writing the
assignment.
I also found the videos to be interesting and true. Grammar is very declining in
American society. Since the invention of the cell phone and texting people have got
lazy with their writing. The use of abbreviations and acronyms such as lol and omg
can be found in many professional and academic pieces. This is an important
problem to fix because we communicate with people from all over the world and
you want to be understood. It is also important in numerous careers because you
want to come off a professional and educated adult instead of a lazy, uneducated
individual. Commas are also very important and also misused. A comma in the
wrong place can change the meaning of the sentence. A sentence to your boss can
go from being a respectful and professional sentence to being insulting all because
of a misplaced/misused comma. Commas can make a piece of writing read
smoothly and correctly or it can make it choppy and possibly even offensive.
Learning all the rules of commas will prove to be helpful in future writing.
Reflection Blog 4
After reading this weeks chapters I found them to be helpful and full of information.
Chapter 6 on the research paper was pretty common knowledge. I found it to be just
a refresher on the structure of a research paper. This chapter will be very helpful
when doing the literature review assignment. Chapter 18 was full of useful
information. This chapter discussed how to start research for a paper. It provided
information on the different source types such as primary, secondary, and empirical.
It also covered print and online sources. I found this chapter to be especially useful
for the upcoming assignment as well.
I found the sentence error assessment to be very interesting. When reading the
mini-lecture of sentence errors I thought it to be very basic and easily
understandable. Then I took the assessment and I got stuck and felt like I was
making mistakes. I submitted it the first time and looked at the answers. I got most
if not all the multiple choice questions right but I struggled greatly with the actual
writing part of the assessment. I looked at the correct answers for the writing part
and found out that I had been making mistakes. I then went back and reread the
mini-lecture and attempted that assessment for a second time. On my second try I
felt like I did better but I did not get it perfect. I still struggled on some questions
but for the most part I did better. I think it is easy to do comma splices and run on
sentences because it looks and sounds right for the most part. I think that this minilecture and assessment should be given to people on a normal basis to help them
write better.
Reflection Blog 5
Overall I am pretty proud of the job I did on the genre analysis assignment. I think
that I will get a pretty high grade. I believe that my content is very good and that

the structure of the assignment is understandable. Honestly I think the only thing
that will lower my grade will probably be grammatical errors and possibly the
reference section. Now that I am thinking about it I am not sure if I cited my sources
correctly in APA format. Everything that we have done this far in class contributed to
how I wrote my essay.
Chapters 12 and 19 were very helpful in helping me to prepare for the upcoming
assignment. The discussion post about chapter 12 helped me to make sure that I do
not making any of those mistakes on my paper. It reminded me to double check my
work for grammatical errors and poor editing. Chapter 19 helped me to get started
on my research for the literature review. Chapter 19 helped me to think about the
sources I want/need to use for the assignment. The chapter discussed primary,
secondary, and empirical sources and how to gather the information. Both of these
chapters will be useful for the literature review and also future assignments in
almost any class when asked to write a paper.
Editing for consistency and parallelism are very important in writing a paper. These
two concepts help to make the paper look and sound good. Making the paper look
the same throughout the whole thing helps to make the paper easier to read and
locate things in the paper. This makes the paper more appealing to the audience.
Parallelism is a concept of listing things correctly so that it is grammatically correct
and makes more sense to the audience. Overall I think I do a good job at editing for
consistency and make sure my lists are parallel. I think that this mini-lecture is just
a good reminder of proper format and grammar used when writing.
Reflection Blog 6
After reading chapter 13 I realized how important the introduction and conclusion of
a paper are. The introduction is one of the first things the audience will read so it
needs to appealing and include the main topic of the paper. The conclusion is also
important because it restates the main ideas of the paper and wraps up the whole
essay. Chapter 14 covered the body of an essay. It discussed the format of a
paragraph including the topic sentence, supporting ideas, and the concluding
sentence. It also covered making sure the paragraphs flow from one to the next and
sectioning off the paper. Chapter 20 was all about the different ways to use other
peoples ideas including quoting and paraphrasing. It covers how to quote short and
long portions of anothers work and paraphrasing which is using anothers ideas but
rewording or summarizing them. Chapter 21 talked about how to use the APA citing
style. I found this chapter to be the most useful chapter of this weeks readings. I
struggle sometimes with citing in APA style.
After viewing the video on internet plagiarism I agree with all the points. Internet
plagiarism is easy for students to commit because of the copy and paste option.
Students just search the internet for things relating to their essays and if its sounds
good enough they will just copy and paste it into their paper. The internet has

caused students to become lazy writers because in most if not all cases something
has already been written on their topic so they dont have to come up with original
ideas. Internet plagiarism is a serious problem with serious consequences. Students
can avoid internet plagiarism by finding their sources in the library instead of just
searching the internet. Using actual books for writing that have been published and
can be held in the students hands changes the students perspective. I agree with
the video that students think that things on the internet are public and shouldnt
have to be cited but that is definitely not the case. Overall I think plagiarism is a
very serious problem in todays education system and something should be done to
fix that.
Reflection Blog 7
Sentence variety and wordiness are important concepts for students to learn about
because they help to make their papers look and sound professional and appealing.
Having the same sentence type and style makes the document very unattractive
because the reader may feel like they are repeating themselves. Wordiness is also
very unappealing and unprofessional because it makes the reader feel like the
author does not know what they are talking about. I do not find myself having too
many problems with wordiness. I do occasionally use some of things the minilecture says to avoid such as prepositional phrases but I believe that I do not
overuse them. When writing I am very proactive in making sure my sentences are
varied and that I am not repeating and over explaining myself. I think that these
mini-lectures are a good refresher as we begin to prepare our first drafts of the
literature review assignment.

Reflection Blog 8
I found the chapters to be helpful especially chapter 15. Chapter 15 covered basic
rhetorical patterns. While many may not know what rhetorical patterns are, they
have most likely unknowingly used them. I found this chapter to be helpful because
when writing I typically stick to one certain rhetorical pattern. However, it is actually
useful to mix and match rhetorical patterns together when writing. I actually did not
know that the rhetorical patterns could be used in just about any genre of writing.
For example, most people, myself included, think that the narrative rhetorical
pattern can only be used for fiction story-telling but it can actually be adapted to be
useful in a proposal. The spelling, punctuation, and capitalization mini-lecture was a
nice refresher as I was writing the literature review. It reminded me to use spell
check but not rely on it completely and reread the paper a couple of times. I
actually read the paper out loud and found mistakes that spell check did not catch.
For the non-discriminatory mini-lecture I do find it vital when writing. It is important
not to offend any possible reader in your writing. However no matter how careful I
am when writing I am sure that I still use some discriminatory language on accident.

With the Paula Deen video, my initial thoughts were that she was in fact a racist.
However, after thinking about it I believe that people use racial slurs on a daily basis
not meaning to offend anyone. Racial slurs are very difficult waters. Some might not
mind the slurs while others take them very seriously and take offense to them. In
the end, I think that racial slurs should be avoided at all costs.
Reflection Blog 9
My initial thoughts on the online opinion piece were that it was going to be hard and
I really didnt want to do especially after the literature review. After starting it I
quickly found out that it was easier than I thought it was going to be. The online
opinion piece, in my opinion, was actually one of the easiest assignments of the
semester. I felt like I did really well on the whole assignment but I did struggle with
keeping the word count down so I had to go back edited it at least three times. This
assignment was by far my favorite. I had a lot more freedom with this assignment
and could just write without all the restrictions of the past assignments. I really
enjoyed this assignment.
I found Chapter 17 to be a refresher with some new information. I know that when
working in groups every group member needs to have an assigned job to help get
the project done and so multiple group members dont do the same part of the
project. I also knew that when working in groups there stages to the project but I
didnt know that the concept was called Tuckmans Four Stages of Teaming.
However this chapter wasnt as useful to me as it might have been to others since I
didnt do any group work with the exception of the mini in-class debate.
I found Chapter 24 to be helpful when making my film documentary. It was all about
presenting work. I usually get very nervous presenting and most of the time dislike
it. It helped me to organize my thoughts to make an appealing presentation. The
last part of the chapter helped me to be calm when presenting. The chapter gave
useful tips such as give yourself plenty of time to present, gather your thoughts
beforehand, make eye contact, speak loud enough to be heard, etc.

Reflection Blog 10
For my semester topic I chose the issue of abortion. I chose this topic because I felt
like since it is a controversial issue in America I would have no trouble finding
information about the topic and completing the assignments. When I chose this
topic I thought I pretty much knew everything there was to know about abortion but
as the assignments required more in depth research I quickly found out that there
was a lot I didnt know about abortion. My favorite assignment this semester was
the online opinion piece. I liked this assignment because it was the easiest and less
restricted assignment of the semester. Although the literature review was timeconsuming and one of the longer papers I have done in my academic career I

actually enjoyed it quite a bit because it gave me the opportunity to learn new
things about my topic. Im not an artsy person so I like to write papers instead of
doing creative activities like visual representations.
I faced a lot of obstacles this semester in every class not just this one. I was taking
6 classes for a total of 16 credit hours this semester. On top of my classes I also had
a great deal of home responsibilities. My father is a divorced soldier with 3 three
teenage kids, myself being the oldest. My dads job is pretty demanding so I would
have to pick my brother and/or sister up from after school activities, make dinner
occasionally, go grocery shopping, etc. Then on top of my classes and home
responsibilities I also have a part time job. I would have to do homework for all my
classes during break at school or work or I would stay up extremely late after work
trying to finish everything. I found it very hard to juggle all my responsibilities but
now that we are nearing the end the semester I feel like I have done a decent job
accomplishing everything.
At the beginning of the semester I tried to brainstorm, write a first draft, receive
feedback, then revise and edit to make a final project. However, as the semester
progressed I found it very difficult to follow the writing process. Most of the time, I
would just brainstorm for about half an hour and then begin writing. When finished
writing I would proofread the document myself then make some quick corrections
that I caught and submit that as my final project.
I feel as though my writing as improved from the beginning of the semester to now.
I remember getting an 80 on the first writing assignment and feeling disappointed
because I felt like I was a pretty good writer and I did an okay job on that
assignment. As the semester progressed my grades on assignments has just
continued to improve which I am extremely proud of. I feel like this class and the
hard grading has forced me to focus more on my writing which has made me an
overall better writer.
For the most part I found the RWS Reader to a refresher. However, there was some
new, useful content throughout the book. I think that this is an incredibly useful
book and that it should continue to be used in the future. I will also being coming
back to this book frequently when writing future assignments.
At the beginning, I thought that the mini-lectures were kind of pointless as they
were mostly a refresher but then I would take the assessments and find differently. I
would quickly read the lectures and take the assessments. Doing that I would get
like 80s on the assessments so I would have to go back and reread the lecture
slower. I would then come back and take the assessment again and do much better.
I found the mini-lectures and assessments to be very useful and instrumental in
improving my writing throughout the semester.

Overall I really enjoyed this class and will remember the important writing skills I
learned this semester throughout my academic career and even into my career
field.