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Iriz Rodriguez Gonzalez

Professor Dewey

ENG 101

11 May 2023

Reflection Final Exam

In consideration of my accomplishments in this course, I believe my strengths are

brainstorming consistent ideas and the ability to comprehend text quickly and effectively when

reading articles or literature. I tend to keep track of new ideas or content by writing them down

as I am doing process work and then organizing them in a manner that will flow nicely to the

reader by focusing on my organizational abilities such as sentence structure and paragraph

organization to have easily readable sentences and paragraphs. However, I feel like my weakness

is the lack of clear and diverse word choices, including a low vocabulary level when I read my

final written texts. In other terms, my writing is rather simple. My writing should be reflective of

my diverse vocabulary and immense knowledge that will leave an impact on my readers, but it

does not, or at least from my perceptive. Creativity is something I also must work on when

writing. It is critical to have my writing unique to keep the readers intrigued and interested while

they are reading my work. For example, I have a hard time forming a hook to capture the

readers’ attention because I do not have the creativity for it. As a result. I tend to write the draft

by writing the hook last because I struggle with it the most in writing.

From this semester, strategies that I will take away from this semester to use in other

classes are tracking when and what time assignments are due and prioritizing in terms of time
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commitment. Usually, I will have sticky notes around my working station to keep track of what

assignments to do on what day and what time I will be able to work on them without it

interfering with my time to accommodate for different obligations. When I complete an

assignment for the day, I will cross it out and fill out the assignments I will complete for the day

and repeat it for the week, and so on. Or I will look at my calendar hanging over my desk and do

the same process. Establishing this routine is very helpful in terms of organization and finding

time to relax and take a break while I can use it in other classes. In addition to arranging the

assignments that will take the most time in days, I have fewer assignments to complete from

other classes. Another takeaway from this semester is time management. There are always

assignments that I must do but it is also important to take breaks to prevent stress. As well as,

using reading comprehension strategies from this course to apply to other classes when reading

I feel the proudest of the memoir and evaluation essays compared to my other essays. I

believe that the memoir essay was the one that I struggled with the most since I had a hard time

narrating an experience through the subjective description, figurative language, or natural-

sounding dialogue while writing this essay. If I remember correctly, it took me around six hours

straight to draft the essay by freewriting; not including revising or editing. I ended up surprising

myself with my ability to describe details by using figurative language after reading the essay,

especially when I do not consider myself a good writer. As for the elevation essay, I was

completely lost on what the topic should be. After researching, I came across a website about

dormitories in universities and thought that it was perfect to do an elevation since my readers are

college students. When I was writing, I was shocked that it took me a mere two hours and I had a

sense of accomplishment from my ability to come up with ideas and reasons to support my

elevation without doing much research. However, I still had to spend time doing full research to
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make sure that my reasonings are credible regardless. Overall, I was proud of myself for simply

writing based on my knowledge and ability to gather research.

Throughout my writing experience, I learned that it is important to make sure that the

thesis is strong and has credible sources to support it. When writing the essays for this course,

there were instances where I simply typed my thesis believing that there must be research behind

it. However, once I start researching, I could not find strong evidence such as studies and

research that can be a solid backbone for my thesis or is relevant to the topic of the essay.

Without a strong thesis, then the rest of the essay can not be constructed since the writing lacks

direction and focus. For instance, this occurrence made me completely rewrite the thesis as well

as remove information from my argumentative essay because there is not enough evidence to

support it to show credibility. As a result, my initial outline for my essay was rewritten, and used

the new outline to write my rough draft by asserting a new thesis and searching for new sources

to support it. It can be a tedious process and time-consuming. If I did research before writing the

thesis statement, I could have used the time to form my new thesis to focus on finishing drafting

the essay. From this writing experience, I learned to construct proper research before forming the

thesis statement to make sure every reason has a reliable source.

The steps I took to meet analyzing rhetorical contexts and the ethical, political, and

cultural implications behind them are applying my critical reading skills to break down a text.

Then, ask myself how the authors write to achieve their purpose, topic, audience, and

circumstance, and what helps me is to research their background to see if their experience has

any influence on writing their piece. As well as seeing what strategies or techniques they used to

attract the audience like the use of ethos, pathos, and/or logos, and indicate what medium of

delivery they used. I used the organization to support the central idea through unity, coherence,
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and logical development by using keywords that connect to the thesis throughout the essay. And

having the paragraphs be coherent, the sentences follow logically and use transitions to help

connect ideas or in other terms, the content of the entire essay focuses on the thesis. Using

appropriate conventions in writing is what I strived to meet since it is what I need to work on the

most. Mechanics, tone, diction, and grammar make writing broadly clear and comprehensible,

and this is what I lack in writing. To achieve this, I use the leading digital learning tool on

MindTap since it provides information on how to properly write with little to no grammar issues

and use quizzes to see if I improve. I also strived to meet with maintaining academic integrity by

summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting from sources by understanding the text and specifying

where the text is supporting my claim. I will use my own words as an indicator that I establish

background or offer an overview of the topic to show to the readers that I have done my research

and to show my credibility. When I paraphrase and summarize, I make sure that I only convey

information or ideas that are stated in a way that the reader understands without being

overloaded with irrelevant information.

Feedback obtained from peer views or instructor comments on my essays helps me to

revise my writing. Revision makes my writing more direct and pinpoints the problems that the

feedback I receive points out and how I can correct them. Reading comments also makes me

reflect on making sure that I fix the grammar or sentence structure that I have in writing to avoid

them in other future works. I would assess my writing strengths by reviewing my instructor

conferences, portfolio reviews, written evaluations, and other methods. I believe my strengths are

forming a thesis and organization in a logical sense from reviewing my essays as I reflect based

on this portfolio throughout this course. My essays are built from a thesis then I will write from

there and in most cases, I do not receive any corrections or comments about the way I form the
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thesis. As for identifying strategies for improvement, writing mechanics are my weakness

including spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and abbreviation. I can meet this by using Purdue

OWL resources or Grammarly to show me how to properly use commas, hyphens, and

apostrophes. When writing, I will generate, format, edit and write using appropriate technologies

by using the grammar and spell-checking tools used in Google Docs. Then, scan the document

for proper formatting including the title page, header, page numbers, and spacing so it will be in

MLA format. I also use a citizen generator to form the works cited page.

My advice to a new student in ENG 101 is to write at your own pace. Writers must start

somewhere and that is okay. Do not compare your writing style to your peers when reviewing

their work based on your belief that their work is better than yours and that you are falling

behind compared to your peers. Do not allow this mindset to decrease your confidence in your

ability to write. Keep in mind that everyone has a different type of writing style. Just because

yours is different than theirs does not mean that your writing is automatically “bad.” You have

potential and can achieve more than you set your mind. In addition, stop procrastinating in

writing an essay. Writing takes time and effort. Procrastination can restrict your potential and

undermine your writing. Hence stop avoiding and start writing. You will also need self-

motivation. Without motivation, it will not push you to your fullest potential in writing. My

advice is to be passionate about what you are writing by picking a topic that you are interested in

so you can maintain the motivation to complete it.