Reflections

First Reflection: Critically Thinking About

Your Writing Journey Begins

Reflecting on my past writing journey

The genre I felt most comfortable with during my college years was academic writing. Drafting a thesis on the topic of women in ministry to an audience of theologians that were mainly against the idea of women in ministry taught me to see a specific topic from different viewpoints and to critically evaluate my point of view in the light of what other scholars bring to light on the subject. I knew that I was writing to an audience who mostly had a different point of view than me and therefore had to have noticeably clear arguments that were well founded with proof from the text and the cultural-historical background of the text.

I considered rhetoric and chose the correct tone, genre, and media to address my audience. The genre and media were academic papers with a specific format, and the style was formal and academic. In terms of critical languaging, it was essential to consider the Biblical text's cultural-historical context in question. We often tend to read Biblical texts from the perspective of our own cultural and historical context. For this assignment, it was essential to see the cultural-historical context of the text, as the meaning would be lost if we did not understand what was meant by it during Biblical times.

When drafting my research proposal for the degree D.Litt. (Greek), I made use of composing as a process. The process involved many reflections, improvements, proofreading, response to feedback, and further research to produce a proposal that would make a meaningful academic contribution.

Other types of writing I did, include translation work. When translating, the process is slightly different as your goal changes from selecting the best genre and the best medium to reach your audience to reflect the original meaning and intent of the original text as best as possible.

My earlier work showed curiosity. I was curious about the translation of the Greek word idou (often translated as “behold”) and the real meaning of the word when translators left it untranslated due to a lack of information on the grammar and translation of the word.

I enjoyed writing when I had something important or meaningful to communicate with my readers and felt confident as a writer. My professor’s strong influence boosted my confidence as a writer.

Reflecting on my future writing journey

Looking forward, I know that my earlier work, primarily academic and factual, might be lacking in creativity. I want to look at new ways of representing my ideas.

Most of my earlier work was done when technology was not very advanced, and multimodal writing was not applied in the academic environment. As such, I lack creativity in using multimodal writing. I am looking forward to including visual aspects in my writing and making my future work more effective to reach my audience.

I realize that I need to adjust my style and tone to my audience and that I need to narrow down on who exactly my audience will be. I think knowing and almost seeing your audience would help you produce work that would be better received by the target audience.

I might be comfortable writing a research paper, but I also want to improve my writing for a more informal audience. I am looking forward to learning more through reflection on other people’s feedback on my work.

In terms of rhetoric, I would like to think more about what my writing would do for my audience and how to captivate their interest. I am hoping to display more aspects of the habits of mind (Roen, Rankins-Robertson & Maid, 2022) in my writing in the future. I want to publish a biography one day.

Roen, D., Rankins-Robertson, S. & Maid, B.M. (2022). The McGraw Hill Guide: Writing for College, writing for life (5^th ed.). McGraw Hill LLC.

Below are some examples of my earlier work: a book translation, my research proposal for D.Litt. Greek and the research proposal for the degree M.A. Theology.