Reflections

The Reflection

Describe your thoughts or past experiences for each of these:

 1. What advice or “rules” about writing have you been given in the past?  List or describe as many “dos” and “don’ts” as you can think of.  Where did these come from?

Advice: Don't let other people take control of your life

• be the leader and don't be afraid to be your true self

• don't be a follower 

2. What do you think “good writing” is like?  Or what does a “good writer” do?  Describe that writing or writer.

A good writer is someone who understands and takes all of their knowledge and places it on a canvas like an artist. Writing can be difficult, like many other things, so it's good to develop such a skill. A good writer also listens to their audience.

3. What types of writing assignments have you worked on most recently in school, in all of your classes?

Most of my writing assignments are lab reports, so I am better at those than writing in a regular composition class. I excel in a lot of my lab reports, and I do enjoy writing them. 

4. What do you expect writing for the next couple of years in college to be like, especially compared to your past experiences?  What concerns do you have about writing in college or for this course?

I expect writing to become more of a challenge, it's not going to get any easier. In the future I do have to take public speaking, so that's my only concern. I have never taken public speaking before and it just hits me like a truck to think about since I get nervous around large crowds. 

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Core Value I. Writing is a practice that involves a multi-stage, recursive and social process.
Writing is a process that involves multiple stages and that does not always follow a linear path.  In other words, we don’t read, write, and revise once and in that exact order; rather, we engage in a variety of activities at multiple points as we compose a text. These activities include but are not limited to reading, generating and discussing ideas, researching, drafting, reviewing and sharing our work, reflecting, and revising, and they can take place through a variety of technologies and tools. Many of these activities require you to discuss your work with others—your peers, your instructor, and potentially people outside the class—to both give and receive feedback. In this way, writing is a social experience, one that depends on open-minded collaboration that respects identity and language differences and how these shape the way we write and read.

Core value I explains that writing is not linear and can take multiple pathways. It tells us that we ourselves don't follow a strict set of rules that go along with writing. Everybody starts at a different set point. We also participate in various activities while we write out our compositions. Different ideas/activities are included that show how we all start writing differently. For example: reading and drafting. However, these activities require for us to share the work with peers and provide potential feedback. 

Back in highschool, we were all forced to take a literature class. This literature class would always hand out many discussions and writing assignments, such as reports. Usually, these reports would be written within a week and then peer-reviewed with a friend or the teacher. Soon enough we were given the reports back and feedback was provided on what to fix in the report. I remember asking so many questions throughout different writing projects because instructions weren't clear enough to me, which frustrated me during the class. Going back to the discussion boards, they were similar as to how we do them now: write the response and reply to a classmate respectfully. Although, at the moment, a skill I'd like to work on more is being able to develop more ideas, because the more ideas you have the better your essay is going to be, and when I'm under pressure, it's not the best for me. 

Core Value II. Close and critical reading/analysis is necessary for listening to and questioning texts, arriving at a thoughtful understanding of those texts, and joining the academic and/or public conversations represented by those texts. 

Writers create texts to communicate ideas, and they make specific compositional choices in their writing to achieve their goals. These choices are in terms of language, materials/mediums (physical and/or digital), and other compositional elements, including typography, layout, design, images, sound, editing, and more.  As readers, we must analyze these elements to determine the authors’ meanings, as well as the ideologies that have shaped the ideas and how they are expressed/presented through texts.  Readers engage with texts not only to understand their meanings and listen to other authors but also to question them.  By engaging with multiple authors during the reading and writing processes, and by constructing relationships among texts, you will discover and create “conversations” to join by working with and adding to those authors’ ideas.

Core value 2 presents a topic of the ability to properly communicate ideas. In writing these ideas, writers can achieve their goals but also these ideal choices are based on language and material. Writers want to try to get closer to their audience and being able to construct a stable connnection. 

- the concepts of core value 2 are familiar to me in a way because I am currently working on a comic and I try to make people feel included by incorporating different elements of the modern world 

Well, in my history class throughout high school, we have had to write many reports-- most were argumentative. When these essays were written we had to make different connections with points here and there and try to have a counter argument for either our side or the other. Although one skill I'd like to work on more is being able to identify and evaluate the author's compositional choices and strategies for communication.

In class, i believe, we have read many texts closely to analyze the literal meaning and to critically evaluate the messages behind them. These stories were either fictional or very real personal stories of the authors. For example, the princess and the zucchini on the outside, seemed nonsensical -- more of a children's story. But deep behind those words showed a light on women's stereotypes. Concepts such as these are important to shed light on because they have relativity to the world around us. They are important to speak upon. 

Outside of the class, authors may use this core value to publish their works to the world and help spread news about something/someone. They might even write about their own experiences. In the future I imagine using these core values by writing articles solely based on science most likely. Maybe in my profession. 

Core Value III: Writing is shaped by audience, purpose, genre, and context.

Writing is an act of communication that involves an author writing for a purpose and using a genre to reach an audience in a specific context--these elements constitute the rhetorical situation. Taking the rhetorical situation into account helps you to analyze the choices and strategies of other authors, as well as to create effective texts of your own. Effective writers assess audience expectations and the textual conventions associated with a situation or genre as they create a text for a specific purpose; they then make strategic decisions about how they want to meet or challenge those expectations in terms of mode, content, structure, rhetorical appeals, presentation/design, language, and style. Thoughtful writers recognize the historical and political contexts of genre conventions and audience expectations, and how their own choices related to conventions/expectations have the power to uphold or challenge the status quo; this includes responses to the historical academic call for “standard written English” (white middle-class English), which has contributed to the language oppression of people of color and failed to recognize the rich linguistic resources that writers of all backgrounds bring to the table.

A writing piece must reach or have an audience and a purpose, why is it being written and for who? A genre also helps get the work out there. Language should also be included, such as different literary elements for a good essay, which helps inform the audience on what the topic of the report/article may be. 

I'm not entirely sure where I've used things like this, perhaps on an argumentative essay in my AP french class during my AP exam but I'm not sure. In class, we have written an essay that contains driving questions. I specifically wrote about music and how it connects to my spanish culture. It really down die down to what helps out different communities. 

Real world application of this core value: Writing an article that can be translated for different races, Again, whatever works to help out I'm here for it. For example, another science article can be written in both english and spanish.

Core Value IV. Information literacy is essential to the practice of writing.

Academic and intellectual writing is informed writing, which means contextualizing our ideas within pre-existing conversations and providing evidence beyond our personal experiences or opinions.  Conversely, it also means recognizing the limitations of existing conversations, including how dominant venues/platforms have privileged the voices of the powerful, failed to include and represent the lived experiences of the full spectrum of humanity, and undervalued personal experience as evidence. To produce informed writing, you will need to develop the skills necessary to locate information in a digital environment; to evaluate authorship, expertise, and quality, particularly toward including the underrepresented perspectives of people of color, LGBTQ+ folks, people with disabilities, people who are neurodivergent, women, and people of all socioeconomic backgrounds; to determine which information to incorporate into your own writing depending on the rhetorical situation; and to document your sources appropriately.

Summary: To be inclusive in writing or when writing about different minority groups, or people who are misrepresented in some form. I don't recall working on topics like these in the past up until this point. Private high school never really touched upon these things, it was always a religion focused school. I'd like to work on representing more LGBTQ folk in my work, it helps shed light with the social issues surrounding them.

In this course, we have touched upon many topics of LGBTQ+ folk, body positivity, and more explained in the core value. For example, one LGBTQ+ article we've read is "Girl" written by Alexander Chee. Another example is Elizabeth Berg's article 'The Day I Ate Everything I Wanted" where she talks about body image. These stories really hit home sometimes due to the personal influence they have surrounding them.

This core value has a big impact on the world. It can really influence others to touch upon social issues that can really cause detrimental harm to small communities. Again, it is very good to share light about each and every person's stories. In my professional career (in the future), I might be able to use this core value when writing my comics or doing any sort of article that may involve these topics. 

Core Value V. Writing has power and comes with ethical responsibilities. 

Because writing is not only personal but also public and social, there are ethical concerns that we must take into account. The most obvious component of ethical writing is crediting others for their ideas through proper citation, which is also an act of sharing research with others. Just as important, ethical writing involves conscientiously listening to other authors, doing the work of navigating linguistic differences, understanding their ideas and how they have arrived at their perspectives, and accurately representing them in your own writing. Through this process of critical and conscientious reading/listening, you will understand that there can be a variety of valid perspectives on an issue/topic and that ethical writing represents the complexity of an issue by respectfully acknowledging multiple perspectives.

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Everyone has their own ideas presented throughout their work, and it is indicative we must respect them. But if we were to cite something from said article, then it must be properly citated. When writing a research paper, I have been repeatedly told to cite things properly if one of the requirements is a quote from an article or website. 

We have peer edited things in class, such as the website. This website is going to be a team project, meaning things are being shifted and edited around. 

In my lab reports, it is a CRUCIAL step in referencing real-life exampled of different topics discussed during lab. However, these examples must be cited in order to receive proper credit and to avoid plagiarism.