Reflections

Questions:

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?

Some rules about writing that I've been given in the past are no run on sentences - instead use proper punctuation, and certain formats for essays. These came from past teachers.

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

I think a good writer is able to express what they feel with words in an efficient way.

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

A few essays for an African American literature class, a paper for a business class, and assignments in this class.

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 think the writing will be less format based like in high school because my African American literature teacher said my writing is very high school format style and we can express ideas more freely using our own voice.

Part 2: 

Core Value 1 is below. Fill out the two remaining questions about it below. 

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.

What you need to be able to do and demonstrate for Core Value I:

• You can demonstrate perseverance and openness in developing your ideas and writing across time.

• You can use reading and composing processes as a way to think, to discover, and to explore ideas, and you recognize this as a necessary writing practice.

• You can identify an awareness for multiple writing processes, resources, and technologies/tools, and how to effectively apply them to various writing situations.

• You can provide respectful feedback to others and demonstrate responsiveness to readers’ feedback through reflection and revision.

• You can distinguish between local and global revision as a reader and a writer, and you practice these at appropriate points in the revision process.

• You can identify where to go, what to ask, and what to do at various stages in the writing process for feedback and support.

Questions: 

1. Summarize the Core Value and identify how familiar the concepts of the Core Value are to you from previous experiences (it’s OK if it’s radically different in some way!)

Core value 1 allows for open minded and social writing unlike how it was for me in high school where we did independent writing and had to do stuff based on a format.

2. Write a paragraph in which you reflect on where you have previously worked with the skills outlined within the Core Value and any that you would like to work on more.

In junior year of high school my English teacher was very strict with how you wrote stuff. Essays I wrote there weren't really able to express what I felt, but with this core value I can work on open-minded writing.

3. Also, write a paragraph in which you reflect on where you worked with the skills outlined within the value in this class. Illustrate your ideas with clear, concrete examples from your experience in the course and where you (or another author) or we as a class used the concepts of the core value and why it was important to do so. Be specific!

With many of these assignments in this class I was able to share personal experiences of others who I interviewed, such as stuff with essay 1 and 2. It's important to do this because you get to hear from real experiences.

4. Write a few sentences detailing the real-world application of the Core Value. Consider: outside of a writing classroom, what worth does this Core Value have? How do you imagine using concepts you have developed and the core value in the future (this could be in your personal life, academic work in college, or in your profession/career later)?

Outside of a writing classroom this core value can be applied. In the workplace you need to be able to discuss ideas with your coworkers because they may see something you don't see, and you may see something they don't see. You can always learn something from hearing the experiences of others.

Core Value 2 is below. Fill out the four questions about it below. 

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.

What you need to be able to do and demonstrate for Core Value II:

• You can read texts closely to interpret and understand writers’ messages, and read texts critically to evaluate, critique, and question those messages and how they are constructed, including their use of language.

• You can recognize or trace how ideas emerge and combine to create meaning in others’ texts as well as your own.

• You can analyze and synthesize ideas across multiple texts, exploring issues or questions, so as to develop your own ideas and enter into an existing conversation.

• You can read texts with a writerly eye so as to identify and evaluate an author’s compositional choices and strategies for communication.

• You recognize that writers compose through a variety of modes--alphabetic, visual, multimedia, print, and digital-- and that a writer’s chosen mode (or combination of modes) is inherently interconnected with their message.

Questions:

1. Summarize the Core Value and identify how familiar the concepts of the Core Value are to you from previous experiences (it’s OK if it’s radically different in some way!)

Core value 2 talks about reading stuff more thoroughly. In high school we did this, but I was never good at seeing works through the writer's perspective. 

2. Write a paragraph in which you reflect on where you have previously worked with the skills outlined within the Core Value and any that you would like to work on more.

I've worked with skills that core value 2 outlines in the past when reading short texts in high school, as well as when reading long texts. I'd like to be able to see the reading from the pov of the author better and be able to see the writing in a deeper way.

3. Also, write a paragraph in which you reflect on where you worked with the skills outlined within the value in this class. Illustrate your ideas with clear, concrete examples from your experience in the course and where you (or another author) or we as a class used the concepts of the core value and why it was important to do so. Be specific!

In this class I have worked with the skills outlined within this value. While reading articles and short texts I went in depth with the reading, trying to see the deeper meaning under the skin.

4. Write a few sentences detailing the real-world application of the Core Value. Consider: outside of a writing classroom, what worth does this Core Value have? How do you imagine using concepts you have developed and the core value in the future (this could be in your personal life, academic work in college, or in your profession/career later)?

This core value has real-world applications. Outside of a classroom you need to be able to understand what people mean when they say/write stuff and why they said/wrote it. At a workplace this core value is very useful.