The 10 Semi-Weekly Self-Reflection listed below helped me strengthen my analysis skills of my own writing.

Self Reflection Week 2

What kind of self-reflection experiences did you have in your freshman English
class? What have you learned (related to self-reflection or writing in general) that
has stayed with you and supported your writing?

The self-reflections that I have done in the past, for my AP English class, were about going back to my writing and analyzing what I could have done better. The reflections mainly were done alone, but they were sometimes done with peer groups. Through these self-reflections, I have learned alot about the style of how I write and that I don’t always state my ideas in a way that flows to the reader. Due to this critique, which I found via my self-reflections, I developed techniques that helped me make my writing one cohesive unit that was more understandable to the reader. I do this by making clear outlines to help me map out my ideas before I start writing as well as reading my finished piece out loud to look for any gaps in the paper. This is just one example of how self-reflections have helped me in the past, and I think it will further help me even more in the future.

Self Reflection Week 3

Analyze the rhetorical situation of your Freshman Portfolio. For those few students
who do not have one only: analyze the rhetorical situation of your Freshman English
research paper/project.

In AP English I had to write a paper using the rhetorical situation about a letter from Mahatma Gandhi to Viceroy Lord Irwin, a representative from Britain in India. This is where Gandhi responded to the Salt Tax, in the 1930’s, and said how unjust it was to the people of India. In this essay, I had to analyze the tone and the content that Gandi used to get an emotional or logical reaction from Lord Irwin. This allowed Gandi to achieve his goal of lowering the salt tax for India.

To write the essay I had to give sufficient background information about what was happening in India at that time, this way my reader would be able to understand what was happening in the piece. I also had to make the essay relevant to them, because most people don’t want to waste time reading something that is irrelevant to them. Lastly, I had to explain why I was even writing about Gandi and the salt tax in the first place. After doing all that I had an essay that was captivating and informative about the past and how we can use it to change the future.

Self Reflection Week 4

Analyze the rhetorical situation of your Product Review essay.

The rhetorical situation of my product review essay is making sure my audience understands the different criteria that do or do not make Kleenex a decent tissue box to use. I also needed to include sufficient background and technological innovations that made a tissue box possible, to give context to what consumers expect their tissue boxes to be like. The last thing I needed to do when writing my product review essay was to connect to the audience and make sure they understood why I was writing about a tissue box and its significance to me. I did all this to allow there to be a clear link between me, the author of the essay, the subject, Kleenex tissue boxes, and the audience.

Self Reflection Week 5

What have we done so far that has been helpful to your writing process? How might
you apply this helpful information or tool? What has been confusing/What would
you like to spend more time on? If the clarification/additional focus does not occur
during class time, how will you acquire the knowledge?

I find it very helpful when we discuss a basic outline of the essay that we are writing because it allows me to visualize where and how I should start writing my essay. I will apply this tool in the future by reading the prompt of the assignment carefully and making a generic outline based on what the essay requires. After that, I will edit the general outline and make it more specific to the topic I am writing about. This system will allow me to organize my thoughts and ideas before drafting an essay. I would like to spend more time on the specifics of APA-style writing and how that is applied in the engineering field. If there isn’t enough time in class to discuss this I would like to be assigned an at-home reading of essays in APA format. This way I can see the commonalities in the writing and the structure of APA style essays.

Self Reflection Week 6/7

To be completed after you have received feedback on your essay:
Analyze the rhetorical situation of your Lab Report Analysis essay. Include textual
detail to support your claims.

After analyzing the rhetorical situation of my Lab Report Analysis essay on IBS I found that I tried to organize the information to allow my reader to clearly understand the plusses and minuses of the three lab reports. I did this by introducing the topic of IBS and the importance of finding a cure. Then I made a naming system for the lab reports and provided one-sentence summaries for each lab report. After, I gave a topic sentence as to what each part of a general lab report should be, before going into the particulars of my three lab reports. This organization gave flow to my writing, which ultimately allowed my audience to understand my thought process and my claim better.

In addition, I allowed the reader to understand the components of the lab report without getting into the technical science terms. This is seen when I write, “In lab report 1, the title and abstract clearly state that salt compound DXL-A-24 does improve the pain and the bacteria in the stomach of rats experiencing induced IBS (Xu, 2023, P.1).” This provides my audience with an example showing how the title and abstract are clear and do its job.

The combination of my organizational skills and bringing more general examples, without all the technical jargon, allowed my readers to grasp the claim in my Lab Report Analysis essay.

Self Reflection Week 8

How are you doing with time management? Are you balancing the multiple needs of
this course? Your other courses? Are you making time for reading, writing, studying,
and collaborating? Explain your yes/no answers. Include how if yes or your success
plan if no.

I think I am doing okay with time management overall in this class and my other classes. I do this by keeping due dates in a notebook planner. In addition to that, I put down when and how I am going to do the required work. For example, If I know an assignment is going to take me a long time, I plan ahead and split it up over a few days.

I am making time to write, study, and collaborate with my peers via this same system I mentioned before. However, I have been struggling to keep up with some of the readings. I find myself too focused on reading every word which takes a long time, rather than understanding the main idea of the readings. In addition to this, I am going to read the readings in the mornings where I have a few free hours. So if I make set time to read the readings and focus on the main points of the readings, I will end up reading the readings before class.

Self Reflection Week 9

What experience have you had working in groups before this class? How has the
group work we’ve done in this class been for you? What are you doing/will you do
to optimize your experience completing the collaborative project for this class?

Before this class, I worked in groups of all sizes, ranging from two to eight people in a group. In the larger size groups, I found it difficult to make sure that all the work that needed to be done was completed. However, after having open communication with my peers about what needed to be done, we managed to complete the assignments.

Group work in this class mostly consists of peer-reviewing work and a final group project. In my peer review groups, I found it hard to get my other peers to participate in the posting and responding to me and others. For the group project, that I am to complete in the coming weeks, I have already reached out to like-minded peers, who want to fully participate in the project. I feel that if the peers in my group are willing to do the work together, it will lessen the workload of each individual and provide a more overall positive experience for this group assignment.

Self Reflection Week 10

Analyze the rhetorical situation of your Technical Description. Include textual detail
to support your claims.

After analyzing the rhetorical situation in my technical description of the Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Pro Juice Extractor Model 67650, I found that I used simple language to allow my reader to clearly understand each part of the juice extractor. For example, when discussing types of screws in the juice extractor I wrote, “The specific name of the screw is a carriage bolt that has a flat head mushroom-shaped head and is used to permanently keep two kinds of material together (Handyman’s Worlds Editorial Team, 2022).” Since I stated that the screw is “a carriage bolt” and provided context as to the description and function of the bolt, it allowed my reader to understand the part I was discussing and the overall content of my technical description.

In addition to allowing my reader to understand the content of my technical description clearly, I personally connected myself to the technical description. I did this by providing pictures I took of the juice extractor in my home which indicated to the reader the want I had to learn more about the juice extractor. Therefore, I took it apart and wrote my technical description on this juice extractor.

Overall, the personal link I have to the Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Pro Juice Extractor Model 67650 and my use of clear and simple language to allow the audience to understand the parts further provided an overarching link between the audience, product, and author.

Self Reflection Week 13

Select one learning objective or one component of a learning objective. When,
where, and how have you learned it? How have you developed in this arena?

One learning objective I have learned is the ability to practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects. I first learned this when I had to look for three lab reports for my Lab Report Analysis Essay. I looked for lab reports on the Cuny database, the New York Public Library database, and Science Direct. At first, I found this task to be difficult and it took me hours to find a reputable lab report that fit the topic I wanted to discuss, IBS. However, after practicing using these online databases and library resources, I am now able to get my search time down to just a few minutes because I know where to go and what words to put into the search engine.

I have further developed this skill when working on the collaborative project, Glass Drops. I was able to find two lab reports that answered most of the research questions and safety concerns about the chemicals we were using to create our Glass Drops. I knew which databases to look at, such as Science Direct, and what to type in the search engine, which yielded the results I was looking for. This skill allowed me to help find research for the different components that my group was working on and allowed for a smoother research process when working on the collaborative project.

Self Reflection Week 14

What have you learned that has proved most useful to your composition process?

Over this course, I have learned a number of things that have helped me in my writing process. For starters, the idea of making a clear outline before sitting down and writing is an essential skill that I will use in all future writing endeavors. A second skill that I have learned is that it’s important to have a clear structure because this helps the reader easily locate and understand the information they need. A last skill I learned is, that peer review is a vital part of the writing process that shouldn’t be ignored. This is because not only do others’ comments help you improve your document, it allows you to learn from other people’s mistakes when leaving comments on their documents, which ultimately helps improve your writing.