Reflection on Writing Abilities
Your final short essay will give me your view of your writing accomplishments this semester. Please reflect on your writing abilities, your work ethic, and your contributions to the course. It might help to think of your essay as a guided tour to your writing this semester. I expect to see your ability to assess your own writing and work. Direct me to places in your final papers that are particularly striking. To show me your improvement, point to or highlight significant material—in first drafts, peer-editing drafts, or annotated drafts—and then point me toward the equivalent, improved spots in your final versions. Explain the improvement. Show me, for example, how you resolved a specific problem, expanded on an undeveloped idea, tried some new media (like making a movie) or condensed a wordy passage. To demonstrate your ability to assess your own writing work, take the essay seriously, talk about the process of writing your drafts went through, reflect on writing strategies you’re using now that you may not have felt comfortable with in the beginning of the term. In coming up with material for the essay, feel free to borrow from your your first drafts, your later drafts, your comments on other people’s papers, our peer review rubric; any material you have created this semester is fair game for inclusion in this discussion. The most straightforward approach is an introduction and conclusion, with a paragraph dedicated to discussing each assignment.
*About two pages.
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Reflection on My Writing Abilities
One of the ways my writing abilities has improved over the course of this semester relates to citing sources in research papers. At the beginning, I was not able to tell the difference between a lens essay and a research paper. Research papers are different from lens papers in that they ask for a deeper understanding of relevant sources. Lens essays do not require the writer to grapple with central ideas in the same manner as research papers since the focus is on style choices and character interactions. On the other hand, research papers are more rigorous and require the writer to demonstrate a thorough comprehension of research sources. More importantly, the writer has to be meticulous when citing sources. I did not properly appreciate this requirement at the beginning of the semester and I tended to write my research papers in the same way I wrote lens essays. For instance, most of the instructor comments in the essay “The Future of Virtual Reality” highlighted my failure to connect arguments with the authors I was drawing my content from: for instance, I failed to connect my argument for the advantages of self-driving police cars and officers using remote weapons systems to Harari (the author I was quoting from). I have improved on this issue over the course of the semester by properly citing my arguments as opposed to resorting to sloppy generalizations. For instance, the essay “Dating Applications during the Pandemic Year” included the sources I had consulted in developing my arguments, including the specific q...