12.9 Reflective essays

We spent class discussing how to work on /revise the reflective essays.  We clarified what the focus needed to be, and suggested a number of ways to organize an essay that would write to that focus.

Focus: how you have grown (gotten better) as a writer + what you still need to work on.

Areas where you might have grown (or need work) include:
 1. writing process (invention - analyzing the reading, reviewing the assignment sheet, finding a focus,  deepening the focus, identifying points to support the focus, finding the best order for the points, finding appropriate development; and  revising. . . . you can make this list as well as I can by now),

2.  understanding of the genres/academic writing (summary/response, persuasion, analysis =in particular rhetorical analysi)

3. resources/strategies for working on focus, organization, development, academic language, correctness

Organization:  how you organize your essay will depend on your focus.  Your focus should reflect the most important patterns in your writing & your process that have changed - or that still need to change.

You can organize your essay in terms of writing process (what you learned about pre-planng, invention + revision; genre (what you learned in working on the writing for each unit); or features of writing (what you learned about focus, organization, development).

Development:  as I said in class, for the reflective writing on the analytic essays, the most important work the class needed to do as a whole was on development.  You need to point to examples from the writing in your portfolio to "show" how your writing changed.  Make specific statements about what changed from drafts to finished essays, what got better (or remained the same) in your process and the esssays you turned in as you moved through the semester.

You need to look at your writing in order to formulate these statements. Re-read your writing, and write down what revisions you made, how the comments to your work changed (or didn't change).

Good luck!

In the next class there will be some time to work on /discuss the analytic essays.  We will spend most of class talking about how to plan/write in-class essay exams.

See you on Thursday.