Please prepare and submit a 2-3 paragraph reflection on your writing throughout the semester and the instructor’s comments and feedback regarding the course writing assignments. Some questions to consider: How has your writing changed over the semester? Which specific aspects of the instructor feedback were particularly helpful? What guidelines will you keep in mind for writing in academic and professional settings?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personal Reflection

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Personal reflection

The process of writing does not end when the assignment is submitted to the instructor. Hence, writing can be regarded as a circular process which requires an individual to optimize on the instructor’s feedback, engage in reflection of the weaknesses and the strengths as well as planning on ways to improving. Therefore, I will evaluate on my writing throughout the semester looking at how my writing has changed, the instructor’s feedback which helped during the semester’s writing and which of the guidelines I will adapt for future academic and professional writing. I learned the importance of setting effective writing goals, how to avoid ineffective goals and how to achieve the set goals. The importance of time management was also one of the first things I learned at the beginning of the semester. I later learned about prewriting which involves critical reading and thinking, brainstorming, outlining the writing and organization of thoughts. Thus, I tried to apply these aspects of writing while writing my essays and other assignments. I later realized that I knew very little about writing when I was introduced to the drafting of the introduction, conclusions and thesis statements. I learned that for an academic writing to be flowing the writer must have an introductory section which tells the reader what he or she is about to discuss in the body of the paper. Also, the write-up must have a thesis statement which is the basis of the paper. The conclusion is a very important aspect of the paper as it wraps up all the issues discussed in the paper.

I was now satisfied with everything learned about writing, only to discover that I knew very little about academic arguments. I later understood how to make an argument, how to develop the argument and carrying out a comparison and also contrasting. This amounted to knowing more about how to avoid the use of logical fallacies, how to address assumptions and how to respond to counterarguments. In addition, I learned appropriate ways of proofreading and doing revisions. Revisions are supposed to be based on the feedback given by the instructor, focused ideas, stronger evidence, scholarly voice, grammar, and organization.   

Therefore, from the instructor’s feedback, I will keep in mind the most important aspects of writing an effective paper. I will improve my time management, research and critical reading and writing skills. These skills will help in the effective writing of future assignments and in my career. I will also work on the organization of papers by placing introduction, conclusions and introducing topic sentence in every paragraph. I plan to improve my analysis and argument by integrating analysis of the themes and the summery. Also, I plan on making the thesis statement of my future papers to be specific and clear. I will also use rhythm and the language flow to transition and indicate the relationships between variables in the paper. According to the feedback, the sentences should be both long and short, references and in-text citations should be included properly and grammar and punctuations should be correct.  Hence, to complete the circular writing process, I need to note the difficulties encountered throughout the semester and brainstorm on how to solve the problems for the future. I should also record the comments from the instructor in each of the assignments and consider reading through the paper and highlighting the weak and the strong areas.