Final Reflection on English G100 1 Experience: A Comprehensive Analysis

Sharpened Critical Reading and Rhetorical Analysis Skills

Final Reflection You’ve spent the last few months writing and thinking about a range of topics and issues, including the source of your hidden intellectualism, the ways in which technology—specifically social media—impacts our lives, comics and satire.

You’ve read, discussed, and written on Emily St. John Mandel’s post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven.

All the while, you’ve sharpened your critical reading and rhetorical analysis skills; you are attuned to the rhetorical situation that every and any utterance—written or spoken—is embedded in, reading closely for rhetor, audience, text, message, genre, and cultural-historical context.

You’ve also studied the ways in which various rhetorical appeals are used, including pathos, logos, ethos, and kairos.

Moreover, through reading They Say / I Say, you’ve recognized that writing is a social act: when you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), you are entering into conversation with others. Therefore, you haven’t only analyzed rhetoric—you’ve practiced it.

Indeed, rhetoric is the craft of effective communication, and you have utilized various tools of the craft in your compositions.

An abridged list of the many tools you’ve used this semester: thesis statements and topic sentences; counterarguments and rebuttals; source integration; transition terms and phrases; coordinating and subordinating conjunctions; semicolons and colons.

You’ve also spent considerable time on each essay, moving away from one-and-done or first-draft-best-draft approaches to essay writing. Collaboration and revision have been central tenets of the writing process in this class.

You have peer reviewed and workshopped various portions and multiple versions of each paper. You have also received instructor feedback on your drafts.

For your final writing assignment, compose a 500 word essay reflecting on your English G100 1 experience.

Though it would be impossible to write about the entirety of your G100 experience in so few words, your reading response should be succinct and comprehensive.

Write a narrative essay that is granular and focused as you make claims about specific aspects of your writing while still attending to the semester as a whole and the general takeaways from the class.

You should also include how COVID-19 and the shift to remote learning impacted your experience in the class. This is your chance as a student to write and reflect on what you’ve learned.

Better yet, it’s a chance to consider which lessons matter most to you. Moreover, it’s an opportunity to evaluate how you did in the class and analyze all of your writing from the semester. The reflective essay will include the following:

Your analysis of the advancement of your writing through papers, participation, engagement, and the revision process in all its stages, including peer editing and instructor feedback (with specific evidence for your evaluation taken from your own writing and the feedback you have received.

Your reasons for making the choices you made, and what you may have done differently; what you think you accomplished and what may need more work.

Your responses to the class texts and how these sources informed your own work and ideas.

Your answer to this:

How did these assignments prepare you for other college and professional writing?