Reflections Project

This essay will allow you to circle back to the type of writing you did at the beginning of the semester, but it asks you to draw on knowledge you have gained this semester about yourself, your writing, and your role as a University student and scholar. You will begin, as you did with Essay One, by writing an in-class essay in response to one of the following prompts.

English 100 and Beyond:

Reflect on your idea of writing after one semester of university schooling. This essay can take various forms. You can connect the writing you’ve done in English 100 to writing you’ve done in other classes – did something you learned in 100 come up in other classes? Alternatively, you can compare what you’ve learned about writing in English 100 with what you’ve learned about writing in high school (or in other college-level courses you are currently taking). If you decide to incorporate both ideas into your reflections project, please make sure that they fit together under one thesis statement.

More Than Words:

If you choose this option, your project will have two components. First, you will reflect on some aspect of writing (or making a logical argument) through a visual medium, such as a website, a video, a photographic essay or collage. These visual “texts” can be found in other sources, like the internet, magazines, or newspapers; or, they can be “texts” that you create yourself. And second, you will turn in a 2-page paper in which you explain the role of some aspect of writing in your project. As you write your essay, you might take the following into consideration: how do you distinguish between “writing” and “text,” and have these terms changed for you at some point throughout the semester? What are the differences or challenges that you face in making an argument in both written and visual forms? Feel free to be as creative as you like.

Propose Your Own Assignment:

Imagine yourself a few years down the line as a teacher of freshman composition. In planning your course calendar, you intend to give your students the opportunity to write several different kinds of essays, including autobiographical, analytical essays, as well as a major research project. Yet there are many other kinds of writing that are missing from the syllabus – including interviews and interview write-ups, analyses of literary works and cultural objects, weekly diaries, responses to specific questions or statistics, etc. For this essay, develop an original idea for a writing assignment that you think your students will benefit from and enjoy. In your paper, explain what kind of writing your assignment is meant to develop – personal, academic, technical, creative, etc. Which specific skill is your assignment designed to strengthen? What kind of source material, if any, will you be distributing to your students to help them do the assignment? For additional ideas, page through Easy Access.

Guidelines:

Your final draft should be at minimum 2 full pages in length.

In class writing –Monday, November 26th

Draft 1 – Monday, December 3rd for peer review

Draft 2 – Friday, December 7^th due to me

If you would like feedback from me before submitting it in your Final Portfolio, please come see me in office hours.