Reflection Letter
Dear Professor Cook:
When rereading my discourse paper I realized that though the research was great, the genre was way off. The original paper I wrote was more of a brochure explaining what was great about Sigma Phi Epsilon than a discourse community paper. The problem was that I failed to keep my ideas unbiased. This made it difficult to describe the fraternity as a discourse community because I felt compelled to build and make it sound great instead of truly describing it. I had to go back and look at my notes to remember what I thought about the fraternity before I got caught up in it. Once I remembered what my perceptions were at the beginning of the semester, I was able to write a better discourse paper. Correcting the genre made the revised version an almost entirely new paper, even though they both use the same information. To do this, I focused on how people perceive members of Sigma Phi Epsilon as they go about their business on campus. The clothes they wear with Greek stitching, how they talk to one another differently than to non-members, and the activities they participate in on campus are all described and analyzed in my new paper.
My inquiry paper fell short in a lot of areas. It needed better sources, formatting, and some work in developing and supporting its argument. I made sure to use more scholarly sources, completely removed any that were not qualified from my paper, and double-checked to make sure every source was cited with the proper MLA formatting. Once I made sure those things were addressed, I got to work on the paper itself. In the introduction, I state my argument against the belief that fear is something that cannot be eliminated and has to be coped with. I added information on the two-factor theory, which I feel helps support my discovery better because it demonstrates how our own beliefs can control whether or not we feel afraid. I explained the theory with an example of a person experiencing fear and how his own, controllable thoughts were what brought the emotion about.
English-1102 has been the most difficult writing course I have ever had to take. I know that these courses are supposed to get harder as I get older but this one was different. I was not given several pointless essays to write and then graded off for missing commas. I got to practice with the social aspects of writing I had never used before such as discourse. It taught me a different way of looking at writing and getting my ideas across that the prior classes never dealt with. Instead of simply stating a point and improving on grammar and vocabulary, I learned how I as a person was communicating to my peers. How I come across to other people when I write, how I am perceived, and how I can use these ideas to my advantage when I write all started becoming clear to me during this course.
The peer editing was a helpful experience for me as a student trying to improve his writing. It allowed me the chance to see the writing of other students at my level as they worked on the same assignment. Giving and receiving advice helped me find the aspects of my writing that were ahead and the ones that were behind.
I have realized that my writing can sometimes sound very uptight or mature. Though this style of writing can be useful when communicating to an older audience, it is not needed when my target audience is my own age group. I have also gotten a better understanding of the social dynamics that are in play when I am talking to various types of people. I can see the reason why I have to talk to my parents differently than I do my friends. It is because the discourse I am using changes from a son’s to a friend’s between the two conversations. I learned this from writing the discourse community paper and seeing how people in Sigma Phi Epsilon talked to each other.
I have always thought that in any career, knowing how to use writing as a way of communicating ideas to others was the key to success. The discourse community paper was the best assignment in this class at teaching about writing being used as a social tool. The other assignments got away from this social aspect of writing and focused more on using genre.
Sincerely,
John Bretz
When rereading my discourse paper I realized that though the research was great, the genre was way off. The original paper I wrote was more of a brochure explaining what was great about Sigma Phi Epsilon than a discourse community paper. The problem was that I failed to keep my ideas unbiased. This made it difficult to describe the fraternity as a discourse community because I felt compelled to build and make it sound great instead of truly describing it. I had to go back and look at my notes to remember what I thought about the fraternity before I got caught up in it. Once I remembered what my perceptions were at the beginning of the semester, I was able to write a better discourse paper. Correcting the genre made the revised version an almost entirely new paper, even though they both use the same information. To do this, I focused on how people perceive members of Sigma Phi Epsilon as they go about their business on campus. The clothes they wear with Greek stitching, how they talk to one another differently than to non-members, and the activities they participate in on campus are all described and analyzed in my new paper.
My inquiry paper fell short in a lot of areas. It needed better sources, formatting, and some work in developing and supporting its argument. I made sure to use more scholarly sources, completely removed any that were not qualified from my paper, and double-checked to make sure every source was cited with the proper MLA formatting. Once I made sure those things were addressed, I got to work on the paper itself. In the introduction, I state my argument against the belief that fear is something that cannot be eliminated and has to be coped with. I added information on the two-factor theory, which I feel helps support my discovery better because it demonstrates how our own beliefs can control whether or not we feel afraid. I explained the theory with an example of a person experiencing fear and how his own, controllable thoughts were what brought the emotion about.
English-1102 has been the most difficult writing course I have ever had to take. I know that these courses are supposed to get harder as I get older but this one was different. I was not given several pointless essays to write and then graded off for missing commas. I got to practice with the social aspects of writing I had never used before such as discourse. It taught me a different way of looking at writing and getting my ideas across that the prior classes never dealt with. Instead of simply stating a point and improving on grammar and vocabulary, I learned how I as a person was communicating to my peers. How I come across to other people when I write, how I am perceived, and how I can use these ideas to my advantage when I write all started becoming clear to me during this course.
The peer editing was a helpful experience for me as a student trying to improve his writing. It allowed me the chance to see the writing of other students at my level as they worked on the same assignment. Giving and receiving advice helped me find the aspects of my writing that were ahead and the ones that were behind.
I have realized that my writing can sometimes sound very uptight or mature. Though this style of writing can be useful when communicating to an older audience, it is not needed when my target audience is my own age group. I have also gotten a better understanding of the social dynamics that are in play when I am talking to various types of people. I can see the reason why I have to talk to my parents differently than I do my friends. It is because the discourse I am using changes from a son’s to a friend’s between the two conversations. I learned this from writing the discourse community paper and seeing how people in Sigma Phi Epsilon talked to each other.
I have always thought that in any career, knowing how to use writing as a way of communicating ideas to others was the key to success. The discourse community paper was the best assignment in this class at teaching about writing being used as a social tool. The other assignments got away from this social aspect of writing and focused more on using genre.
Sincerely,
John Bretz