Month: February 2021

Reflective writing

Anindita Datta

Reflective writing is a form of writing in which we look back to process the experiences we had. On the other hand, Metacognitive is a type of reflection or learned from your life experiences with the purpose of using it to your advantage. The difference between this from of review compared to others is that you challenge your writing and come up with reasons with why you wrote it to begin with. It is a method of writing with metacognitive focus which helps one to revive their prior knowledge, practice and apply new strategies in their writing, also helps one to reflect on their strength and challenges.

This form of review is extremely helpful, and I use it a lot of the time on day-to-day things. The way I use reflective writing is I ask myself if I understood the events I experienced or what situation or events gave me a lesson, also makes me think of events that are not important and I should let go of it. I feel all in all it encourages growth on myself as a student, also as a working professional.

In general, when I begin writing I think of various questions, which helps me to think what kind of outcome the writing will bring. I reflect on it by thinking from different perspectives. I try and come up with topics from the beginning, that will reflect to what I wish to discuss, and along with the topics I try to have at least two examples or references that help to enforce or back up my statement or point of view. When initially writing I tend to think these topics are full proof yet after reflecting on it I realize they may lack the “power” or just simply deviate from what I initially intended. With the essay, I chose to go with a personal story since that can help solidify the importance of the topic to me and helps solidify the community within itself as this was the community that helped me learn this newfound viewpoint.

Week 5: Reflection and Revision

Brianna Walters

Reflecting or Metacognative writing is when a writer thinks about an event or idea and reflects on it. This allows the writer to analyze the situation and express their own thoughts about them. Reflective writing comes from the writer’s personal experiences and effects the way a person analyzes the situation and the emotional investment in their expressed opinions. Metacognative writing helps the author create a clear purpose and helps to identify the intended audience. 

Reflective writing is something that has been taught to me since high school. I believe that reflecting and relating subjects can help me to create a more clear plan for my writing. I often will write single sentences and come back to the thoughts I have and expand my thoughts. This allows me to spend more time analyzing the thoughts that I have without losing the idea. It also helps me to go back into my essay to correct the mistakes and change the phrasing of my writing.In “Shitty First Drafts”  Anne Lamott suggests that multiple drafts of an essay should be considered in order to get clarity on their writing. The first draft is the least thought out and the writing is too recently created to have an objective view towards it. Multiple drafts allows me to see the errors and organizational issues that are more apparent in later drafts.

I used reflective writing a lot in my Unit One essay because the events took place in the past so I had to reflect about my time. I believe that it helped me to express the experience and discourse community that was my sorority. The reflecting helped me write a more meaningful and organized description of the events.

reflective writing (shafi khan)

shafi ahmmad khan

Reflective writing is a unique and more insightful form of authorship that is instrumental in conveying a writer’s opinions, emotions, and other aspects from their perspective. Essentially, it refers to a type of writing that conveys a writer’s insights into specific circumstances using an analytical approach that factors in credible evidence. Metacognitive writing helps a writer to better comprehend the audience, develop writing intentions, word choices, and even problems in the writing among other things (Giles 191). Rather than being purely descriptive or reflective, metacognitive writers apply acquired knowledge and experience to illustrate the rationale of some opinions or actions and how they would handle certain situations. For instance, Anne Lamott employs reflective writing to demonstrate how she would handle writing reviews and shows her perceptions of it in contrast to popular opinion (Lamott 1). Moreover, she reanalyzes her writing processes and assesses her mental state and fears while noting what was beneficial and what was not.

My experience with reflective writing,Reflective writing has been pivotal in helping me assess my prior works as a ghostwriter for a political editorial publication. The company I was offering my services to was facing dwindling readership numbers and needed writing that reinvigorated interest in their content. Therefore, I started by taking an analytic approach to the writing process in prior years to figure out what was instrumental in helping me write intriguing content to readers. For instance, my rough drafts only exclusively contained consequential political stories that happened within the last week to avoid stale exemplification. Moreover, I would make sure that each draft had clear intentions by pointing out the political rot within Congress. Since I had the same fixed demographic target to address, my audience was constant, which was something that made me conscious of my word choice and writing style. Moreover, I would use my acquired knowledge to analyze different ways I would have addressed certain political issues or policies I would institute if I was able to. In other words, ghostwriting at that organization gave me valuable metacognitive writing experience through reflecting on political events and my writing experience.

Week 5: Reflection and Revision

Zenayda Bonilla

What reflective or metacognitive writing after reading “Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What were you thinking?”  by Sandra L. Giles,  is a process where the writer needs to revise her/his writing with a sense of awareness and a careful manner,  analyzing and questioning her/his thinking on the writing the first draft. This process is more than pleasing the professor but criticizing own work in order to be on track and to communicate the message in a clear manner to the audience. 

My experience with reflecting on my writing was not an easy task to do. I always tend to not see my own errors when I am checking my work. Adding to that I was confused about what I had to do. I also notice that I was avoiding doing that task. Yet, after reading “Shitty First Draft” by Anne Lamott I felt more relaxed knowing that even for professionals writers the process of having the first draft done. But doing the revision helps me to stay focus on what I want to convey. I also identify and did change some words and sentences. I did correct some grammatical errors. 

When I started with the Unit 1 Assignment, I did not know what word to choose, but when I started to read my classmates’ ideas and how creative they were in their posts, I came out with the idea of choosing to write about cooperatives. Having Professor Wheeler’s feedback was really helpful. The process, however, was kind of confused for my trying to follow it. This is the first time that I follow, therefore I was back and forth. Nevertheless, the fact that the word I choose for my discourse communities is something that I am very familiar with it made me move forward in my writing. I also by the first time ever joining the written center, they help me with the citations. I feel more comfortable with my work, yet always open to learning more and receive feedback because this is my first essay for this semester. Having other people’s examples like the ones that Giles used in her paper is a good guide. 

Week 5: Reflection and Revision (Valeria Cortez)

Valeria Cortez

Reflective writing or metacognitive is when the writer thinks thoroughly  about his writing and thoughts. This type of writing helps the writer find their purpose and how their writing relates with their audience. It also helps the writer find any possible mistakes of their writing, such as language, grammatical or punctuation errors.  It makes the writer reflect about every detail of their writing and consider important points from small errors to how their audience is going to react to it. In general it makes the writer improve several aspects of their writing and develop their skills more. 

I have never been too interested in writing however it has always been a requirement for school, I’ve always thought that I’m not good at writing but ever since I started reflecting about my writings it has helped me figure out some of my weaknesses and most common mistakes I make when writing, and then in future writings I don’t make them again. I think reflective writing helps the writer better in many ways. After reading “Shitty First Drafts” I learned that it’s impossible to have a perfect first draft and that having to write multiple drafts doesn’t make you a bad writer, at the end having to write and revise your writing multiple times makes your writing be as best as it can be. 

My writing process always begins in brainstorming about what my essay could be about, I think about all the options I could write about and I start to imagine and think about how I can turn it into an essay that can reach an audience. Before starting I also do some research about the topic I chose to see if there will be enough information to write about in my essay. After deciding my topic I start writing the essay. My process always consists in putting all the information I can think about in my first draft and then I start to put things in place and connect some things with others so that the writing has more sense and relevance. I started doing this after noticing that attempting to have a perfect essay for my first draft was taking me too much time and that wasn’t helping my writing at all.

 

Stephanie

Reflective writing is a process that helps the writer connect their ideas about a topic, by thinking critically about how to portray their purpose in the writing itself. In Sandra L. Giles’s essay, “Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You Thinking?,” metacognitive writing is described as “reflective and self-assessing activities [to] help writers set goals for their writing.” I can testify to this process being effective. Whenever I write, I ask myself what the purpose of my writing is. Sometimes, I just want to jot down ideas and that’s fine, too. As Anne Lamott stated, “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start
somewhere. Start by getting something — anything — down on paper. ”

In the revision process, I’m able to personally answer questions about my writing to myself. Why do I want to include this? Who is my audience? What information does my audience need? What interests the audience more and what techniques should I use?, etc. I believe this has helped my writing because it helps me find elements I am missing and should add or remove.

The current essay assignment has been greatly influenced by reflective writing. I thought heavily about my audience. What terms does my audience understand? What can they relate to? If they can’t relate to the topic, what can I do to interest them in learning something completely different and new? Additionally, I read over my work and knew something was missing. I had the facts, but what was the reader going to take with them? Well, I wanted my readers to understand that, in the scenarios described in my essay, although standing up for your beliefs and principles may imply hardships, it will have been worth it. The rewards are not always immediate, and will be different from person to person. However, I hope that the reader that finishes my essay will finish with a bigger understanding of what it means to have different beliefs, to stand up for them, and that we can all respect each other the more for it. In conclusion, reflective writing is a great way to improve our writing.

Week 5 Discussion

Anthony D Cuomo

Reflective writing is when you critically think about your own writing and thoughts. I think reflective writing is such a huge asset to have when it comes to writing because it really does help you write better. I took my first English class in 8 years last semester. All I remember from my high school English courses was that I was a terrible writer. I passed all my English courses with the bare minimum grade. But I believe that had to do with the component that was spoken about in Sandra Giles “Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You Thinking?” article. I do not recall ever being told to reflect on what I had done. I would just write whatever thoughts came to mind and put them down on paper without a second thought. My professor last semester helped break me out of that cycle by having me really think about what it was I was writing. I think a lot of that had to come with my maturity through the years and being able to take constructive criticism without feeling like I failed. This also plays a part in “Shitty First Drafts”. I read that article last semester and let me tell you the wonders it has done for me. I am much more confident in getting my thoughts down on paper, failing miserably but having the ability to go back and critique my work and seeing the areas that I need to work on. My first draft on our current essay was complete shit. But I used that moment to just get thoughts down and steer myself in a general direction. Grammar was terrible, punctuation was terrible but those are all things that can be worked out. I had general sense of where I wanted to take the article and was able to fix everything that was wrong afterwards. I honestly was not proud at all of my first draft. But that’s the point I think. Use those moments to help guide yourself and reflect on everything that you could have done differently. So many times I sit here and I re-read what I wrote and think to myself “what the hell was I was thinking when I wrote this?”, then scrap it for a new idea. Rinse and repeat this and you’ll have yourself a fine essay.

Week 5: Reflective Writing (Yailene Rodriguez)

Yailene Rodriguez

Reflective writing or metacognitive writing is one’s thinking about an event, concept, or idea. This is the writer analyzing, examining, or observing a situation and writing their own thoughts about it. Reflective writing is talking about one’s experience, it also plays a part in how the writer decides to word the information. From the reading, I understood that it is a way of helping the writer create a clear purpose, help the writer identify errors, and identify who the intended audience is. This method can be used formatted different genres of writing.
My experience with reflective writing has been overall good because it is based on what I think about a topic and it is based on me for the way it is written. I think most of the time I do not know that I am writing that way because I’m not always thinking in an English teacher mindset. When I do know that I am doing it, it helps me create a clear message on what I want to deliver. I don’t most of the time write most of my ideas down, I usually just think about it, but what helps me the most is writing down my purpose before been able to construct an essay.
My writing process on my current major essay assignment started the same as all my writing assignments, I first started off by understanding what the assignment is and what my requirements are. For this assignment I then started to brainstorm what word I wanted to use that would be a good topic to talk about and that meant something to me. I usually try to think of more than one example before I make my choice. I think to myself what is the purpose of what I am talking about. Next, I write down any background information that is needed to know before I state my claim. After that, I write my opinion on it and then finally reread it to make sure I have completely talked about the topic clearly. In this essay, I decided to use a style of writing that was like I was more directly talking to the reader instead of just answering questions and stating information. This was achieved because I actually took a moment to think about who my audience would normally be for this essay.

Reflection and Revision (Yeshi Wangchuk)

Yeshi

Reflective writing or metacognitive writing helps the writer formulate their purpose figure out their relation to your audience, uncover possible problems with your writing process, set goals for revision etc. Using this method can help writers improver their writing by acknowledging what they did wrong before and think how they can improve that in the future.

My experience with reflective writing i really didn’t know what reflective writing was. Before High school whenever i had writings to do i used to do this with my  teachers and friends but during that time i really didn’t think too much about it i just did what the teacher told me. But as i reached high school i slowly started to use this skill without even realizing it. I started to think what my purpose for writing was what message i was trying to convey and think what mistakes i have made in the past and how i can improve on it and make important connections. After a while i started doing this subconsciously and improved on my writing.

My writing process begins with the purpose what am i trying to write about then i brainstorm and think what i want to write what details i might want to use etc. This gives me an idea of where i want to start and find details faster because if i don’t do this i will get confused and will need to restart and plan again. Then i try to answer the basic questions the writing want me to answer after this i find details that i might be able to use and see where to place them. Because if i don’t do this my details will get mixed up and it wont make sense in my writing, after i have done this i write my conclusion and wrap up my writing but i’m not done yet i finally revise my entire writing and think of what i can improve on and try to change that.

Reflection and Revision

Jennifer Hasani

Metacognitive/ reflective writing refers to being aware of your thoughts and understanding what helps and hinders learning and how to become a more effective learner. It’s like digging deep into your choices and diving further into why you chose what you did. 

I have always reflected on my writing pieces, it has helped me understand my writing strengths and weaknesses. I don’t think a piece is complete without the reflection part that in hindsight can help in future projects. I feel that is what makes you a better writer in the process. As Anne Lamott puts it in “Shitty First Drafts”, “let go and write those “shitty first drafts” that lead to clarity and sometimes brilliance in our second and third drafts.”. Multiple drafts have always helped me reflect on my writing as every draft I write I get closer to perfecting my work. I start to understand my weaknesses and strengths by looking back at the drafts. Though, sometimes it feels as if even the final paper needs revision but I understand that is for the next writing piece to show I have improved.

My writing process starts with putting questions for each of my paragraphs. This has really helped me in writing the Unit 1 Essay. For example, My Body 1 paragraph I would write something like “ Why is this word important to you and your community?”. Then I would follow that up in the paragraph. This helps me stay on track with what message I am trying to get across, instead of being all over the place. I also like to make clear what my perspectives are and connect my experiences with what I know.