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Polly Rogers

Ingram

UWRT 1102

25 April 2017

End of Course Reflection

Quotes/Connections - Key Concepts - Assignments - Modes of Communication

What I learned and How

There are a lot of different things that I have learned since being enrolled in this class.

Some of the biggest things Ive learned have been how to make sure that my work fully displays

the messages that I am trying to convey while still making it fully understandable to the reader.

Ive learned this through working with modes of communication and Aristotles appeals.

Knowing how to provide these things in my writing has made me much more confident as a

writer and in turn, had made the writing process easier and more enjoyable for me. When sitting

down to write, I now look at the linguistic, visual, aural, gestural, and spatial layout of my

writing, as well as, how I am making my writing credible, emotional, or logical to the reader and

this helps to ensure that my audience will truly grasp the message of my work. I learned these

things from the resources provided to us in class and by practicing using what those resources

showed us and getting feedback from my peers. Since my peers had the same resources as me, it

was good to be able to feed off of each other in the sense of how well our work was displaying

what we wanted it to. The example of great peer feedback and the modes of communication were

things that I think strengthened me significantly, as well as, Aristotle's appeals of ethos, pathos,

and logos.
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Revise and Edit

Throughout this course Ive participated in a significant amount of revising and editing.

Whether it was my own work or a peers, I was constantly rereading and working to better the

writing given to me. I think that one of the biggest things I looked at was making sure that the

writing I was working with really provided a fluid composition that had no question of the

message that was trying to be conveyed. In the beginning stages of my writing I tended to use a

lot of statements that started with I think that and through the notes that my professor and

peers gave me I moved away from writing those statements in my work to creating more

concrete ideas that were backed up and didnt leave the reader with a question of why. In my

opinion, revising and editing is one of the most essential aspects of writing because without it,

there is so much more opportunity for careless mistakes to be made. One of the biggest things as

a writer to me, is having a strong audience understanding because at the end of the day, even if

you can understand your message in your writing, if the audience cant then your message will

never truly be heard. With that in mind I always make sure to look for the patterns that I will see

when my writing is being critiqued and really take into consideration the advice that my peers

give me.

Annotated Bibliography

I included my Annotated Bibliography because its something that to me, really showed a

depth of research that I used. Its one of the assignments that I worked the hardest on because I

wanted my research to fully back up my claim and advocate for my topic to my audience. Within

my Annotated Bibliography, you can see that I not only participated in a deep amount of

research, but I also really broke my sources apart and analyzed all the claims they were making.
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This project was important to me because it helped me to become better with researching articles

and making sure that they are credible while learning to use their information to back up the

claims I make within my work. My favorite section of my Annotated Bibliography is my

Thoughts/Connections because it shows a lot of the composing and brainstorming process that

I went through within my research for this piece.

Midterm

The Midterm assignment was something that really helped me see the progress that I had

made as a student and and a writer while also helping me focus on the things I could still

improve on. It was a great opportunity to reflect on all of my work and the revisions that I had

been given and made it easy for me to see patterns in the things that I could improve on in my

writing. Having the key concepts to focus on again helped to make sure my writing was coming

across exactly as I needed it to be. The concepts acted almost as a checklist for things to make

sure I was including in my work or improving on as a writer which only caused my work to get

stronger. With this assignment I realized I struggled with the Key Concepts of incorporating

quotations and making connections throughout my work, and realizing this helped me to make

sure that was a concept I focused on in the future.

Developing Curiosity

My Developing Curiosity Essay was definitely one of the assignments I think I enjoyed

the most. It was a big starting point for me in the helping research my topic I would later use for

my Multi-Genre project and really helped to stretch my comfort zone in researching something I

wasnt familiar with. This assignment helped me dive deeper into inquiry and, of course,

curiosity which are parts of the writing process that are so important to make sure youre doing.
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Without asking questions in researching or writing, youre limiting yourself from the opportunity

to gain knowledge and open a door to form a passion or interest to something you never knew.

This assignment also opened my comfort zone to peer reviewing because it was one of the first

assignments we really worked on reviewing as a class which helped me realize my natural

strengths and weaknesses as a writer and grew my skill in critiquing.

Multi-Genre

I included my Multi-Genre Project since it was the assignment that I truly saw my best

writing and work in. At the beginning I had all of the components of the website separate and

just piled together as my project. I thought that creating a website to hold all of my genres

together would help the audience to gain background information about my topic and help them

to better understand that world of zodiacs, astrology, and psychics. The biggest issue with having

these pieces separate was that if someone were to look at the assignment with no background

information in the subject they would be completely lost in reading the assignment. Making the

genres into a single website allowed me to create about pages and links that could help my

audience further understand all of the information I wanted to convey and I wanted to be able to

reach any audience. I felt that I couldnt do that in my original composition of the piece but

blending all of the works together into a website with an about page and other resources would

help any audience be able to understand and appreciate my topic.

Blog

The blog posts were really helpful to me since they were a great way to get familiar with

Weebly and all that it had to offer and helped me to start working with multi-modality. Each

assignment helped me get familiar with the aspects that I wanted to convey in my writing and
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having them spread out through the semester made learning and working with these different

ideas a lot more beneficial and stress free. Each blog post offered its own set of new information

and gave me the opportunity to respond to it and ask any questions that I felt were appropriate. I

think Blog Post 4 helped me significantly since I begun to choose the people at my Round

Table for that post which gave me a headstart on the people and types of articles I wanted to

included in my Annotated Bibliography.

Process Work

For my first Process Work artifact I chose to include my Developing Curiosity

brainstorming notes. I wanted to include something that showed my thought process at the very

beginning of an assignment so you could see the real progress that goes from a thought process

to a final draft. I think linking the final draft with it will also help show what significant progress

was made from just that little section of notes.

Secondly I included the first draft of my Annotated Bibliography. Here you can see a lot

more of the writing process shown but you can also still see how much work needed to be done.

This draft is much more complete than the last but is obviously still unfinished and needs a lot

more research done.

Finally, I included my original Multigenre Project. Here you can see just how far adding

a little bit of multi-modality and a better layout can amp up your assignment. This was my

favorite transition between a draft and a final product because the draft was something that I

could have turned in on its own but I thought about how much better it could be by forming it

into a site and strived to do that.

I included all of these pieces because I think they all show different stages of the writing

process that I went through. Even though some of the pieces seem like they could be finished,

you can see a significant difference between draft to final for each one.

Feedback

For my feedback I chose to show a response to one of my blog posts and a peer-review

on my Developing Curiosity Essay. I thought that these were important because they help

display the different kinds of feedback we got within a course but both of them still helped

significantly with my skills as a writer. The first feedback helped me understand the different

revision that could go on a opinionated piece and the second helped me see an issue I was

struggling with as a writer and that was backing up my claims.

Writers Notebook

For this section I wanted to include one piece that was my own and one that we got from

the course that both helped me with my E-Portfolio. I included the Reader Response Letter 4

because it was an assignment that I think really helped me gain an understanding of the

E-Portfolio and made me feel more comfortable about working towards my composition of it.

The second piece I wanted to include was the modes of communication notes. I wanted to

include this because I thought it was one of the really beneficial tools that we gained in this

course and it was also something that I worked with a lot in the composition of my E-Portfolio.

Wildcard

For my Wildcard artifact I wanted to include something that was unrelated to this course

but was something that I created with the tools and strategies that this course provided me with. I

chose to include a scholarship essay that I wrote while I was in this course because this class
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helped me to be confident and comfortable in writing that essay and a lot of the tools we were

given went into writing it.

Make-Up

For my Make-Up assignment I included my Reader Response Letter 1. I missed the

assignment because I failed to provide a hard copy but it was a good learning experience because

it helped me to remember to always bring one. The assignment opened my knowledge of inquiry

and curiosity and made me more comfortable with those topics.

3 Key Concepts

Like I mentioned previously you can see that I originally struggled with incorporating

quotations and making connections in my work. These were things that at the beginning of the

semester, just didnt come naturally to me. Although I would make connections to my life and

the text when thinking about a project or reading over the directions, thinking to include that in

my writing just wasnt a natural skill for me. Now even though it is something that still may not

come to mind at first, working with both of those Key Concepts are things I strive to include in

my writing constantly even if it takes the second draft to remember to include it. Practicing with

multiple Blog Posts and Reader Response Letters where I had to respond to a text were things

that helped build my confidence in including quotations and making connections since it came

more naturally to me in participating in a responsive assignment.

The third Key Concept I had a hard time with was multimodality. Originally it was never

something that really came to mind when composing a text and I didnt really see a lot of

purpose in using it since I figured most people would just be looking at my work for the text and

the text only. It wasnt until my Multi-Genre Project and Reflection that I realized how much
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better my assignment would be if I included more aspects of multi-modality within it. In my

reflection I discussed how I feel like these genre pieces do a great job with displaying my ideas

to my target audience(and)...something that could really convey my argument more...would be

to create a website...that would include (all of the pieces) that would really help bring an

understanding...of...what exactly I am trying to say. Revising my project into something that did

this appealed to all of the modes of communication and bettered my project significantly. After

that assignment I took the ideas of multi-modality and made sure I included them in my

e-portfolio because I really realized what a significant impact it could make on my writing.

Organization and Design

I wanted my e-portfolio to be something that was designed in a way that would appeal to

any audience and would be easy to navigate throughout the entire site. The layout I chose was

something that I find to be very simplistic, yet, aesthetically pleasing. I didn't want the site to be

covered in busy images or moving videos because I think that they would be something that

would distract from my work and the growth Im trying to display as a writer. I made sure to

keep in mind the five modes of communication as I worked in this project because I knew that

they could better my assignment and make the site something that could be enjoyable to my

audience.

I used the visual mode of communication within every area of the site. All sections of the

site have corresponding layouts for each subheading that are presented in a simplistic yet

intriguing manner. For example the Major Assignments page itself has a blurred background of a

skyline that is repeated through all of its subcategories (Annotated Bibliography, Midterm,

Developing Curiosity, and Multi-Genre). All of the colors of the site coordinate with one another
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because I didnt want the site to seem to busy or unorganized, but I still wanted it to be

something that was visually appealing to my audience.

I also kept the spatial mode into high consideration when designing the portfolio. Again, I

didnt want the site to be too busy and take away from my work so this concept was very

important to me. I gave my audience a way to access all of my assignments from the main

categories page itself (Major Assignments, and Artifacts), as well as, their drop down bars. I also

made sure all of my sections were spaced out in a way that separated each one from each other,

while not being too far apart to where the audience could miss one.

The linguistic mode you can see within the works I included and the responses I had to

them. I again didnt want my portfolio to be something hard for any audience to understand so I

kept my word choice for all of my tabs in one to two words and tried to explain each assignment

as best as possible. I didn't use gestural or aural communication within my site because with the

simplistic layout I wanted, I felt that those two modes would make my portfolio busier than I

wanted it to be.

Grade I Deserve

Looking back over the rubric I think I deserve an A in this course. Although I did have a

few missing assignments and didnt have perfect attendance, I really put forth all of my best

effort into this course and strived to go above and beyond in my work. I have made significant

progress over this course because I really took into consideration all of the tools we were given

in this class and strived to use all of them within my assignments. I never turned in any work that

met the bare minimum of requirements and even after a final draft was due, I continued to better

my writing and pieces that I turned in. I think that all of my assignments within this portfolio
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including the portfolio itself address all of the requirements given my my professor and really do

show my talent as a writer and a student. I think that if any audience were to look at this portfolio

they would leave it with no questions asked about any of my work and that itself shows

something that can only be achieved with A quality work.

Future

I can see everything we learned in this class helping me in the future because there were

so many resources provided to us as writers and students. I think that the key concepts and

modes of communication are the main things that I will continue to use over and over again in

my writing. Those were skills that really helped to improve my writing and the communication

really advocates for the audience to gain the best message possible from my work. If I had to go

back and take this course again I would definitely take that opportunity. I gained so many

resources and so much confidence in myself from this course that I feel I could look at any form

of writing assignment and feel confident in pursuing it with no questions asked.