The Reflection to End all Reflections

Over the course of writing many papers and assignments, I feel that my writing has definitely improved from before. I have gained a better feel for writing and learned many new techniques and terms that have escalated my writing style. In the beginning, I would usually just summarize what I read and repeat the same thing. Now I am able to look back at the writing and analyze each part very well so that I can give a sound analysis of what I read to the audience. Using many of the rhetorical terms that I read about and reading many types of texts and genres, has helped me in seeing how other writers analyze their writing. I mimicked those techniques in my assignments and papers to improve the way I write. Writing is also a process and that is why I learned how to revise and make drafts of my work. Every time I make a draft, something new is fixed or added, so that in the end, the paper is as good as it can be. To make new drafts, collaborating with my peers to see the mistakes that I have made is very important. I have learned how to peer review others’ work and have them review mine. This gives me a better insight into different writing styles so that I can improve my own writing, as well as take the feedback from others so that I can make my writing better. These things that I have learned have also shown me new writing strategies to incorporate into my future writing. They improve my writing tremendously and make it easier for the reader to follow what I am saying in my writing. To get my writing across to different audiences, the use of print and digital means is important and that is why my paper is usually available on any device, as well as on paper so that it is accessible to anyone. A very important aspect of academic writing is being able to research and find credible sources to use in my writing. Learning these things from the CCNY library has really helped. Now, I can look at many databases and search for what I need. Usually, these databases have many academic texts that are written by people who know what they are talking about. This has also helped me to check for credibility and bias in the texts. Looking at the author’s background, as well as where the text is from helped me in seeing if the source is credible or not. This has helped my research a lot and ensures that my readers are reading correct information, with minimal bias as possible in the research. One of the techniques that have helped my writing a lot is weaving together summary and analysis into the paper. I am now confident in summarizing the text but also getting straight into the analysis so that the whole paper isn’t just summarizing. But it does depend on the intended audience of the paper and sometimes the summary isn’t needed since the reader already knows what I am talking about. Synthesizing is still something that I need to work on because I find it to be a little difficult. I feel like the method isn’t really clear to me, even when I look at other writers doing it. I need to just practice more writing and get a better feel for it. That’s how I think I’ll learn how to use synthesis in my writing. Citations in my writing have been very easy to do since the beginning and I feel very comfortable now in the way I cite texts and authors properly in the MLA format. This has definitely made my writing more professional and accepted in the academic atmosphere. Rhetorical terms are very important to good writing and I have understood them very well now. I can now check to see of all of the terms are present in my writing, which makes getting my point across more efficient and the reader can understand it easier. The genre of the essay is always what shapes the writing, and the techniques that I incorporate into the writing are dictated by the genre. This has helped me a lot in writing different types of papers. Exigence is a term that I feel is very important to me because it is what motivated me to write the paper. When there is the motivation behind the writing, it always makes it better and this shows up clearly in the paper. The reader can tell if the author did this with motivation or not by simply looking at the quality of the paper. This has also made my writing’s quality much better. The purpose is the most important thing because it is why the author wrote what he did. It is the message that the author is trying to get across, and now, I always look for that after I’m done writing so that I can make sure that my writing matters to the audience and is not just irrelevant talk on something that is unimportant. This makes the writing worth reading, thus making my writing much more enjoyable by the audience. This connects straight into the audience of my writing. Making sure that I satisfy the specific audience in my writing is very important because that’s what makes or breaks the writing. If the audience likes my writing, that means that the job is done and that’s why I always reread my final paper, so that I can see it from a reader’s point of view. This makes my writing better because I can pick up on any small mistakes that I may have made while I was looking at it from an author’s point of view. These techniques ensure that I have the correct stance between me and the reader. I have learned to go over the relationship that I have created between me and the reader, and to see if it is appropriate for the genre of writing that I am trying to create. Overall, all of this has helped my writing tremendously and has prepared me for the writing that is to come my way throughout the rest of college.