Discourse Community Essay Reflection

The discourse community essay assignment was beneficial to me for a few reasons. The
first and probably most important reason is because prior to writing the discourse community
essay, I had no idea what a discourse community was or that rock climbing would be considered
one. The discourse community essay assignment was also very beneficial for me because it
grounded my ego. By saying that it grounded my ego I mean that I did well on the first writing
assignment and there was very little for me to correct, but on the discourse community essay
assignment there was a lot that I needed to correct. I am glad that I made so many mistakes so
that I could have the opportunity to learn to write better.
The revision process for this assignment was a profound learning experience for me
because I had so much to revise. I learned that quotation marks are not intended to be used to
emphasize words or phrases. Learning this new information about quotation marks was a bit of a
shock to me because I have always thought that it was appropriate to use them in that fashion. I
also learned that the pronoun their should only be used when referring to multiple people, and
that when referring to only one person whos sex is undisclosed the phrase his or her should be
used instead. I most definitely became a much better writer thanks to the revision process for this
assignment.