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Tyler McGregor
Steffen Guenzel
ENC 1101-0001
3 December 2014

Writing - Really Writing: A Reflection of my Progress in ENC 1101

The transition from taking high school English courses to taking ENC 1101 was
comparable to entering a whole new world. While none of what I was taught in my
English classes in high school was technically wrong, it was all almost so simple that it
could seem wrong. Differences ranged from preparing to write to revising final drafts and
everything in between. The ENC 1101 course opened up a much more detailed and
profound world of writing that enhanced my skills as a writer. Among the learning
outcomes from taking ENC 1101, I feel I excelled exceptionally in demonstrating an
understanding of writing processes and how writing processes change depending upon
context, along with demonstrating awareness of the relationship between discourse
conventions, lexis, genres, and their related communities. Regarding the other two
outcomes, demonstrating an understanding of rhetorical situations and demonstrating my
capability as a reader of complex texts, I believe I met as well but perhaps not as strongly
as the other two.
By far, my the topic I excelled most at was the writing process. I enjoyed learning
about how others write, analyzing how I write, and how the writing process can change
based upon the genre. An assignment this semester in ENC 1101 asked the student to
analyze his writing process while writing for another class or something else outside of
the ENC 1101 class. I decided to write my paper on my writing process for an event

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known as National Novel Writing Month. This assignment presented a unique
opportunity to analyze my writing process for a genre I had never previously written in:
novels. I found some interesting differences between how I write for school assignments
and how I write in the genre of novels. These differences include my preplanning for
writing. For academic papers, my preplanning is very intricate and carefully laid out, like
a blueprint. However, for my novel, I realized my planning is not nearly as detailed. In
fact, its so vague that it allows for ample amount of wiggle room and creativity. The
writing process isnt just limited to preplanning. Ive learned that in my particular
situation, I need to feel a flow and in the right mood in order to be able to write
effectively. Its easy for me to write once I get an idea that has potential. I usually
encounter problems when it comes to thinking of an idea to write about in the first place.
Difficulty of thinking of something to write was one of the first issues addressed
in ENC 1101. An early article that we read was called Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott
and it elaborates more on this issue. Basically, Lamott emphasized the importance of
getting something-anything-down on the paper. She proceeds to say that a first draft
doesnt need to be perfect. In fact, as the title of her article suggests, it can be below subpar. The importance of a first draft is to just get a basic idea down on the paper. That
way, revisions and corrections can be made over and over. I applied this article shortly
after I read it. For paper I in ENC 1101, I was stuck trying to figure out what to write for
my literacy sponsor. I had determined my literacy and so, remembering Shitty First
Drafts, wrote everything I could down about it. This led me be able to see the big picture
of my literacy and determine how my sponsors influenced it therefore resulting in a
decent first college paper.

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As the semester progressed in ENC 1101, we started to encounter more
complicated topics. Of these topics were the ideas of discourse communities and its
characteristics along with activity theory. Though complicated, I feel I have a firm
understanding of this topic. I showed my understanding in paper II when I discussed the
discourse community of long snappers. The long snapping community has all the
characteristics of a discourse community as listed by John Swales in his article The
Concept of Discourse Community. Swales stated that these characteristics are a broadly
set of agreed goals, mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, use of
participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback, possesses one or more
genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims, acquisition of specific lexis, and a
threshold level of members. In paper II, I presented a claim of how the long snapping
community is indeed a discourse community and explained this by describing how it
meant the listed criteria.
Activity theory was the first theory presented that provided me with a critical lens
for looking at a subject or situation and understanding it a new way. To begin, this topic
was a bit confusing for me to grasp, especially after reading Kain and Wardles article
Activity Theory. Kain and Wardle stated that an activity system is most basic activity
theory lens and has six characteristics. These characteristics are ongoing, object directed,
historically conditioned, dialectically structured, tool-mediated, and human interaction. It
wasnt until I read Victoria Marros paper The Genres of Chi Omega: An Activity
Analysis that it became clearer. In Marros paper, she provided her sorority as an
example. She took her sorority, which met the criteria to be an activity system, and used

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activity theory to analyze further. Doing so helped me to understand activity theory and
how it differs from discourse community.
There is no doubt that ENC 1101 has helped me to become a more proficient and
exceptional writer. Working with detailed works and complicated topics, such as rhetoric
and the writing process, I have been able to perfect my own writing. From reading so
many articles on writing and writing myself, Ive realized its complexity and beauty.
Because of ENC 1101, I believe I have mastered some of the outcomes intended after
taking the course as well as gaining a firm understanding of the others.