You are on page 1of 3

Nafis Muhammad

Professor Ingram
UWRT 1103-026
September 29, 2015

Key concepts are vital in the completion of the first-year writing course UWRT 1103. On
the precisely detailed syllabus is a list of Key Concepts, this list of concepts is split into two
categories some that come from the teachers own research/experience and others that are firstyear writing student outcomes. In one months time some of the key concepts have been easier to
accomplish than others. For example concepts such as independent inquiry & curiosity,
making connections and Critical reflection all have been fairly easy to achieve by way of
assignments such as blog posts and the exploratory essay. Whereas concepts like responsibility
for your own learning and getting out of your comfort zone have been a little more
challenging.
As mentioned above blog posts have played a huge role in developing and practicing
these concepts. In fact majority of the blog posts written have consisted of each of the three
concepts listed above. It is a must when writing s blog to do independent research or inquiry
about a topic as well as being curious and creative about how you present to the topic in those
aforementioned posts. In Blog post 1 there was actually an Inquiry post that required reading
over the syllabus and making inquiries about it in the form of questions. An example of mine

was In the Couse Description it states, "Students learn to distinguish rhetorical contexts,
practice different conventions, and develop positions in relation to research". What are
conventions? And which ones we will be keying on during this semester of Writing?. I
effectively read over the text and formed questions based on that reading. There is also a lot of
making connections in a prototypical blog post. That essentially is the purpose of blog posts,
reading something and making connections to it by using personal experiences. And up to this
point in the semester is something that Professor Ingram has tasked the class with doing multiple
times. For example in blog post 2 the instructions were to read an excerpt from the book Who
Says? The Writer's Research, by Deborah Holdstein and Danielle Aquiline. In the excerpt
Holdstein and Aquiline say that in your writing class, you will examine what interests you.
Therefore I made a connection to the text by listing my interest and narrowing it down to one
specific interest that I considered a passion, which was sports. The last is critical reflection
which is not only needed in terms of reflecting on your own blog post and being critical of
others blog posts it also comes in handy when writing essays. For example critical reflection
was a big part of the peer editing process off the exploratory essay. One more note on the
exploratory essay is that because it was an essay that was centered on yourself and your interests
it was also necessary to make connections to your past experiences and connect them to the
passion. There was also various activities completed in class to help accomplish this, using our
various senses to recollect past experiences.
Some of the concepts thus far have not been as easy to grasp, which could be due to lack
of practice or just difficulty. Those being like responsibility for your own learning and getting
out of your comfort zone. Responsibility for your own learning is a concept that I dont expect
to be as familiar with being that we are only at the beginning of the semester. It is a rather vague

concept, and has various meanings. For me I relate it to just being in college and the territories
that come with that. The changes in teachers and work preparation that changes as you move on
to college. With that being said, being able to be responsible of your own learning is going to
be a challenge as I progress through the semester but Im sure there is a light at the end of the
tunnel. Another concept that seems to have a similar fate is getting out of your comfort zone.
This concept is all about getting out of your comfort zone as a writer which for me is forgetting
about what you have done in previous writing class and being able to branch into new areas. One
big part of that, in which a lot of freshmen struggle is the 5 paragraph essay. For so long it has
been taught that thats the way an essay is supposed to be constructed, making it comfortable for
the writer to use this format when writing a paper. Both of these although difficulty concepts can
both be accomplished by then end of next semester, solely by getting used to the class and
practice. As the class continues to write essays and other papers Im sure that getting out of my
writing comfort zone will become increasingly less difficult.
In conclusion, the concepts presented in the syllabus are ones that are challenging but are
also accomplishable, much similar to the class. However the concepts that I feel that I have fully
developed such as independent inquiry & curiosity, making connections and Critical
reflection will no doubt come in handy as I try to tackle the other two concepts: responsibility
for your own learning and getting out of your comfort zone. By the end of the semester I will
be able to piece together all of the 10 Key Concepts listed by Professor Ingram and take what I
have learned and put it towards future writings.

You might also like