Luke Ware

Suzanne Ingram
Writing and Inquiry in Academic Context I and II
9th September, 2015
Midterm
Throughout this school year, I hope to obtain many new skills and techniques for my
writing and communication skills. I understand that the need to write and communicate properly
serves a vital role in the workplace, no matter the occupation. From the 10 key concepts I desire
to engage strongly with learning how to have responsibility for my own learning and
development and getting out of my comfort zone. I believe that some challenges that will
challenge me are developing independent inquiry and curiosity, critical reading, and critical
reflection.
In my own personal opinion about myself, I feel that so far this year I have gotten out of
my comfort zone multiple times. I know this because I normally have nothing against talking to
people or socializing of any kind. However, when I have to talk about topics that I have no
particular interest in or feel that I do not have enough strong background knowledge of, I tend to
rather not indulge in the said conversation. For instance, in my second blog post I discussed
where I am more comfortable in literal territories. Of course out of my literacy territories, I have
some places where I feel more capable and comfortable. Also when we talk about our papers
with others in class, I am not a hundred percent sure that my paper is well written. In fact I know
that it lacks many aspects that make a paper well written. When other people look at my work it
sure is uncomfortable for me, so that is one example of getting out of my comfort zone. In

continuation with getting out of my comfort zone, I feel that having responsibility for my own
learning is something that I am working on currently. Referring to My Passion, I understand that
in order to have success in life I have to take college seriously and be responsible for my own
education. Knowing that my future career and the rest of my life depends on a degree from
college tells me that success matters. In order to get that degree I have to work hard and make
sure that I give my best in everything I come across. I am hopeful that as the year progresses, I
too will progress in these key concepts that I am already striving to improve.
One of the hardest topics about writing and inquiry is in fact developing inquiry and
curiosity. I am not completely confident in my ability to develop questions that require more than
a yes or no answer. That was one of our first blog assignments, For the first part of you post, ask
at least 5 meaningful questions that require more than yes or no answers, like this one I
can engage with this in the latter half of the semester by practicing more and thinking about
questions with ore depth. Critical reading challenges me because when I read assignments all I
think of is just what I read, and I do not realize that there is more in the text than just what the
text tells you. For instance when we read the poetry in class about Mondays, I had no idea that
there were multiple modal ways the author was trying to communicate with his audience. For
instance, there is a linguistic mode of communication. I never knew the way you organize your
writing can be a form of communication as well as facial expressions and other forms of body
language from Gestural mode. It was interesting and a little confusing to learn how the 5 modes
of communication work together to get information to the reader. I also have a difficult time with
critical reflection because I tend to ignore the more important details in the writing. When as a
class we each had our own memory to write about, I would have never extracted so much detail
from my memory. I have never done an exercise where I had to recall a moment to where I could

remember all the senses from that particular moment. That seeing in the moment activity really
helped me practice being more detailed in my writing and elaborating more in places where I
should be elaborating more in my writing. I would like to see all of these challenges become
easier along the semester. I think that as long as I practice, I can see these challenges fade away.