Tashayla Taylor

Jo Chapman
English 180
December 13, 2015
Final Reflection
Now that the semester has come to an end, I have grown and
developed new skills as a writer through the various writing
assignments I completed this semester. To start, we began the
semester writing a literacy essay. This essay was intended for us to
look back and analyze our previous journey as writers and to think
about what shaped us as writer. In my essay I talked about writing my
first paragraph, book report, and research paper. I explained the
techniques that almost every student learns while going to school and
reading or writing. From the Literacy Essay, I learned that as a writer, it
is difficult for me to write about a very broad topic. I prefer more
specific topics that I can explain really well. It seemed weird to be
writing about writing in my opinion. The literacy essay made me think
about process that has gone into my writing over the years. A well
written essay is not something that is only drafted once, but rather is
reworked multiple times to be the best it can be.
Continuing on, the Visual literacy essay taught me how to
condense my words and instead use pictures to tell a story. This was
difficult because I had to tell the story of my road to literacy that I had
previous wrote about in the Literacy essay. With so many aspects going
into my writing career, it was difficult to just find four or five pictures to

accurately tell my story. During the process, I found myself deleting

pictures and starting over. My goal in the visual literacy essay was to
think about my audience and tell my story with pictures that can be
understood. My audience consisted of my classmates, teacher, and
other college students. I also learned a few things about research when
doing the visual literacy essay. My research techniques were used
when I was browsing the internet for pictures to use. The assignment
required us to use MLA formatting to cite our pictures. Practicing
citations also helped me in later assignments.
Taking a break from writing, my favorite assignment was the
Pecha Kucha presentations. I chose to do a Pecha Kucha instead of the
group powerpoint because it gave me more freedom and individuality
to pick a discourse community that I found interesting. I decided to
choose a dance team here on WIUs campus for my presentation. After
doing a lot of researching and gathering tons of important information
about the dance team, it was difficult for me to pick out which key
points to focus on in my presentation. I decided to start my
presentation with the history of the dance team and move on to more
recent events so that it flowed smoothly. I used multiple pictures on
each slide that gave me hints toward what I needed to say during my
presentation. I also had to make sure my presentation was concise
enough for my classmates to actually be interested and learn
something about the discourse community I chose. I think I

successfully completed this assignment and learned a lot about

presenting to an audience and choosing the most effective techniques
when presenting.
While still thinking about discourse communities, the annotated
bibliography was probably the toughest assignment of the semester for
me. I had never created an annotated bibliography and did not
understand what my task was. This was the first assignment I attended
the University Writing Center for. To prepare for this assignment, in
class we were given articles to read and summarize using the key
points. At this point is still did not know what this assignment was
requiring us to do. For my discourse community I chose African
American women running for public office. When I went to the writing
center, I found out that an annotated bibliography was an essay that
consisted of a few summaries of articles and analysis that tell how I
planned on using the articles to support my claim. I used three articles
that supported my claim and one article that refuted my claim. By
using an article that refuted my claim, I was able to explain why that
view was wrong and why my claim stood stronger. The annotated
bibliography was another assignment that required research, but it also
introduced a new style of formatting an essay. The format we used was
very peculiar and unlike anything I had done before.
Following the annotated bibliography was the final research
paper. The research paper was a breeze because all of the research

had already been done in the annotated bibliography. I liked the

research paper because it gave me a chance to actually explain and
support my claim using rhetoric. I used all three techniques, logos and
ethos and pathos, to persuade my readers into supporting my claim.
Along with the final research paper was a flyer. This flyer made me
think back to the visually literacy essay because I needed to convey
my message through pictures that would gain support from my
audience.
Throughout the class, I also enjoyed doing freewrites at the
beginning of class. I liked that the freewrites covered a variety of topics
and allowed us to step away from the structure class time and write in
our own way about our own opinions. I noticed that I became more
comfortable doing freewrites and I was able to speak about things that
I usually would not talk about in a classroom setting. My experience in
English 180 was well worth it and I enjoyed the class. I am looking
forward to continuing on to English 280 next semester and using the
things I have learned to continue my growth as a writer.