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Angelin Lopez

English 13011-101

Dr. Sharity Nelson

9 September 2022

Reflection Essay 1

Throughout writing the General Analysis essay, I have come to learn many things, some

of which can be used in other courses. The knowledge I learned from breaking down the writing

process can be hugely beneficial for other classes that involve having to write summaries,

discussions, and reports. Worksheets such as the ‘Analysis First Stage’ and ‘Genre Analysis

Worksheet’ (Nelson, “Analysis First Stage” and “Genre Analysis Worksheet”) played an

immense role in helping me understand the process of writing a genre analysis and writing in

general by breaking down the different components that make up the writing procedure.

While there are certain techniques that can be transferred into other courses, citation is

one that cannot be transferred into many. For instance, Mathematics is one of the subjects where

citation would not be relevant as citing is based on acknowledging references and other sources

that math does not use. Other than citation, punctuation and sentence structure isn’t heavily

enforced in courses such as history either. For most history courses, as long as the answer to the

problem is stated and the point has come across, most instructors do not care for the structure or

grammar involved.

Being able to analyze a community improves your writing abilities in the sense that you

will be able to identify things that may not be completely obvious at first glance. When
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analyzing a community, you have to break down all of its components, such as the “why?” And

“For what?” like we did in the ‘Genre Analysis Worksheet’ (Nelson, “Genre Analysis

Worksheet”). This helps immensely by establishing a mental rule to look deeper into the

information that was handed and look for the true meaning behind it. Not only this but writing a

genre analysis makes you look at writing from a different angle. Instead of a usual argumentative

writing genre, you are now challenged with writing a descriptive essay. The change of

perspective and writing style is beneficial as when we get used to writing in a specific genre it

becomes hard to write any other way.

After spending a lot of time writing and re-writing my essay drafts, I’ve come to see my

strengths and weakness when it comes to the actual writing process. From the beginning, I was

able to see one of my weaknesses showing, which was the actual preparation for the essay. I

struggled for a good whole day before I was able to properly get my ideas in order and begin my

introduction. Once I had an idea as to what I wanted to say within the introduction and started

the draft, I realized I had another weakness, the ability to write the introduction itself. Writing

the introduction was something I struggled with for the first two drafts of my essay. Not only

was I over-explaining ‘Facebook,’ but I also couldn’t really understand what an introduction

should be composed of. (Lopez, “Missing and Unidentified Draft 1 and 2”) I worked on it

tremendously and got feedback from my peers, which did help in the end. While I do have some

weaknesses, I do believe I also have many strengths, such as the ability to write continuously

once I have my mind set on what I feel I need to say.

Upon receiving feedback from my classmates, (Nelson, “Essay 1 Peer Review”), I

learned that although my ability to correctly order the process of information throughout the

essay needs work, I did get my ideas across clearly. Not only that, but using the feedback that
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was given to me, I was able to learn and improve my ability to structure my sentences properly. I

have also come to see that while I might be struggling to write specific aspects of my essay, I am

still improving and heading in a positive direction with my writing.

Writing this essay has made me learn many things not just about myself but my writing

as well. I have come to see that while my writing is not perfect, I am still doing a good job

regardless. Throughout the essay I had many moments in which I completely hated my writing

and felt it wasn’t the best I could do. Because of this, I felt like I was doing horrible and was not

where I needed to be in my writing. It wasn’t after the ‘Essay 1 Peer Review’ (Nelson, “Essay 1

Peer Review”) that I was able to see that while I was completely frowning upon my work, it

wasn’t horrible at all. Overall, I learned that I shouldn't be so hard on myself when it comes to

my writing as well as progress makes perfect and it is okay to make a few mistakes.

At the beginning of the course when writing a genre analysis was first introduced; I was

completely dumbfounded as to what way ‘genre’ was being perceived. I didn’t understand the

context in which the word was being used until the assignment of ‘Genre Analysis of Business

letters of Negotiation’ (Santos, “Genre Analysis of Business letters of Negotiation”). It was in

this assignment where swales definition of genre was introduced and I was able to finally

understand the concept of genre. From my understanding based on swales definition, genre is a

circle of people who all share the same purpose within their group. The community I believe is

the title for the collection of people who all share the same purpose and the participants are the

people themselves.

One of the parts of writing this essay that I found challenging was the actual preparation

for it. I was struggling with my ideas and wasn’t sure what I wanted to say in my writing or how
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to go about it properly. Along with this, at the time, I didn’t completely understand the prompt

and was in a state of confusion as to how to proceed any further. All these factors combined

contributed to a challenging hurdle I had to overcome. Although, after I came to terms with the

way the word ‘genre’ was being used, I was then able to understand the prompt correctly and

managed to write the rest of the essay slightly easier. The least challenging part of the entire

writing process was both the citation page and the conclusion. I found these to be the least

challenging as both do not take much effort to complete. The citation page is just a combination

of the sources and references used in composing the drafts, while the conclusion is written based

on everything that was already expressed.

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Work Cited

Lopez, Angelin. “Missing and Unidentified Draft 1”. 14 September 2022. ENGL 1301,

Texas A&M International University, Student Paper.

Lopez, Angelin. “Missing and Unidentified Draft 2”. 16 September 2022. ENGL 1301,

Texas A&M International University, Student Paper.

Nelson, Sharity. “Analysis First Stage”. 30 August 2022. ENGL 1301, Texas A&M

International University, Worksheet Assignment.

Nelson, Sharity. “Essay 1 Peer Review”. 14 September 2022. ENGL 1301, Texas A&M

International University, Student Activity.

Nelson, Sharity. “Genre Analysis Worksheet 1”. 29 August 2022. ENGL 1301, Texas

A&M International University, Worksheet Assignment.

Nelson, Sharity. “Genre Analysis Worksheet 2”. 30 August 2022. ENGL 1301, Texas

A&M International University, Worksheet Assignment.

Pinto Dos Santos, Valeria B.M. “Genre Analysis of business letters of negotiation”. 1

September 2000. ENGL 1301, Texas A&M International University, Homework Assignment.