Reflection

English 1301 or Writing and Rhetoric 1 truly allowed me to see how impressive and sophisticated writing

can be. Going into this course I knew before hand it was going to be difficult, but I did not imagine it being THAT

difficult. It was an immediate increase of intensity from high school writing that I was not prepared for at all.

Throughout the course of this year, I learned a whole new way to write, specifically scientific writing, and using

the many tools we were provided with helped me improve along the way. In this reflection I will be disusing the

two major pieces of writing I was assigned for English 1301 Writing and Rhetoric 1 which included a Synthesis

and Literature Review.

The first piece of writing assigned to me was the Synthesis Document over a chapter from Naming What

We Know: Threshold Concepts for Writing Studies using 7 sources. Initially, I did not know how to write a

proper synthesis. It was completely new to me and learning to cite properly was one of the aspects what I

struggled with the most. I completed the synthesis to the best of my abilities, and I figured that if I focused on one

paragraph at a time, rather than the entire document, it would be easier to write. Because of this strategy I

significantly developed my synthesis and was able to clearly talk about certain topics in each paragraph and was

able to cite properly. However, my reference page was awful, I had the write citations however they were not in

the proper format, and I then learned how crucial it really was to have proper citations. For future circumstances, I

will organize my sources and citations in the correct format to make sure that my document(s) will be credible.

The second major assignment was a Literature Review. For this assignment the class could choose to

write a literature review on their own or with a group and I chose to be in a group. For this project we were

assigned to find twelve peer review articles over a specific topic and summarize each article. Our group decided to

write the piece over how blue light affects sleep in young adults. At first, we noticed that we were struggling on

finding specific headings for our Literature Review but using a research matrix made it so much easier to come up

with good headings. It seemed like it was going to be quite the handful but once we learned how to properly write
the document, I now think my abilities to paraphrase difficult writing had developed and I will continue applying it

to my future writing. As my skills develop over time I will make sure to use the principles I have learned in this

class and use an outline like the research matrix to help develop my future writings.

In conclusion, the English 1301 Writing and Rhetoric 1 course truly gave me knowledge on what writing

really is and learned new skills and concepts to help my writing become better. I truly do believe this course did set

me up for my future especially in the industry I want to go into. However, I haven’t stopped learning and there is

always room for improvement, but with confidence I can say I have become a better writer.