Joelina Garza

Engl 1301-102

Dr. Sharity Nelson

5 December, 2023

Reflection on Portfolio

This course has presented many challenges, some were easy to overcome and some I felt

were harder to overcome and I would still consider them a bit challenging. My journey through

this course has not only challenged my writing skills but also strengthened my writing skills by

breaking down and helping my understanding of the writing process and the revising and editing

process. This course taught me how to manage all my work and assignments through the project

management worksheets. This course strengthened my ability to gather and collect information

for my essays though the analysis worksheets. This course also helped me organize my ideas and

information through the outline worksheets. Through this semester I learned about different

genres and what they mean. I also learned about different methods of analysis and how to

conduct them. Those analysis being genre analysis, visual analysis and rhetorical analysis.

This course has taught me many things about the writing process. The writing process

that is learned in english 1301 is different from the writing process learned in jr high and high

school english classes. The writing process in this course was more academically challenging

than the writing process I had used prior to taking this class. This course has taught me that the

writing process comes within its errors and that the first draft will have many mistakes and will

most definitely not be perfect. This course has taught me that the writing process takes time and

skill which is why the writing process comes with the process of revising and editing. I have
learned that after writing a draft comes lots of editing and revision. I have learned that the

process of revising and editing is more than just fixing grammatical errors; it is also about fixing

sentence structure and paragraph structure and about making your essay flow better and making

sure it makes sense to your audience. I've learned that getting multiple perspectives in your

writing helps to improve the essays. Getting multiple perspectives on my writing felt really

crucial to me. Peer review was something I felt helped the most in the revising and editing

process. I felt that having my peers looking at my writing really helped me improve my essays

because they may look at a piece of writing differently than me. Others might notice mistakes

that I didn't, which helps improve my writing. The homework that really helped me understand

the writing process were the outlines worksheets and the analysis worksheets. The analysis

worksheets help me gather my ideas and break down that type of analysis I was writing about.

The analysis worksheets were broken down into sections which helped me understand what I

was looking for specifically and what I needed to get out of this analysis. Whether it was

understanding the genre, finding out what the visual text is trying to convey or finding the

rhetorical situation and its meaning. The outlines help me organize my ideas and create

sentences that form an essay. This knowledge helped build my writing skills in other courses by

increasing my understanding about sentence and paragraph structure. For example, in a history

course there was a research paper due where u had to pick a topic and write a 2 page essay on

that topic. Before this course a two page essay would've been a struggle. It would've ended up

with lots of unimportant information but because of this course I was able to find the important

information and expand on that information alone. Being able to write long papers is something

that will help carry me into other courses and even after college when I have to write some form

of an essay.
 I've learned that analysis is more than just looking at words and finding out what they

mean. I learned how to be more open minded when analyzing my artifacts and really look into

what each detail means. Analysis is also about looking at visual text in detail and making

predictions and looking into the deeper meaning of sentences and objects and looking at what

the author is trying to convey and make the audience understand or what the author wants the

audience to know after reading the text. The activities that helped me the most with the analysis

process were the analysis worksheets. The analysis worksheets broke down what I had to analyze

and how to analyze it into sections making it easier to understand. The analysis worksheets

helped me know what I was looking for when looking at my written text and what to expand on.

The analysis worksheets were broken down into sections that showed what I need to look for

specifically. The worked sheets really helped with my understanding of how to look at something

in detail. Really seeing every detail was something I struggled with throughout essay 2. When

conducting my visual analysis for essay 2 I had to give really deep descriptions on my visual

text. Making sure that every little detail was included was difficult. It seems like everytime I look

at the image there was nothing new. However, I knew there was something there that needed to

be expanded on.

The most challenging part of revising essay 2 one more time was correcting my sentence

structure. Based on my feedback, my sentences need to go into another more fluidly. I needed to

find what information was crucial and what information needed to go so that the sentences went

together a lot better than before. My instructor also stated that I need a what statement. Assuming

I already had one for each paragraph I struggled with finding out what exactly a what statement

was and figuring out how to create a what statement for each paragraph while making sure it was

connecting to the rest of my body paragraph. The least challenging part of revising essay 2 one
more time was finding grammatical and spelling errors that I didn't catch the first time I wrote

the essay. My knowledge of grammar and spelling was something I had prior to this course.

Finding grammatical errors was the least challenging part because the google docs website

already finds them for you. However there were some spelling mistakes that the site did not

catch but finding them was really easy. I just had to read over my essay a few times and I was

done.

Some of the choices I made to communicate course concepts were giving a short

summary of the essays by stating the topic and what artifact I was analyzing for each essay. In

my writing assignments explanations I made genre analysis, visual text analysis, and rhetorical

analysis understandable to someone who is unfamiliar with these genres by really describing

what they are and explaining how to conduct these types of analysis. My website also shows

examples of the type of analysis in the course with my essays. My essays are pieces of writing

that conduct the type of analysis in the course and can help the audience understand how to do

these analyses themselves. I made the document noticeable and easy to access on my website.

The most challenging aspect of this course was the amount of work. There seemed to be

assignment after assignment making a busy and stressful schedule. However, the project

management worksheets helped organize the assignments and create a schedule for each essay

making the assignments easier to manage. The project management worksheet made an easier

and manageable schedule because it broke down what day things were due,what time it was due,

and how to turn it in whether it was through turnitin, a discussion board or some other way of

turning in assignments through blackboard. During the analysis process one of my biggest

challenges was seeing each detail. I had to learn to read in between the lines and really see the

visual texts in detail. Along with the analysis process was also the writing process which also
presented many challenges. One of the biggest challenges in the writing process was organizing

my ideas. For example when writing essay 2 I had some much to write about that my sentence

organization was a mess. What helped me with organizing my essay was the outlined

assignments. The outline assignments showed me what specific information to include which

helped me find what information was unimportant or not needed. The outline assignments also

showed me where to put each sentence and how to write each sentence which improved my

sentence structure and the overall flow of each of my essays.

Although the course presented many many challenges, the one thing I would consider the

least challenging was fixing grammatical and spelling errors in my essays. Grammar and spelling

is something we as students learn all throughout school so needing to know how to write with the

correct grammar and spelling was nothing new. Considering the academic level of the course I

felt as if there were no strengths discovered during this course. If anything this course challenged

my strengths and my prior knowledge of writing that I had before this course. Although this

course did not help me discover new strengths, it made the ones I had prior to taking this course

stronger by challenging them and making me write on a whole new level of academic writing.

What really became stronger throughout the semester was my ability to expand on my ideas and

information. The essays in this course were some of the longest essays I have ever written and

although at first I struggled with expanding on my ideas I feel that expanding my ideas and

information became easier with each essay.

I feel this course has really prepared me to become a part of the academic writing

process. As mentioned before this course was a real challenge for me however that only made

my strengths in writing stronger and expanded my knowledge on writing. This course made me

write on a whole new level of academic writing which improved my writing skills and has
prepared me for high level courses such as English 1302. This course gave me a good

introduction on what to expect with writing courses that are at the level of academics or higher.

Without this course I would not know the many different types of genres or that there were

different types of analysis. My knowledge about analysis before this course was just finding the

meaning of words and sentences but this course showed more ways to analyze that goes way

deeper than just the words on the written text. Something I also found challenging throughout

this course was the length of the essays. These lengths of the essays really challenged my ability

to expand on my ideas. With each essay came the struggle of reaching the word count. I needed

to learn to expand my information but also leave out unimportant sentences. I felt a breakthrough

with this challenge when I easily reached my word count for essay 3. Unlike my other essays

while writing essay 3, reaching the word count was not a worry of mine because expanding my

ideas was something I learned and was a challenge that I overcame while writing essays 1 and

essay 2.

In conclusion, this course has challenged me but it has only made my writing stronger

than before I took this course. This course challenged my strengths which made them stronger

and improved my writing skills. Each class assignment and homework assignments helped me

improve in different areas of writing. The assignments help organize work and create and

organize ideas and information from my artifacts. To be specific , the project management

worksheets are what helped me create an organized work schedule of the assignments for each

essay and the analysis worksheets and outlines worksheets helped me collect and organize my

ideas and information from my artifacts. What really challenged my writing skills was the length

of the essays and having to expand my ideas more and more. I learned different genres and I
learned different analysis and how to conduct them. Thoses analysis being genre analysis, visual

analysis, and rhetorical analysis.