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Jesus Garza

Mr. Martinez

ENGL 1301-701

9 December 2023

Final Reflection Essay

This semester has been a roller coaster of learning curves, teaching us how to better

ourselves when formulating an essay. I’ve felt like the words have gradually gotten better at

moving from my brain to my paper without experiencing any mental roadblocks. The ability I've

gained just to write smoothly and confidently has only grown since the beginning of the

semester. As I reflect upon my past assignments, I can easily state their purpose on how they

helped me construct a better point of view for my essays. This semester as a whole changed my

way of writing as well, using more concise words rather than just formatting wordy sentences. It

also taught me how to properly brainstorm and plan even before the rough draft, which helped a

lot when constructing new ideas, especially when I was assigned to make a visual and rhetorical

analysis essays. Those two fields of literature are uncharted for me so when creating ideas, the

brainstorming part was a vital step, followed by peer and instructor feedback. Everyone's an

Author, the book that is co-assigned with the class, is also structured very well to reinforce the

new subjects brought to us as writers, including taking into account our audience and learning

from our constructive criticism. In this final reflection essay, the discussed topics are how I truly

found my place as a writer, building on the writing process of a paper, analysis in the

construction portion, revising, identifying my weaknesses and strengths in the revision process,

properly communicating course concepts, identifying the hardest and easiest part of the course

overall, and seeing how it truly prepare me to be apart of this amazing writing community.
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The writing process in this course was definitely the biggest learning curve that English

1301 had to offer, as it has changed throughout the class. I’ve learned that a good writing process

comes with time and patience; it’s a key factor, especially when formatting correct sentence

structure so my ideas as an author don’t get discombobulated. The fact is that the writing process

is very versatile when dealing with different types of essays. Take, for example, the essay we did

for visual analysis vs the essay we had to do for rhetorical analysis. Yes, we were writing about

entirely different things, but structurally, both essays had the same foundation. We had the same

set of assignments, like the analysis and management worksheet, which better prepared us for

upcoming assignments and quizzes so we could space out our time to actually work on the essay,

and the other one helped us identify multiple topics we could write about and describe each one.

The analysis worksheet was originally thought to be a big pain to do by many students in the

class, but it was actually really helpful in laying out all of our options and seeing the descriptions

we made for them, guiding us to choose a topic we were more comfortable writing about. This

really built upon my prior knowledge of the writing process from just being random

brainstorming, not this intricate step-by-step process that laid out the information for me so

neatly. One primary example of this was the “Source Worksheet Rhetorical Analysis,” this

helped me greatly in choosing the right article as I read from the description making it easy to

write about since it was something that followed my passion.

The repeated revision that was done over “ The Effective Rhetoric Uses of Using

Animals In Medical Research,” was eye-opening as I can see my mistakes much clearer. It felt

like I was reading a whole different paper or maybe the same paper but with a different set of

eyes. My experience as a writer had pointed out my mistakes to me much more clearly. I saw that

throughout the essay, I could’ve used words that made sentences flow much smoother or used
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phrases that made conjoint sentences less clumpy and wordy. The idea hit that I didn’t write the

actual reasoning for what it contributed to the article. I expressed how the article's author uses

pathos and logos, but I forgot the vital part of what that actually contributes to their audience,

which was brought to my attention by instructor feedback. To elaborate further, how did the

author's use of logos and pathos have its effect, and was it positive or negative on the audience;

what did this effect cause the audience to believe, and how did it sway them to go against animal

testing? I made that mistake back to back when introducing the author's methods in swaying their

audience into their views. This is why the revision process is vital, even though it is my third

time doing it. I fixed these issues by adding a clear and concise description of what effect the

author actually had on the audience and why it was effective. This clear decision-making

wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for previous class assignments preparing me not to be

scared to change a paper if necessary.

The most challenging and the least challenging portions of the revision process was most

identifiable at the beginning of the process as I had read my peer and instructor feedback. The

most challenging was coming to terms with the feedback that I had actually missed something

when I initially thought everything was in the paragraph. This couldn't be farther from the truth

as I kept reading continuously over and over and I was able to see the problem. This was most

challenging because I had felt like I was repeating the same action getting the same results until I

took a break and read again, and then I noticed the problem was right in front of me. The little to

no description that I gave of the cause and effect relationship that the author had using pathos

and logos. The least challenging portion was just fixing my grammatical errors that would make

my paper sound choppy and not flow smoothly. It was much more apparent, that words sounded

like they shouldn't be there once I read it again for the third time. I was surprised to see how
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many errors I actually had, but it was rather time consuming than it actually hard. What came

really easy was when I had a peer read it over to me again, giving me the chance to overhear it

from a different perspective, allowing me to spot out the poor wording in some sentences. It also

helped that my peers would heavily give me constructive criticism and good suggestions to

different concise words I could use.

How did I communicate course concepts to my audience? So to get started when

communicating the concepts, I first had to evaluate my audience. My audience was prompted in

our essay rubrics as being our instructor, Mr. Martinez and our classmates, so I knew I had to

speak in a manner that assumed my audience was new to this topic. So I had started in the

beginning using very introductory terms like in essay three, when I would mention an activist

group, first I would have to introduce them and explain their purpose and why the author brought

them up. Explaining what this does to the author’s audience and how he uses this rhetoric A

much greater example is when dealing with the Visual analysis paper, essay two. That essay was

a perfect encapsulation of introducing new ideas to an audience; I had to say what everything

meant in that image. For example, I had a horror poster with different shades of light, and I

couldn’t just say there was white light or no light hitting the girl. I had to talk about what

correlations that light made going into detail about how the white light is on her posterior side,

indicating shes walking away from Him and towards evil, as there is no light on her front side.

So, when explaining to my intended audience, I had to make sure they understood the analysis, I

had to formulate my sentences as if they were new to literature.

The most challenging part of this course and the analysis aspect of the essays was

learning how to formulate good text to be easily consumed by the audience and not just for it to

sound good from the author's point of view. I feel like my written papers before this course were
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heavily based on what the author or I thought about the paper, but I would never consider the

actual reader reading my paper. I didn’t really perfect this up until essay two, when I took helpful

criticism from my instructor that I needed heavily thorough explanations. Making my

information easily consumable was the most difficult part of this course, as well as dealing with

what I thought was a lot of writing. I'm from Staggs Academy, meaning I’m a high schooler in

college, so there was never really a grace period where I learned to write a lot. We were all just

kind of thrown in here. So, dealing with a rough transition like that was also really tough for me,

but I did manage to get used to the writing, and I feel like now I can complete papers without

groaning about it, now it comes to me as second nature “ just another writing.” Of course, I still

try equally as hard on my papers, but now I don’t get scared when I see a paper due the

upcoming days.

The least challenging aspects of this course and the strengths I've learned I have through

the course assignments is actually giving feedback. It might be weird to say, but I believe giving

feedback is a crucial part of this class not only does it help your peer fix their essay, but builds

your analytical skills for your paper too. I discovered that I should look at my paper from a third

person point of view from giving feedback. For example, in essay one, during my peer

conference, I had made a remark about on classmate Sabrina’s paper, noting that it might lack

information in its thesis statement, but that’s when I thought to myself, “Does my thesis lack

information.” From this, it only spiraled upward any remark I would leave on my peer's paper I

would double check on mine. It even got to the point that i was so good at reading my paper

from a third person point of view that I would sometimes give myself harsh criticism to fix my

paper. Something that I displayed heavily in essay three, where I would get my highest grade

being ninety seven percent. I was proud of myself that the easiest portion of the class was being
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used to my advantage by training my analytical skills when it came to analyzing other’s papers

and using those same methods on my paper.

The preparation this course has given me to be a part of a bigger community has come in

a new form of art, literature. I feel like after taking this course I can consider myself a part of a

larger community dealing with academic writing. I often find myself indulging in writing

academically just to practice in my free time. Meaning that this class has almost embedded itself

into my brain subconsciously, which, to be quite frank I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not.

Something I do know, though is that I will forever be a part of this academic writing community

thanks to the teaching methods of my instructor, as I feel like he has bestowed me a path in that

lead to academic writing. The rigorous assignments that he assigned mixed with his feedback,

has given me a new perspective on what academic writing really means, which really sets into

stone how this course has prepared me to be a part of this community. To elaborate further, the

constant brainstorming and revising really set this course apart from just any other English class.

I feel like it really sets into motion how you're supposed to think when approaching academic

writing. Almost as if this course has changed my whole mindset when it comes to writing

academically. All of which is extremely beneficial to an aspiring writer like myself, I do feel

ready to journey into a new community of writes like myself.

All in all, English 1301 with instructor Mr. Martinez has completely changed my view of

literature from the writing process down to how I give feedback to others. The writing process

has changed significantly after I'm leaving this class. I went from just doodling circles calling it

brainstorming, to having elaborate worksheets of information that I can base my whole essay on

completely reducing the amount of mental roadblocks I have. Revising my Rhetorical Analysis

essay over and over also opened my eyes to see its true flaws and what I had to fix. The
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problems were minor but had the biggest impact on my essay, really tying the paper together. It

came to my surprise that was even the problem in the first place, and it was very hard to believe.

As a matter of fact I think it was the most challenging aspect was accepting my own flaws that I

had to come to terms with. The least challenging was just fixing my word choice for some

sentences as I had my peer read it in front making it a lot easier. One interesting aspect was

commuting the course concept and analysis to my audience, introducing aspects as if I was

introducing them to a newborn. Which as my instructor put it is vital as they are not the authors

and are seeing it from an audiences point of view. This led me to the most challenging aspect of

the course, and its analysis was putting my information in a manner that it is easily consumed.

Looking at it from an audience point of view rather than mine, cleans up any misleading

information. The least challenging part, however, was just talking to my peers and giving them

helpful feedback; in return, I would learn better analytical skills I could even use on my paper

too. Safe to say, this course has sent me a straight path to an academic writing community. It has

prepared me for even greater writing challenges as well, which I can’t wait to embark on. It’s not

a matter of if what I learned will stick with me, it’s a matter of when will I use my newfound

skills and apply them to bigger and better things, when will I expand my ever-growing

knowledge of literature, and when I will formulate the best writings possible!