Homayoon Heidari

19 October 2023

Reflective questions about your first writing process

1. What steps did you go through to write your essay? critical thinking, coming up with key points,
setting a timer, turning on some music, explaining the key points and putting them in order.
2. Did you have a plan in your mind for how you would structure your essay before writing? Yes, I did.
3. Did you make an outline of the key points you would include in your essay before writing? Yes, I did.
4. How did you select the key points you included in your essay? They just came to mind…can’t explain
it any other way…the music might have helped.
5. How did you make the decision about the order of the sentences in your essay and the organization of
your text? I started with comparing university to similar structures from our past and ended with
possible career opportunities for our future.
6. Did you think about how much time you should spend on each part of your writing? Not really, I set a
timer for 20 minutes and I wrote as much as I could think of. I set the timer to more accurately
simulate the experience in the classroom, because I was absent due to illness.
7. Did you think about your audience before writing? Sure, it was on the back of my mind.
8. Did use any external resources (material, books, websites, other people) for writing? No, I wanted it to
be personal.
9. How many false starts did you have? I didn’t, I mapped it out in my head before writing.
10. How did you make decisions about using appropriate words in your essay? I just used what I thought
was appropriate at the moment.
11. Did you check a dictionary while writing? No
12. Did you think about adjusting your time while writing? Yes
13. Did you check your essay while and after writing, focusing on grammar, spelling, and punctuation? Yes,
I always check everything compulsively.
14. Did you monitor the coherence and cohesion of your essay? I wrote a simple formal essay. I assume
everyone can understand it.
15. How many times did you revise your writing? A decent amount of times.
16. Did you ask your classmates and friends to read your essay and provide comments on your writing? No
17. Do you think whether your classmates and friends can help you with your writing? I’m sure they can,
I’m not really that big on writing essays to be honest.
18. Did you use any references or citations in your writing? No, just opinions and observations.
19. How do you evaluate your writing? what is your score? I can’t rate myself, I’ll leave that for others to
decide.
20. What problems and obstacles did you experience in your writing? I couldn’t think of much in 20
minutes, as a result of that the essay is fairly short.
21. How did you overcome your problems? I guess in that sense I didn’t overcome it, hopefully I can do
better next time.
22. What was your feeling about writing “before”, “while”, and “after” writing? I felt stressed before and
while writing, but after finishing it I felt satisfied.
23. Did your feelings turned to be more positive or more negative from the beginning to the end? Definitely
positive, it was a nice experience.