English 229 Reflection

Here’s the reflection I wrote at the end of my English 229 professional writing course. Read on to discover what I think about my writing process, feedback from my peers, and new media writing.

self-reflection

Professional Writing: Looking Beyond the Text

I had a great desire to take this professional writing course and was very interested in the topic of “Rhetoric, Design, Technology: Composing 21st Century Professional Texts.” I thought for once I would be learning topics that would be useful in the real world, and I was right. The skills I learned while composing my resume, cover letter, memo, presentation, and website will definitely be useful as I join the workforce. My online portfolio has real world applicability and can be shown to potential employers. While writing traditional academic papers such as position papers and research papers is valuable and inevitable in a college education, composing texts for this course was much more meaningful and interesting to me.

As I look back at all of my writing from this course (from my resume and cover letter to my final website project), I am happy to see my own voice and interests expressed in my texts. I learned a great deal from this course and am ready to take on the world of professional writing. After analyzing my work, it’s evident that my writing strategies overlap whether I’m perfecting my resume or creating a social media video. I invite you to follow me as I look beyond the text and reflect on my writing process, discuss the pros and cons of collaboration and feedback, and ponder the possibilities of new media writing.

Writing Process

I indicated in my blog post on 9/13/11 that “my writing process for school varies with each assignment,” but as I reflect on my writing process, it’s clear that I generally use the same approach regardless of the type of text I’m composing. I noticed that thorough note-taking and careful attention to prompts is a key element of my writing process. This is no surprise considering my detail-oriented personality. In the beginning of the semester, I created an English 229 folder to keep my notes and writing assignments organized. Note-taking helps steer me in the right direction before jumping right into the actual “writing” part of writing.

Here is an excerpt from my writing process blog post written on 9/13/11: “For me, it’s easiest to divide my ideas into different paragraphs at the very start so I have an organized approach to writing. Next I go on to my intro paragraph and make sure I construct a good thesis that explains my main idea and what points I will discuss in the body of my paper. Then I write the paper in order starting with body paragraph number one and ending with the conclusion. After this I read through my paper making any edits and revisions. I also re-read the prompt and rubric and double check to see if I have included everything in my paper.” This writing process has to be altered for texts that aren’t strictly composed of words or structured in paragraph form. Here are the steps that went into creating my online portfolio:

  • Look at examples of online portfolios
  • Figure out my purpose and audience (a useful step in all writing)
  • Choose a platform and learn how to use it (Wix)
  • Set learning goals: “Use repetition in each section (home, about, writing, styling, contact) to form a cohesive online profile” -10/6 blog post
  • Pick a theme and design the site (something I spent too much time doing)
  • Produce/gather content in the form of text and images
  • Insert content onto site
  • Receive feedback from my peers
  • Reflect on the feedback
  • Make changes before submitting the final version

Throughout this course, I learned the value of self-evaluation and reflection at all stages of the writing process. This is the main improvement I made to my writing process. Adding this step has helped me to consider how to improve my writing from start to finish. If I hadn’t written my online profile writing process/reflection post on 10/13/11, I may have never discovered the following hindrances to my writing process:  “I do think I could have spent a little less time exploring the site and looking at different templates because this took me a lot of time. I think it would have been more beneficial to pick a design earlier on and get started on the content/design of my own profile. This may have allowed me to start fine-tuning my profile ahead of time and prevented me from running into computer problems (Wix would not load!).” At first I was not a fan of self-reflection at the “end” because I tend to turn in my assignments and never want to look at them again, but by reintroducing myself to my texts I was able to admit that all writing can be improved upon (even after you hit submit).

Collaboration & Feedback

Group projects are not my thing. I’ve had negative experiences working as a team in school because I usually get stuck doing all of the work. I guess this is somewhat my fault, but I do not like to settle for anything less than my best work. At first I was pleasantly surprised by the collaboration of my group for the proposal and presentation assignment. This may have been due to the fact that we read about teamwork and discussed different collaboration strategies prior to delving into the assignment. During our first group meeting, we chose a topic and assigned tasks. I ended up being the leader/planner as usual and took charge of the whole proposal process. Since I know I tend to overwork myself, I repeatedly asked my group for their input, thoughts, and suggestions. Instead of communicating their own different ideas, they pretty much just agreed with me on everything.

As expected, I felt like I did slightly more work than my group members. This is expressed in my self-evaluation in my proposal reflection blog post on 11/1/11: “I was in charge of gathering the background information and facts about our group, Ed2010, and the Intern Queen since I know the most about these two organizations. I also wrote up the majority of the proposal and made sure to follow the format of the proposal in the Markel reading. I also worked on the task schedule and budget chart. I designed the flyers and made any necessary changes to the written proposal and PowerPoint.” As I review this list of tasks, it’s clear that I did a majority of the work. Here’s a possible solution given in my 11/1/11 blog post: “In order to improve group members’ participation in the future, I’d like to delegate tasks and let them do more of the work instead of me feeling overwhelmed and in charge of the entire project.” Although life would be much easier if I learned to let go of some of my responsibilities when collaborating on projects, I don’t think I will be able to fully change my take-charge, leader-oriented personality that I bring with me to group projects. Maybe what I need is to collaborate with another leader and learn to share the responsibility.

Typically, I don’t find in-class workshops or peer-to-peer feedback to be very helpful, but I like the way the feedback process was emphasized in this course. By making work-shopping the main focus of certain class periods, I was able to give and receive valuable feedback. However, I sometimes felt that the feedback I gave to others was more helpful than the feedback I received.  For example, Quy was so appreciative of the feedback and grammar corrections I offered during our resume workshop and he even asked to be my partner for the final project rubric creation assignment. I’m glad that I was able to help others, but I would have liked to receive more feedback from my peers. I express this in my midterm reflection blog post on 10/16/11: “I have noticed that sometimes my peers do not give me very much advice or suggestions for improving my work. When this is the case, I am forced to reevaluate my original work and consider new ways of arranging the content or fulfilling the requirements of the assignment.” I had a difficult time making changes to the letter we wrote in the beginning of the semester because the majority of my feedback was positive feedback. I might have been able to alter my letter more if my peers had given me suggestions on how to write it differently.  Feedback has the potential to reign a supreme aspect of the writing process, but in order for it to be most effective, all students need to offer as much valuable advice as they are expecting to get from their peers.

Media & Technologies

This year was my first year really experimenting with new media writing. I’ve blogged and constructed PowerPoints in the past, but I’ve never created websites or videos until this year. I think media and technologies enhance writing by giving the reader multiple avenues of entry into a text and allowing the writer to express his or her ideas in multiple forms. That was my purpose in using sound, moving and still images, and text in my social media Mike’s BP video. Here are some major differences I’ve identified between traditional writing and new media writing:

  • Emphasis on design
  • More choices
  • Exposure online

I was able to really experiment with design when creating my online profile, social media video, and website. Some of my design choices included: theme, layout, design, color, and font. William’s design categories (contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity) were helpful when considering what design choices to make in regards to media and technology. Here’s an excerpt from my reading response #4 on 10/4/11: “The design elements seem to unify and organize, help the reader, and create interest; every design category serves a purpose.” I utilized contrast and repetition in my online profile by contrasting black with hot pink and repeating an arrow symbol on all of the pages in my profile.

Writing produced with media and technology has the potential to be exposed to a large audience; an audience that far exceeds that of a teacher and one’s peers. I published my online profile, social media video, website, and blog online in order to attract an audience and have viewers engage with my texts. I was surprised to see a comment on my 9/29/11 resume and cover letter blog post from a user named resumepointersfromjed: “It sounds like you have a fine resume. I LOVE that you have listed your experiences in reverse chronological order! It sounds like you have done your research. If you ever want an extra opinion amongst the many, I have a solid level of experience in a HR Manager role and love the resume creation side of things. Regardless, best of luck on landing your Glamour magazine internship!” This motivated me to continue displaying my work online and inviting feedback from the online world.

Another aspect of new media writing is the ability to post my writing to social networking sites. This allows me to extend the reach of my writing projects and promote my websites and videos through Facebook and Twitter. I posted my online portfolio on my Facebook page in order for my friends and family to view my portfolio. After I make a few changes to my online portfolio, I plan to post the link to my LinkedIn page in order for future employers to view my portfolio.

Goodbye English 229

This reflection has allowed me to go beyond the text and analyze my writing and design choices along with ways to improve my writing in the future. I expressed my individual writing process, explored the good and the bad of collaboration and feedback, and discussed the benefits of new media writing. I hope you are now able to better understand the mechanisms behind my writing and gain insight into my writing mind.

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