Purpose
Across your work in this course, you have reflected on your reading, research, and writing processes. In this final essay for the course, you will reflect on your writing and research work across the semester to articulate, trace, and discuss a developmental theme about yourself as a writer or researcher. You will use your work for the class as evidence to support the theme you identify.
In this project, you will work on the following objectives:
Analyze your own writing and learning processes
Evaluate your use of language and rhetorical strategies
Demonstrate critical awareness of the rhetorical function of different kinds of English
Use appropriate primary and secondary sources in ethical ways
Use a writing process that involves multiple steps and analysis of your rhetorical choices
Task
We will use Joy Ritchie’s chapter “Connecting Writer’s Roles to Social Roles Beyond the Classroom” to begin our discussion of the themes that emerge when we reflect on our research and writing work in this course. In that chapter, Ritchie explores the ways that several students work through their research and writing in a composition course, developing their identities as writers and people.
After we have read and discussed Ritchie’s text, you will spend time reading through and reflecting on the artifacts of your work in ENG 1020—your journals, reflections, drafts, projects, and even notes or emails about the course.
You will use these artifacts to support your development of an articulated theme about yourself as a researcher or writer. In a 1200–1500-word reflective essay, you will introduce this personal theme and use the artifacts as evidence of how this theme has developed through your work.
You can choose the central reflective mode of your essay: it may be narrative, argumentative, descriptive, comparative, analytical, etc. The mode you choose will guide your organizational choices. Because this is a reflective essay, you will write it in the first person and draw from personal experiences and artifacts. In the introduction of your essay, you should make this theme explicit; in the supporting paragraphs in the body of the essay, use and discuss evidence from the artifacts to demonstrate how this theme has developed across your work. You may also draw on any of the readings we did for class to develop your ideas.
The target audience for your reflective essay is yourself, your instructor, and your classmates.
All written work must be typed and double-spaced. Pages should be numbered. Please cite any sources, including your work, in MLA format.
Evaluation
Criteria
Completion Checklist
Focus – The introduction includes an articulated theme about the author as a writer and/or researcher
Evidence – Identification of and description of specific artifacts from the course and the student’s work that support the theme
– Discussion of how the artifacts demonstrate the theme
Organization – Essay and paragraph structure reflect the primary mode of the essay (e.g., argumentative, narrative, etc.)
Writing Style – Demonstrates purposeful use of grammatical techniques to enhance the piece.
-There are no non-purposeful run-ons or fragments
Formatting and Mechanics – Utilizes MLA format, which includes Times New Roman 12 pt font, double-spacing, 1-inch margins, and page numbers
-In-text citations are appropriate to the selected mode; sources are listed in formatted works cited entries
PERSONAL INPUT:
– I am going to be providing my previous “artifacts” (my projects) in documents. You are to take the research tips and tricks from finding scholarly websites to finding websites that are suitable for my topic at the time of the artifacts. If you need more information on the process you can always ask, but for the most part, just write anything that would make sense according to the rubric. The theme we’re writing this on is the “interest of research”. The Interest of researching can be on improving it, finding better articles, or anything of that matter. Again, if you have any questions ask me please. This essay can be about anything, I chose Interest in research as a theme, if you have any personal idea about a different theme to write about then you can just present it, I’d most likely accept it, if not just stick to this original one. ALso, when looking at a project and taking info from it, say it in contect please, for example ” In project two, I did this…..this led to me….”, something in this type of format.
