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Bellanira Puentes Writing 37 Professor Haas 11 February 2014 The Final Reflection Essay When I first signed up for Writing 37, I was almost excited to start writing essays again. I was told by my friend that this class was great so I decided to sign up for it. I started the class with a few familiar faces and ended up with many faces to remember. Now that this class is over, I do agree that I have had some fun times and I also realize that its been a lot of work. I am hoping that all this writing has paid off and my skills are looking better than before, especially in writing academic essays. There is difference between a scholarly essay and any ordinary essay. Once you have a Scholarly essay, then it is worth college material. These essays have something more to them than any other normal one. For one, it usually has textual context which means that there is more meaning to whatever is being written about. The writer has looked at every word being used and has examined its purpose for it being there. One thing that I have learned is how every metaphor or simile is put into a sentence to have a meaning to it. I have also learned how to analyze scenes from a film or a TV series like the movement and placing of the camera and how it was important. It is important to realize who the audience is in your essay. Any film on screen knows this as well and they both relate to each other. For a scholarly essay the audience

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that our writing is intended for is usually people with high intellect and we need to show it. Deep analyzing is one way to prove your abilities. Analyzing genre conventions was the main focus of our class. The mystery genre, which has a lot of different ones to work with, is great and I have learned a lot than what I ever thought of. This all helps with future analyzing and in later works that I will be doing. Other than just my next writing class, there is always going to be a place to analyze and write any discoveries or other assignments. The essay that I am choosing to fully revise is the second essay that we wrote: the modern day text essay. I chose this essay because I enjoyed writing this one a lot better than the first essay. It might have needed more revisions but my attitude towards it was more positive and I knew that was important. The greatest strength of my final draft is the information and the analysis. I did my research and have studied film analysis and there is also a lot of information put into that essay. The greatest weakness of my final draft would have to be the organization and cohesiveness of my essay. The information is there but all over the place by chance or even just the wording of some of my sentences. I have been told that by my peers and they have also suggested for me to re-read the essay multiple times to know that it sounds scholarly and college like material. For the other essay, I have only re-written one paragraph and that is what I will turn in. This paragraph is the introduction. I believe this did need a lot of work. The intro is very important and has to be written correctly. It needs a great thesis and it must catch the reader s attention from the very beginning. It is the basic outline of the entire essay and it determines

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how the essay will turn out. A great strength about the new re-written paragraph must be the outline of it and how it foretells how the rest of the essay will be. The greatest weakness of that paragraph is catching the readers attention and making it sound interesting to them. This class used a lot of group work and collaboration and it is something that everyone had to learn and deal with. In the beginning we all got put into groups of four which we all helped choose. We got to know each other and always worked out our schedules to meet up and work on our assignments. My group met several times at the library usually to figure out exactly what to do for our presentations. Creativity was always needed to be thought of and how we were going to keep our audience interested. Throughout the year as well we had different groups to work with. We would be in groups of three to help revise our essays. This peer review was a way to know how to help others and to communicate the revisions and suggestions that we had for our peers. These were very helpful because while reading other essays I could get an idea of what I was missing or what I could work on as well. The biggest thing to always have here is responsibility. The biggest group collaboration that we had was the RIP Seminar. This presentation was the whole class working together. For our final presentation, we had three main directors that ran the whole class by making sure everyone had their parts and contributions to the Seminar. Within the class, we were all separated into three groups: the presentation, the outline, and the visuals. I volunteered myself to be a part of the presenters group which I am glad that I chose. It was a stretch for me but it all worked out great and I was confident about my lines. I was presenting for my group and I did my research to make sure that the information was correct. Another thing that I was supposed to do was work on a scene for the script. Everyone had to do this at

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one point. I had a small speaking role, as an understudy, for the actual play but I never got to perform it. I was an understudy for the cop in training. I did not volunteer for this but I was glad to do it and it wasnt as bad as I would think. I had one line to memorize for it wasnt that hard to do compared to the other ones that had a big role in the play. In the end, I didnt end up needing my role because the actual actor appeared for it. During the presentation I had another job to do after the intro. Three of us were in charge of moving the set around in between each scene. This meant getting chairs and tables and all the other props. During the actual presentation, whoever could help with moving chairs around, was helping us too. As a whole class we all worked well and separated the work evenly. The presentation over all turned out great and the other class seemed as entertained as I was. The other class had their presentations as well. It showed that they did a lot of hard work for this but I believe that it wasnt all needed. They gave out handouts which had all the information on it already so there was no point for so many slides with so many words. The videos that they had did keep my attention so that gives them props. It was too long and they should give themselves a time limit to fix this. Running through the whole thing is also a good idea. I enjoyed doing the connect assignments. It was usually 3 per week and they only took about 15-20 minutes for each without distractions. I know the ones I had a lot of trouble with was the ones with critical reading. The grammar ones were fine but I know that reading and paying attention to the passage is difficult. One thing that I must confess is that I would try to skim the passage before actually reading it fully which would take a longer time. The connect modules show you right away what answer is right or wrong. It gives you instant feedback

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which everyone finds helpful. When I would get an answer wrong it would tell me why it was the wrong one and explain how to get to the right answer. These assignments have helped me in my writing skills and grammar skills. There were some things that I already knew and I did learn new things too, which honestly surprised me. I know I still have a lot to work on. Although I might have improved with all of the assignments I know that there is always room for improvement, especially if my writing isnt professional yet. My hardest time was in some of the readings like the short passages or even the books. Even if I do like reading, it doesnt mean that I am good at it. I know that is one thing I will always work on. The most important lesson that I will take from this class learning how to work with a group. This includes all the responsibilities and flexibilities that come with it. I have to be able to adapt to the people around me and learn how to make everything work for everyone. In the futures that is what I need to keep focusing on. I need to always be responsible and get everything done on time for myself and for my teammates. I am also open to new ideas now, including horror which is one that I would not like. Being open about might help me understand it better like this mystery genre which was interesting from the beginning. I am excited for my next writing class although it may not top this one. Yellow- change wording Green- need to stay with one person (first person, third person, etc.) Purple- add in transition sentences Blue- grammar and staying in the same tense

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Red- add more detail Gray- for this part I need to add more detail and more of my opinion on how the other group did with their presentation