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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 excited to start writing essays again. I was told by my friend that this class was interesting and that she recommends it 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 pays off and that 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 Scholarly essay, then it is worth college material. These essays have something more to them than any other normal essay. For one, it is supposed to have textual context which means that there is more meaning to anything that is being written about. The scholar has looked at every word being used and has examined its purpose for it being there. One thing that I have learned is that 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. An example would be analyzing the movement and placing of the camera and how it is important. It is important to realize who the audience is. Any film on screen knows this as well and both writing and films relate to each

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other. For a scholarly essay the audience that the writing is intended for is usually people with high intellect and it is important to show it. Deep analyzing is one way to prove these abilities. Analyzing genre conventions was the main focus of our class. The mystery genre, which has a lot of different conventions to work with, is great and I have learned a lot more than what I did know. 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 out any discoveries made or even for other assignments. We got to write two essay analyzing different things. 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 it was important to have a good attitude towards it. The greatest strength of my final draft is the information and the analysis. I did my research and studied film analysis and there is also a lot of information that I 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 could all be scattered around. Even just the wording of some of my sentences could improve it a lot. I have been told that by my peers that my essays can be confusing. They have also suggested for me to re-read the essay multiple times to make sure 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. The paragraph chosen for revision is the introduction. I believe this did need a lot of work. The

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intro is very important and has to be written correctly. It needs a great thesis and it must catch the readers attention from the very beginning. It is the basic outline of the entire essay and it determines 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 this paragraph is catching the readers attention and making it sound interesting to my intended audience. 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 that we chose ourselves. We got to know each of our group members 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 as well as how we were going to keep our audience interested. Throughout the quarter, 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. Being in groups mean having to think about the others too. 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

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volunteered myself to be a part of the presenters group and I am glad that I chose this. It was a stretch for me but it all worked out great and I was confident about my lines. I was presenting for my smaller group so 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 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 using my role because the original actor appeared for her part. 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. I think they should have presented together as a class instead of having small groups.The videos that they had did keep my attention. 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 do know that I did learn new things about the horror genre.

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I enjoyed doing the connect assignments. It was usually three assignments 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 were the ones with critical reading. The grammar ones were fine but I know that reading and paying attention to the passage is difficult for me. One thing that I must confess is that I would sometimes just try to skim the passage before actually reading it fully which would take a longer time. The connect modules show you right away which answer is right. It gives you instant feedback 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 but 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 in the future. 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 future 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 genre that I am not fond of. Being open about learning it might

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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.