Beh

1
Isaiah Beh

Professor Onwuzuruoha
English 2010-039
April 30, 2015
Reflective Essay

Writing is a long and arduous process. The writing process has its fun parts,

frustrating parts, and rewarding parts. During this past semester we as writing students
were given a list of objectives to try and reach throughout the course of the class. Having
these goals helped by breaking up all the different aspects of the writing process so the
students would not feel overwhelmed by the total task put before them. I am going to go
through each of these objectives and explain how the work I have done throughout the
semester has helped me accomplish and understand them better. Furthermore, I will
discuss how these objectives helped me with my final revision, or third draft of my Memoir
essay.

Throughout the semester I had to learn to write papers in multiple genres. First, a

Memoir of my personal experiences that had to discuss a rhetorical opportunity for change.
The personal experience I discussed was how traveling abroad helped me to return to
school and pursue an education. The rhetorical opportunity I approached was that every
student should travel because traveling in its self is a learning experience. The next genre I
learned to write in was a Report on the proven benefits of student travel, written from
peer-reviewed sources, experiences, and interviews with other students. The Report let me
show my audience that there were some really great benefits to traveling while you are a
student. The last genre I learned to write in was Argumentation, this allowed me to state

Beh 2
my opinion on why a person/student should travel and the negative effects if they chose
not to. This also helped me adapt the style and design of a proper argument by letting me
show I could effectively debate the benefits of student travel without being offensive to my
intended audience.
The next objective of the course was to learn to adapt strategies of argumentation
for a given writing situation. I feel by learning how to properly state a position on a
subject, such as; the benefits of student travel, I was able to effectively state my own beliefs
on the subject, critically respond to a civic conversation, and become a legitimate
participant in the student travel conversation. Furthermore, by learning to properly gather
documentation that backed me up in theses conversations I built my overall rhetorical
appeal. By learning how to approach research critically, analytically, and rhetorically I was
able to find multiple peer-reviewed sources that effectively and accurately helped form my
argument. Furthermore, by properly citing the sources I used, I was giving credit and due
thanks to the authors for their contributions to my papers.
All of the work I did in different genres took a lot of time to learn how to conceive
the basic ideas I wished to explain. This course helped teach me to properly draft, revise,
and revise again every paper I wrote throughout the semester. I received help in the
drafting process by working with other students. Whether this help was from peers
reviewing my work, editing other students work, or collaborating with multiple students
on a single project I was able to fine-tune the editing and drafting process. I used this help
throughout the semester to revise each and every assignment.
I chose to revise my Memoir assignment a third time and post it here on my
portfolio to showcase what I have learned by accomplishing these course objectives. The

Beh 3
process of revising a document for a third time was a long and hard one. One struggle I had
was not having a peer-review to help make revisions. Throughout the semester I looked to
my peers and professor for insight on what my audience wanted to hear and how they
wanted to hear it. By not having those reviews I had to dig deep into my own pride and
change parts of my Memoir that I liked. In the end I believe the changes I made benefited
both my audience and me. I chose to showcase my Memoir project because it has both a
text portion and a multimodal video. I believe by being able to read, see, and hear about my
travels abroad my audience will have a more emotional response to the message I am
trying to convey. Furthermore, the Memoir project displays how I learned to edit and revise
both a text and a multimodal piece of work. If I had to go through this process again I would
contact more of the students in my class to receive peer-reviews to help me better
understand my audience.
By using what I have learned this semester I feel that the document I have created
here is finally reaching its true final draft. Now I leave you, dear reader, with an open
glimpse of my personal writing process posted here on the Internet for all to see. Please
remember that no paper, essay, or project is ever complete and I welcome your comments,
criticisms, and praise to help me with my next final draft.