ENGL-2010

Cesar Roncancio

Jim Beatty

May 2017

Reflection

Threshold Concepts

Writing as action is one of the most compelling things there is on the world, responding

to situations by writing a book, or even a simple news report can be highly influential in

the way people react to the problem and can definitely change the outcome or the

repercussion the problem would have, examples like Martin L. Kings open letter, or the

Syria After Four Years of Mayhem report by Sergio Pecanha, created certain kind of

repercussion in the country, this contingencies, another threshold concept, have a huge

impact on politics, society, economics.

Virtually any written piece creates an action, gets out there in the public, opinions or

facts on any topic, and when the topic is controversial these written pieces play an

important role informing, or misinforming, creating awareness, or warning.

Many written pieces around the world have had huge contingencies, I believe specially

social justice topics have this type of reactions on people, they incite debate, attack

someone, and also get people behind a cause, good or bad, the written word is a

powerful weapon.
Peer Review Process

As a student, learning about writing techniques, styles, ways of expressing, etc, I

found peer review to be really helpful, the outcome of a lot of different opinions, points

of view, and even ways of writing were really interesting. Sometimes, as you write by

yourself, you can be confusing, or actually never be able to explain your point clearly,

but because you read the piece yourself you cant really find in what way are you being

devious, because self critic is hard, but when somebody else gives you constructive

criticism, you can understand the point, and how vague you were being. Sometimes you

write about a topic, and dont really consider all the option, or point to look at the topic

that may become a sided essay, but if you have somebody to point this types of things

out, is easier to correct them, to work on them, and to fix any problems.

I found the process very rich in content, when I helped a peer with his paper, I was able

to present to ideas in the way he could solve the main problem or question he was

asking in his paper, some ideas he already thought of, and could develop better, other

ideas he didn't think of and was able to add them or tweak any response he had that

could use more work or background.

Finally, after all the revisions we did, I was able to write a better paper, more concise,

less sided, and was able to transmit my point to other people without the fear of

ambiguity. I was really helpful to have somebody to comment on my writing, help me

with it, and giving me other points of view I didnt think about in my papers.