Dr. Paul M. Rogers

Writing Reflection

While getting peer review is essential to most professional writing situations, assessing your own communication and writing ability is perhaps the most important skill you can develop. Please reflect on the writing you have done for this first assignment. Write a letter to me that:

Demonstrates self-assessment; provides evidence of your ability to be reflective.
Points to specific examples from your writing that prove your assertions about your writing.
Helps me see your work as you believe it should be seen.

The letter should also include SOME of the following (covering all of them could require sixteen pages!):

Discuss why this paper is the best paper or the worst which you've written.

Detail the revisions you've made and the improvements and changes that you want readers to notice.

Discuss the strengths of the essay.

Outline the process that you went through.

Demonstrate what your writing illustrates about you as a writer, student, researcher, or critical thinker.

Acknowledge your weaknesses but show how you've worked to overcome them.

Acknowledge the reader-respondents who have influenced your writing and how.

Reflect on what you've learned about writing, reading, or other topics of the course.

Discuss your strategies for writing and revising.

Detail the process by which you solved a writing problem.

Discuss the writing/thinking risks you've taken this term, the experimentation in which you've indulged, and the results of those ventures.

Discuss the writing discoveries you've made.

Reflect on the ways in which you have written/revised to accommodate audience needs, expectations, and/or values.

What surprises you about the paper you'r submitting.

What patterns do you see in your writing?