302 Reflective Commentary Guidelines for Discipline Awareness Project: Periodical Analysis

Reflective Commentary Guidelines

After revising each of your major assignments this semester, you need to write a reflective commentary in which you discuss your experience of completing this assignment. In the case of the Discipline Awareness Project: Periodical Analysis, please consider the following questions:

1) Discuss how you decided on these two articles. What about them intrigued you, and in what way do they focus on related topics?

2) What was the hardest challenge you faced in writing this essay? Why?

3) What do you think this essay does particularly well? Why?

4) How did the peer response process go and what changes did you make after receiving your peers’ comments? Note that you should not tell me about every little change — I don’t need to read about every comma you put in or took out; instead, you should describe how you spent your time in revision. Did you re-think some of your points, change the organization, focus on technical issues?

6) No writing is ever finished, merely abandoned at a point when the author decides it is good enough. Where do you think the essay still needs work? What kinds of changes would you try to make if you were to have more time?

The commentary should be written like an essay — meaning well-organized and properly paragraphed, grammatically correct, do not number your answers — but the style may be informal, and of course you should use the first person. I expect it to be between 300 and 350 words total (not per question). Please use your word count function to put the total (not including the header) after the commentary. No title is necessary.

Reflective commentaries, like other aspects of the essays, earn scores of √+, √, √-, or -. However, rather than being averaged into the score, your reflective commentary score will be converted to a bonus: a √+ will earn a bonus of 1 point; a √ will earn a bonus of .5 points; a √- will not earn a bonus; a – will result in a .3 point deduction, and not turning in a reflective commentary will result in a 1 point deduction. Remember that this essay assignment starts with a base value of 10 points.