REFLECTION

ENG - 1010 - Intro To Writing

Professor Jerri A. Harwell

Morgan Nelson - 30 April, 2015

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Morgan Nelson
Professor Jerri A. Harwell
ENGL 1010-036 (Reflection)
30 April 2015
Reflection
I have always felt like there is a writer within me trying to get out. As a matter of fact, I
humbly took English1010, Intro to Writing, in the hope of polishing my writing skills. I have
written many songs, poems, and books. I also keep a thought journal. I write for pleasure as
well as for academic and work purposes, and I thought I wrote fairly well. That being said,
however, the writer within me has had quite a struggle with this course, and is now just trying to
make it through the semester.

Going into the Intro to Writing course feeling prepared might have been my first mistake;
Setting expectations, my second. I had imagined a course where I learned to use fewer commas
and experience a healthy decline in grammatical errors. Basically, I was expecting to become
less reliant on the family proofreader and more reliant on myself.

I did come across a newfound confidence in my writing abilities. However, it came in

the form of learning techniques taught from the book They say/I Say the second Edition by
Gerald Graff , Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. And although I did not learn rules of
grammar and punctuation, per se, I did learn how to objectively listen, conduct research if
needed, give credit where credit is due, and then enter into a conversation via writing, with the
confidence of knowledge. They say/I say also gave me a new respect for using templates in

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order to provide a basic structure for organization. In fact, the Intro to Writing course mimics the
form and structure that is laid out in the book.

I suppose the very idea of using a format for writing seemed superficial or ordinary, and I
did not want to become a sell-out. I argued for creativity and the need to freely express myself.
I used the argument that genuine and authentic writing could not come in the form of a template.
I also thought to myself they should have called this course Intro to Templates, not Intro to
Writing. It did not take me long to realize that resistance was futile, and in order to pass this
course I would need to conform. I am glad I did. Writing summaries has never been difficult,
but using a template made it unusually easy.

The respect I found for formats started to form during our first writing exercise: The
Summary Response. The importance of the summary response exercise was being able to relate
and understand, as well as discuss the main idea behind the essay. In order to do this, you would
have to find supporting points and the relevance they held to the argument/idea. I found that
comparing two summaries on the same topic from different authors was very important. My
favorite was the comparison between Dana Stevens' "Thinking Outside the Idiot Box and
Steven Johnson's "Watching TV Makes You Smarter. The perspectives they both brought were
intriguing to say the least. They were both knowledgeable and, in the end, very persuasive.

This idea of persuasion rolled over into our next exercise: Rhetorical Analysis. In order
to be persuaded by a writing piece, one might want to understand its reliability and analyze its
content. For this exercise we did just that. We analyzed techniques such as word placement,
repetition, style, tone, figurative language and rhetorical appeals (Ethos, Logos, Pathos, Kairos).

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We asked the questions, who is the author and why is he credible? We also asked
what writing style the author used to persuade the reader. I found 2b or Not 2b by David
Crystal, very fascinating. Crystal uses a cartoon filled with imagery, simile, and metaphor,
disguising dialogue from a Shakespearian play. If you didnt understand rhetorical appeals and
techniques, you may have missed the references entirely.

Our next assignment was: The Annotated Bibliography. We started by choosing an issue
that we wanted to explore, then formed a research topic or research question (Thesis) about that
issue. I chose the topic: Education vs. the price you pay, leading to my thesis, Is Education
Priceless? The idea behind this exercise was research and the use of reliable sources, which
would lend the knowledge and credibility needed to write the final assignment: The Synthesis
Exploration.

The intimidation or apprehension I had in this class was minimized when I realized each
assignment was building to the next, and in the end, it would all come together. I feel like this
structure led to a more solid understanding of the writing process. Looking back, I recognize
where my writing started and how much it has grown. I now say, They Say / I Say has
developed a true fan. And although confidence is priceless, whatever grade I get, it will not
represent the amount of mental and physical preparation that was diligently dedicated to this
course.