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Jacob Greene
Mrs. Thomas
UWRT 1102-004
25 April 2016
Final Reflection: My UWRT 1102 Experience
1. Choose a song or musical composition that communicates your
experience with writing and UWRT 1102. Consider including a video of
the song. Explain your choice.
My experience of writing expressed through a song of my choice would be
Blue Ocean by The Flying Colors. This song relates to my writing experiences
due to its inferences about moving on from something beforehand. In
previous years of writing, I have really begun honing in on my writing skills. I
was way behind everyone else in high school until senior year, where I
decided to take my writing much more seriously. Since then, my writing skills
have skyrocketed and I have become a much better writer. I have learned to
better understand text when reading it, although I still struggle at times, but
for the most part I am really starting to read and write better. This is a great
allusion to my moving on from old writing.
This song can also relate to my topic of choice; The afterlife. When
listening to the lyrics, you can hear that they can be interpreted as a
spiritual world. Lyrics such as Take Me, Where the river meets the sea,
and To a world beyond the space and time, describe what someone would
want from an afterlife.

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2. If you were to teach this class, what ideas would you emphasize?
If I were to teach this class, I would teach students a lot of what the They
Say, I Say book by Graff and Birkenstein has to say. They use a lot of good
examples and explain concepts in words that students can easily understand
and relate to. This book almost follows a formula as well, giving definitions,
explanations, templates, and then summing up some loose ends. They really
cover all concepts in great detail in a way that they can relate to a students
writing. Since using this book, I think it has greatly helped my writing. I would
use this book to help the students work toward their thesis effectively.
3. Explain how your understanding of rhetorical knowledge has
changed over the course of the semester using at least three examples
from your writing. Ex. Did you shift an assignment to better fit a
particular genre like a proposal?
I believe my understanding of rhetorical knowledge changed through my
explanations of other citations. When reading a text, I wanted to incorporate
into my paper, I started to focus on my own personal ideas when I read it,
and put those ideas in my paper to let the reader know how I feel about
certain subjects. Also, I believe I understood how to connect to my audience
better by using more relatable language. Before this class, I tended to just
write facts about a subject, disconnecting papers from the reader, but I really
focused on trying to connect to my audience better. Lastly, I think I improved
my selection of words in order to portray a point. Typically, I would use

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simple words and not elaborate on things, which has changed a lot since the
beginning of my college career.
4. Explain how your critical reading has improved during the semester.
Ex. In what ways did you read across texts for connections and
patterns in your inquiry?
My reading has improved marginally throughout the past couple of years.
When I was in high school, my reading comprehension skills were about as
bad as they can get. When taking final exams, I would almost always get a 0
out of however many questions there were in reading comprehension.
Therefore, I have really been trying to hone in my comprehension skills by
thinking about the texts in more detail and focusing on what the author was
trying to say. Although I am still not a master at comprehension, I do believe
my comprehension skills are getting better, and that I can relate more to
what authors have to say in their texts.
5. Discuss your composing processes. Ex. Did you conduct additional
research while revising or after consulting a colleague? Provide at least
three examples to support your assertion.
When writing a paper for any class, I have really developed what I believe
is a good method for my own personal writing style. I almost always start
with research, making sure I cover all of the questions I have. Often times,
reading one citation will lead me to another question, which develops
another citation. This cycle typically lands me with a good amount of
citations to form a paper. Then, I write the draft of the paper, trying to

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incorporate the citations as well as my own interpretations. Lastly, I tend to
use peer review in order to make solid corrections to my paper.
6. Provide at least three examples of your knowledge of conventions
Ex. sentence level changes, MLA citations.
My knowledge of conventions has improved throughout this course
immensely through the They say, I say book. This book gave me great
insight on how to structure a paper. Since using this tool, I tend to structure
my paragraphs in a way that I include the authors description of a topic,
followed by my own words describing my opinions. I also tend to make my
paragraphs about some certain subject, and divide them up as such. Also, as
I said in my rhetorical knowledge, I have been experimenting with a wider
variety of words. I believe my knowledge of conventions has probably grown
the most of all of the Student Learning Outcomes. The structure of my paper
has really been improved throughout this course.
7. Critical Reflection:
A) Explain the importance of reflection in learning processes.
B) Explain what you think is important in providing commentary on
others work and receiving commentary on your own.
C) Provide at least three examples of your nuanced use of commentary
in your writing projects.
Throughout this year, I have really tried to focus on reflections throughout
all of my papers. This is something I really put a lot of effort into this year, as
I rarely ever looked back on my works before my collegiate level of

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schooling. On all of my papers this semester, you can see that I put a lot of
detail into my reflections, some over a page long, in order to encapsulate the
thoughts running through my head at that very moment. I believe reflections
are very important to capturing your initial thought of how you feel about a
paper you write. Even after you reread, you may want to write another
reflection, seeing if your view has changed on your own style by seeing how
well or how badly you may have written. This also helps with self-analysis. If
someone reflects on their work, it lets themselves, as well as professors,
know what they already see as wrong in their writing. It gives the student a
mindset of something to work toward, and a professor the knowledge of what
students need to work on.
In my projects this year, I included several reflections in one paper, in
order to document the feeling I had toward my paper at different points in
time. I also used personal feelings in my reflections to remember my
emotions in my writing. Lastly, I included dates, times, and titles for my
reflections in order to remember what I was referring to when re-reading my
reflections.

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Works Cited
Pantsoffful. "Flying Colors - Blue Ocean." YouTube. YouTube, 14 Oct. 2012.
Web. 24 Apr. 2016.
The Letter M. "Flying Colors - Blue Ocean Lyrics | SongMeanings."
SongMeanings. Ed. Bonsatsu.
SongMeanings, 1999. Web. 24 Apr. 2016.