Assignment Overview:Â
Write a 250 Word Reflection on Unit 1. Please include the word count on the top of the page. Use Times New Roman 12 point font.
Metacognition: What did you learn about yourself as a writer this unit? Maybe something about your writing process or your strategies?Â
Transfer: How can you transfer this knowledge/ awareness/ learning into other aspects of your lives (other classes or in the world outside of City Tech.Â
A Unit Reflection asks you to reflect or look back at the unit and think deeply about the readings, the major project, and the short writing assignments you completed.Think about what each of our mentor authors taught us and what we learned from our different writing assignments, both short and long!
Guiding Questions
You do not have to answer each question, but rather use them as a guide or inspiration as you reflect or look back on the unit!
- Discuss what you learned about yourself as a writer and a reader in the process of writing your Discourse Community Analytical Essay. For example, what part did you find the most challenging? Or the most successful? Did you try anything new like revising with a specific focus?
- Which of the readings, if any, influenced you or inspired you? Explain the influence, USE SPECIFIC examples. Â
- The focus of Unit 1 was on Rhetorical Situation (audience, purpose), and Genre, what did you find interesting? What did you learn? What would you still like to learn more about?
- What are your thoughts on the experience in general? Was it a useful learning experience? What specific skills or perspectives did you acquire as a result?
- How could you transfer something you learned in Module 1 to other aspects of your life both in City Tech and outside of City Tech?
- Is there anything else you want me to know about you as a writer or reader or your work in this class?
Steven Galushka
English 1121, Section D423
Prof. Coleman
Reflection 1: Unit 1, Discourse Communities
Spring 2022Â
During this unit, I found out writing about my discourse community that, having steps along the way to slowly build my essay over time is now the strategy that I will be doing for all of my assignments from now on until I find something way better/ground breaking. Having stepping stones to build my essay made my experience with essay writing a whole lot better. Im not much of writer so I didn’t like to write long essays especially if it was for something I didn’t like, it would days to just get the first paragraph written, but when I was writing about my discourse community, I had fun writing an essay for the first time. Like I said earlier having small assignments that helped me build my essay was really helpful. Also, having a say on what I can write about in the essay is the biggest factor for making Unit 1 very enjoyable and an easy way to get into College Writing.
The most influential readings I have read during Unit 1 has got to be, “Understanding Discourse Communities” by Dan Melzer, This reading was by far the most curiosity-inducing article I have read to date. Since I knew nothing about discourse communities, and what the term discourse communities even meant this was a great insight on what I meant to have an interest, passion, hobby, skill, talent, to be a human being. Reading this was like opening my third eye, it gave me a broader view of the world and how any discourse communities there are, let alone show me that I was in one and I didn’t even know it. This Unit was amazing and I hope that the next Unit, will bring similar things to the table when it comes to researching, writing and editing for College Writing.
I learned that as a writer that It takes me a while to get started but once I get started the words just start to flow. I also learned that I write better when I’m writing about something I’m interested in like this project. Also as a reader in learning new things about my discord community It was interesting. I didn’t really find anything hard because it was a community I know so much about already. What I found successful was finding information, I knew where to look. I found that when looking for feedback I had to look at different perspectives.
What I found the most interesting in this genre was finding out the audience. I think that learning about what specific people that your writing is for is really important to get your message across. I learned what a discourse community was. Not only did I learn what they were but I learned what they needed to have in order to be called a discourse community. Another thing that I learned is that a genre of something can be multiple things. For example, a blog, video and social media posts. I would still like to learn about purpose, I don’t fully understand because purpose can have different meanings in different situations.
I thought that this unit was a very useful learning experience. In previous English class we talked about genre, audience and purpose but we never really went in depth with them. We just learned what we needed for whatever assignment we did at the time. One skill that I can say I learned is that now I know more genres than ever.
One thing that I can transfer from this module to other aspects of my life is addressing my audience. The person your addressing makes a difference on how you communicate with them.
I found it challenging to find a topic I wanted to write about during this unit. I learned a lot during this unit, especially about my discourse community. I found it easy to write about a topic that I was interested in. I think that I learned that I don’t like having things written out. I think that I work best when thinking of what I want to say and writing it down. I work better when I am able to write. I thought I would struggle to find an audience because while city tech students would understand I didn’t know if I was adding enough information. I found it easy to find information because I was able to just go back to my old class and pull information from there. I was able to think back to when I took the class and try to remember what I did to pass that class. I also thought back to when I was in that class and what my goal was. In the beginning I wanted to change my artifact because I thought it wasn’t an artifact. I thought about using something else like scrubs but then I realized that an x-ray is the main thing associated with radiology. I wanted to look back at the readings but I didn’t feel the need to go back to them because I had picked my own topic. I think this unit was enjoyable because I got to pick my own topic and I was talking about something that I knew about thus I didn’t have to do much research.