Author Archives: Kieran Reichert

ENG 1101: Final Reflection

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ENG1101: Final Portfolio & Reflection (Reichert)

Along with your final portfolios, which must include the final revised drafts of each of your major essay assignments as well as the reflections for each, I am asking you to write a Final Course Reflection of at least 1000 words. This, along with the other reflective writings you did over the course of the semester and in your portfolios, is one way we package what we’ve learned into something we can take in to the future and TRANSFER to other writing situations in other arenas of your lives.

To start, consider the following prompts:

  • What have you learned about yourself as a reader, writer and scholar this semester?
    • What moments, assignments, readings, conversations, and/or lessons led you think of yourself that way?
  • What from this course will you be able to take with you into other parts of your life? How will this transfer enhance or improve your ability in other writing situations?

Like any other essay we’ve written in class, you should write with a balance of argument and evidence. Think of this as an essay you are writing about yourself and your experience in this course. You are making claims about how you’ve grown, and then you should substantiate those claims with evidence from the course. This can be as simple and informal as a narrative explanation of a moment/assignment/conversation in class, or you can more formally quote from your own writing. As I did on each essay, I will be looking to make sure that each of your claims is supported with specific evidence.

Along with the strength of your argument, I will be reading your reflection for evidence that you were paying attention to and absorbing some of the terminology that we used in our (digital) classroom. Terms like audience, discourse communities, rhetoric, analysis, thesis, revision, “down draft,” etc should be part of the case that you’re making that you indeed learned something in this class. This can be a fun and creative assignment, in which you are telling me the story of your time in my class, but it should also reflect the skill that you’ve gained over the course of the semester.

I will be grading you on:

  • Argument (Claim + Supporting Evidence)
  • Organization (paragraphing and sequence, intro/conclusion)
  • Register (what tone should a reflection take?) & Audience
  • Length, Grammar/Usage/Spelling, Deadlines

1101 Unit 2: Low-Stakes Assignments

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I have a couple ideas for low-stakes assignments for the Genre Awareness unit in 1101.

First, I’ve found that students most readily know genre as a term related to music/film, and therefore I think it would be useful to start there.

1. In class, play a short clip from a recent horror/thriller film (Midsommar/Us).

Discuss w/ class: What makes this a horror film? Are there any things that, if you took them away, would change the genre?

Writing Prompt: Imagine being asked to rewrite this as a romantic comedy. What would change? What would you have to add to make it romantic and funny?

2. Play clip from Seinfeld’s “The Subway” where riders strain to hear an indecipherable announcement.

Class Discussion: What are the conventions of a subway announcement?

Writing: What other ways can you find that information? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these other different genres/modes? What is unique about subway announcements versus all other genres/modes?

Concepts to tie in (for both): How do considerations of audience/purpose/constraints/genre conventions impact the content and form and mode of the text? Can we write out a procedure for identifying the conventions of a genre given some exemplar?

Literacy Narrative Assignment – Kieran Reichert

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Essay #1: Literacy Narrative

In this unit, we have read several examples of literacy narratives. In “Mother Tongue,” we read about the Amy Tan’s mother’s “broken English” and how that, along with several pivotal educational experiences, made Tan the writer she is. In “All Writing is Autobiography,” Donald Murray talked about the different parts of himself he brings into his different writing projects. These were both literacy narratives, which are stories writers tell about their relationship to reading and writing.

In this unit’s writing assignment, you will write in response to the question “What does literacy mean to you?” that is personal, meaningful, and considered. You will describe experiences or events that have been important in shaping the kind of writer and reader you have become, or experiences that illuminate the role that literacy plays in your life. The purpose of this essay is to link your participation in this class to the rest of your experiences with writing in your life. As a result, each student will bring some fuller portion of themselves to the page and, the course will be enriched, and, in turn, you all will exit the course with a deeper understanding of what this course meant to you and how to take the tools we craft and hone outward into future writing situations. 

In preparation for this assignment, you have read two examples of literacy narratives — Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Donald Murray’s “All Writing is Autobiography” — and you will read a third sample student literacy narrative. Look to them for guidance.

If you feel stuck, think and write about the following prompts:

  • What is your current attitude toward reading/writing?
  • What are your beliefs about yourself as a reader/writer?
  • What happened in the past to make you have that attitude or those beliefs?
  • What experiences were most significant?

Also, consider the following areas of experience you might explore:

  • your family’s attitude toward reading/writing
  • your own reading/writing experiences in and out of school
  • what you remember about learning to read/write
  • what successes or failures you have had connected to reading/writing
  • a particular book that had an impact on you
  • your reading/writing strengths
  • your reading/writing weaknesses.

Your essays will be >750 words (approx. 4 pages) in length, double-spaced in a normal 12-pt font (Cambria, Baskerville, Garamond, Times, etc.), with 1” margins all around. You should write your name and course details in the header, and page numbers in the footer.

Given the nature of this essay, you should draw from personal experience, and you may use the first-person “I” when doing so. You will bring in two printed copies to our peer review session in class and turn in a final draft electronically and physically by the beginning of class on __________.

Please feel free to stop by my office hours or shoot me an email with any questions.