Reflection EssayThroughout this semester and the past one, we’ve done a lot of writings, different type of writings, narrative, analysis, review and much more. I loved these writings, because of one thing I felt, I was engaged in something when I was writing, I was trying to push my honest opinion about that certain topic, I was arguing for my position in the argument, I was in a debate. Although I am not from this country, I love it here, because you are given the opportunity to enter in a debate, to take your position in the argument, that’s exactly how I felt. Back where I come from, debate is not given to any one, only those who hold strong positons in the society, I felt I was more active in the American society, I argued on topics like consumption and how the society lives on lies that they were told, it was interesting topics and an interesting class.
Aside from being in a debate, I learned this knowledge that every successful writer knows, no matter how good your writings is you could always improve it. Writings is like preparing a dish, you could always make your dish tastes better by adding certain amounts of flavors and reducing certain spices that makes the dish taste bad. Nevertheless, you can always do the same to your writings. I learned that any writings you write is never perfect or complete, you could always add little spices and makes it even clearer and enhance your position in the argument. The way I tried to make my writings better is by writing more than one draft and if I have time I go over the process of analyzing. This process helps in clarifying the thesis statement and improving it if it didn’t reach the right limits, it also identifies each paragraph’s main idea by reading every sentence in that paragraph and identifying if it is doing its purpose or not. This process makes the writing better and more understandable for the reader to get the idea you are trying to show, however, it is time taking process but its positive impact on the writing is huge. |
During this semester, we were able to perform a mock UDWPE as one of our writings. Furthermore, this doesn’t just gives you the idea of what are you going to face but also gives the confidence to take it. Speaking as a student, what scares the student is some exam that he has no idea of what approaches to take and what to take care of the most when performing this test, most of students also worry on how any test is being graded, many different exams have several approaches and different perspectives, this makes the student worry, develop fear and lack of confidence taking that test. So I believe this mock gave most of my class mates the confidence to take the UDWPE.
One difficulty I faced during this course was pushing your place in the argument when you are either agreeing or disagreeing with the other writer. Some writers write an argument essay agreeing with the other writers, while the truth is actually they are totally against the idea, but they have no idea on how to argue with the opposing side, or simply they don’t feel like doing all the researches to back their point of view of that certain topic, so in their essays you see them lost and they have no idea of what they are talking about. I was able to overcome this issue by simply being honest. I was able to clarify my position in the argument, and I had clearly stated my opinion with all the respect to the other writer’s opinion. Nevertheless, what made this problem even serious is that sometime the other writers could actually go against some activity that you have been doing all your life and you believe that he is wrong, so simply you have to state the honest opinion. To back this up, the professor actually made it more helpful when he told us that relating the case of consumption with the theme I chose (Video Games) is like the other writer telling you that what you have been doing is just wrong, however, you don’t agree with what he/she says, so simply state your honest opinion. Overall, there is always room for improvement, I believe that what we learned from 113A course now we are applying it in 113B and what we’ve learned in 113B we shall apply in other courses in the university that ask us to write an essay about some specific topic. |