Garcia 1

Andrea Garcia

Emily Litle

ENG121001

9 December 2020

Reflection

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting from this semester because school was obviously very

different and I’ve never done online courses, so this was completely new to me. I felt

comfortable enrolling into this english course because I felt comfortable with the subject and felt

like I was a decent writer, but this semester definitely helped me improve my writing and realize

what I was doing wrong and how I could fix my writing. The following artifacts are things I

wrote for this class and I will discuss how I improved myself during the writing process while

learning new things from the course.

The first artifact that I will be discussing is my very first journal entry. I remember

reading the journal prompt saying that the paper needed to be in MLA formatting. I wasn’t really

sure how to write in MLA format, but the MLA format example document that was provided for

us was very helpful, along with the video. I remember watching the video and reading the

document several times to make sure my paper was written correctly, and I did learn some new

things. For example, I did not know I had to indent every time I started a new paragraph, or that I

had to include a header on each page with my last name and page number. I’m glad I learned that

because my papers look more organized and presentable.

The second artifact that I will be talking about is paper one. For paper one we focused on

images and how they manipulate an audience through rhetorical devices. I usually have a hard

time trying to explain rhetorical devices in my papers, because it feels like I’m just describing a
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text and not much of what the text is trying to say. Describing the image was a bit easier and

since we had more direction as to which rhetorical devices to use, this paper wasn’t as difficult to

write. I got a better concept of rhetorical devices and how they are used, and if I’m honest, I

didn’t know what ethos, pathos or logos meant, so I thought it was very informational to know

that they meant and how they can be used to send a message.

The next artifact I will be talking about is paper three. Paper three was an annotated

bibliography leading up to paper four, and I was excited about this paper because we were able

to choose what to write about. When it came to researching valid sources, I was able to learn in

our webex meeting about research databases through the school that we have access to. I thought

this was very helpful because we had access to scholarly articles that I could trust using in my

paper. It also narrowed down my options so I could pick resources more easily and resources that

fulfilled the CRAP test. This paper also let me evaluate evidence and apply it to my argument

and how this source was helpful for my cause.

My next artifact is paper four, and I think this paper was my biggest challenge yet, but I

can say that I learned new things while writing this paper. A big thing that I learned in paper

four, as well as paper three was learning how to cite sources correctly. I’ve done work cited

pages before, but I wasn’t formatting them correctly, I also didn’t know how to do in-text

citations. With the help of our webex meetings and sample papers, I was able to learn how to cite

my sources correctly and now my papers look more professional and it also makes everything

look well organized. I also enjoyed forming my own opinions in this paper because the topic I

talked about is very important to me and I was excited to write a paper where I can show people

why this topic is important. I didn’t want to sound biased or uniformed, so the use of sources

from trusted articles made me feel more comfortable taking a position.

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The last artifact I will be talking about is journal 8. I really like writing these journals

because it feels really soothing getting to write about things specific to us. I think this was my

favorite journal that I wrote because it really does encompass why I’m studying and who I am as

a person. Of course one page can’t describe everything about me, but it made me realize why I

should keep going. This semester has been really tough for me, but remembering who I am

working hard for made me want to keep pushing.