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Wendy Ramirez

Professor Monterrey

English 5-74

17 July 2021

Progressing my Theory of Writing

This English course is an academic literacy course where I am expected to demonstrate

anything so far that I know about literacy. No matter how much I know, I am expected to meet

the four learning outcomes that this English course requires. The four learning outcomes of this

course are, 1. Develop awareness of how communities shape reading, writing, and research, 2.

Explore a writer's identity in relation to the politics of language, 3. Engage in reflective and

metacognitive processes, 4. Compose rhetorically effective texts, informally and formally, in a

variety of mediums and genres. If I am being honest when I heard I had to meet these certain

goals, I didn't think I was capable of doing so because I wasn't confident in myself nor in my

writing. Over this five week course my experience of English 5 is that I have grown as a writer

and expanded my believes through developing awareness of how communities shape reading,

writing, and research, how I've explored my identity as it relates to the politics of language, I've

engaged in reflective and metacognitive processes, and I have composed rhetorically effective

texts.

Reflecting on how my surroundings influences my literacy, identifying the purpose of the

writing, and analyzing how reading and writing are situational and contextualized through

understanding genre conventions have helped make my writing more effective. Assignments that

have helped me pertain to this learning outcome were reading many articles but in particular the
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article Mindful Reading. After reading this article I was able to recognize many tips that can help

me in literacy and be able to then apply these skills onto my reading, writing and research.

I have understood that a writer’s identity is exhibited in the work by how they use

language, in other words, their choice of words. Discussing how a person’s language and culture

influences their reading and writing can make you self aware of your own writing skills and open

minded of where other writers come from. People of any culture use language to control, for

power; therefore, language can be political in nature and shape a writer's identity. An activity that

relates to this learning outcome is when being put in breakout rooms and in our discussion posts,

we are able to view and study the writer's language, which can then determine characteristics of

the writer.

By engaging and reflecting in metacognitive processes and further providing, receiving,

incorporating peer feedback, I have improved my beliefs on writing. Learning how to properly

peer review made me realize how important it is as a reader and a writer. After doing some

reading I was able to fully understand why giving critical feedback is important for a writer. In

high school I sometimes felt shy and didn't want to come off as rude if I had to tell a classmate

that their writing didn't make sense. Now after reading multiple articles, I feel more confident in

being helpful to my classmates when revising their writing because like the article said, we

should all be able to take critical feedback. I learned that when doing revisions of either a peer’s

writing or even your own we need to figure out the context to the writing, the main focus, and

the writer's voice. Answering these questions during revisions partially meets one of the learning

goal outcomes, which is important for this English course. In one of the articles the author

mentions that when revising your own work, it's important that you are reading as a reader,

meaning to pretend that you are reading someone else's work. It's important that as the reader and
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writer you give yourself critical feedback but not too critical. When peer reviewing the reader

should be able to give an even amount of critical and praise comments. Also, as the writer it's

important that the reader is able to make connections to the writing because it means that the

writer was able to target the audience, which is important in writing.

I have grown as a writer by composing rhetorically effective text and formally informing

a variety of mediums and genres and I have been able to summarize, evaluate, analyze, and

insight sources to improve my research skills. Throughout high school my writing wasn't the best

because I struggled so much putting my ideas into words. If I am being honest I still struggle

with it but I definitely think that I have made some improvements. Some of the improvements I

have made that have helped me in my writing are knowing when to use a quote, paraphrase, and

summarize. This has helped know which word I can use to help me phrase my ideas. As I learned

how to do annotated bibliographies I believe that it's important to know how to do them as it

will help improve my writing skills. It helps me improve my writing because doing annotated

bibliographies, we have to do a summary of what the article was about. I feel like summarizing

other text helps the brain work harder as we have to think on how to rephrase the text and if we

can make connections to it.

Writing is a process of revision, meaning that the writer must have multiple drafts before

a “polished” draft and therefore must follow the literacy components,]. There is a significant

difference between a rough draft and a final draft. The difference is that a final draft can offer

more information and details that enhances the writing whereas a rough draft is just all the ideas

of a writer splattered on a piece of paper. A rough draft is nowhere near the final draft. A rough

draft is only the start of this long process of writing. There are many steps that are to be followed

in order to finalize a paper. Some of those steps are knowing who the audience is, what genre to
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use, the tone, how organized the writing is, etc. In my rough drafts I make sure that I have all my

main ideas written where as in my final draft I go into depth and make sure that each paragraph

is clear for the reader to follow along and that my writing is from grammatical errors.

As for my accomplishments in literacy I have understood many of the different

components that make a good essay. I have been able to fully understand that as a writer it's

important to know who the audience is. Knowing who the audience is is important because it

helps you figure out what the genre of the writing will be. I learned that before we start writing

we must know what kind of writing we are doing, like if it is a report, an argument, or an

evaluation. This is important because it helps the author determine how to write the ideas so that

it helps the reader navigate throughout the writing. Being able to understand these concepts that

take to become a good writer was an eye-opener to me because I didn't think that writing had its

own process. In the first week of this course I learned that writing is a process of and reflection,

and I can agree because after all the articles that I have read have provided what the process of

writing is. I believe that being able to understand these components of literacy means that I have

partially met the four learning outcomes.3

In conclusion, through growing knowledge of how communities impact reading, writing,

and research, exploring my identity as it relates to the politics of language, engaging in reflective

and metacognitive processes, and generating rhetorically effective texts, I've grown as a writer

and expanded my beliefs. All of the assignments I did, like reading articles about literacy, the

discussion posts, the journal entries, in class writing, and peer reviews have helped me achieve

the learning outcomes. I can use all the information that I have learned in this English course in a

future workplace and or class. It's important that I continue to practice all these strategies in my

future classes because it would only help me improve in my writing. Like I have previously
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mentioned, writing is a process and revision, meaning that a piece of writing will never be

perfect and there will always be room for improvement.