Refelctive writing

Class introductory

I feel what makes me unique is that I am a very quiet and shy person when one first meets me, but it isn’t until I get to know a person and become comfortable talking to them and around them, that I suddenly become a very talkative and outgoing person. For example, in high school I had some classes where I was the quietest kid and some classes where I was the most talkative. This was all due to the kind of people I was around. Going into my first year of college at UNCG, I will say, I was a little nervous due to the fact I was leaving Charlotte to go to a school where I didn’t know anybody, and for a shy person like me that doesn’t have the greatest social skills, I knew I would have to go out of my comfort zone to meet new people. I definitely struggled at first, but eventually ran into a friend of mine that I keep in touch with to this day. I will say about my social preference, that I like to work in a duo. This makes it easier for me to meet new people and socialize. For some reason it becomes easier to socialize and express my personality when I’m with a close friend that is meeting new people along with me, but I still am not sure why this is. So, even though I went into my freshmen year as socially inept as I was, I was still able to meet tons of new people thanks to my friend who introduced me to the world of socializing in a way I had never seen before.

Writers Profile

At the beginning of the semester I came in with more confidence as a writer. The reason for this confidence was because of my growth and development during my English 1101 class that I took in my last year of college. The confidence as a writer that I came into this semester with allowed me to have, what I feel, was great success as a student of this class. Having worked on my portfolio over the last couple weeks, I got the chance to really put my work from this semester into a better perspective. What I found from looking through my portfolio work, I feel my confidence as a writer going into the first day of this class wasn’t exactly lived up to with the work that I have done in this class. However, I still saw growth in my writing and myself as a writer in general, and I certainly believe I have gotten better as a writer through this class and feel like I took good initiative in being able to grow as a writer. That being said, I still have weaknesses in my writing that I will continue to address and get better at, but those weaknesses had improved throughout this semester. What helped me grow as a writer in my English class from last year was my expansion on writing and thinking more creatively, whereas the growth I developed this semester was through taking more of a focus on writing for the audience since they are an integral part between what can make piece of writing bad or good. The challenges I faced in this class were few and far between, but the challenges that I did face involved me having to think more critically than I usually had in my past English classes. My strength as a writer usually lied within thinking creatively, whereas thinking critically has never been a strength of mine, but the assignments that involved students thinking critically had helped me grow within that field of writing and thinking. Since I grew as a writer within my weakness of critical thinking, my overall opinion of writing had changed. My opinion of writing that changed was what I had mentioned earlier, that the audience should be a major focus when it comes to writing a good piece, but another part of my opinion that had changed about writing is that while writing is primarily a work of art, it is also a very complex skill. The aspect of this class that helped me the most was simply the general array of assignments that we were given throughout the semester. What I mean by that is we have been assigned work that involved having to write in many different styles and formats, we had assignments that made us think and write critically and make us think and write creatively. I believe the variety of different writing styles we had worked on throughout the class really helped me grow in certain areas of my writing. I think the assignments that helped me out the most were the journal articles and moodle post since they helped me strengthen my critical thinking, but the assignments that brought the best out me as a writer were the small-stakes assignments due to the involvement of creative thinking that went into those assignments. What I had expected from this class when coming in was pretty much what I had experienced to some extent. I walked in with maybe a little too much hype about myself as a writer, since I had realized that I had much more to improve with my skill for writing over the semester, but I did expect for this class to help highlight my strengths as a writer and feel it did exactly that. Overall it has been a very good English class this semester.

Theory Of Writing

Over the course of this semester, we have written and read individual pieces about the theory of writing and writing itself. The students of the class were treated with opinions and information about writing from across a wide spectrum of writing, including what good and bad writing is, what to apply and focus on regarding a written piece, and obviously many different forms of writing. The theory of writing that I am developing and have developed over the course of this semester is that when it comes to writing, the writer should stay independent from the standards that are presented as the proper way to write and instead they should create a unique voice and style that is truly their own. The best way to do that I believe, is to veer away from those “standards of good writing.” However, with that being said, there is still much more that goes into creating a solid piece of written work. That leads to my second theory of writing. I believe that a good piece of writing is one that can be understood by its audience. Therefore, I believe the audience must be heavily thought of before and during the process of creating your written piece, whatever piece of writing it may be. I think if a piece of writing is widely difficult to read amongst its audience, then it can stake a claim as “bad writing.” What I think about writing itself is that it is a form of art and not a skill that can necessarily be taught, because I think one cannot be taught creativity. Writing has the ability to influence and inspire in many different ways, depending on the style and content of the writing. If you look at history of literature, writing has influenced many societies and cultures, and has been an integral part of many cultural movements. I don’t look at myself as much of a writer, but I have always felt that there is a creative and talented writer within myself. If I was to seriously put my mind to it, I believe a good writer would emerge. I have traditionally been a writer that has followed my theory of veering away from traditional standards and always put a unique spin to my writing. However, my writing has seemed to consistently been somewhat difficult to understand by the audience. Hence why I feel the audience is very important to consider when it comes to writing a good piece of literature. So, I do believe in good and bad writing. I think what makes bad writing is the lack of understandability and a lack of focus on the audience, and what makes good writing is the coherence and focus on audience. My third theory of writing has it that a good focus on audience and coherence makes it easier for the writer to create a unique and creative piece, as well as making it easier to be less dependent on the standards that are held to be the blueprints on how to make good writing.