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Luis Santa Cruz

Trishia Briones

ENGL 1301-123

December 6th, 2023

Final Reflection

As my first semester ends, I am able to reflect on what I had learned and gained from this

English 1301 class. This class was able to teach me things that I didn’t know I couldn’t do.

English had always been my weak spot when it comes to academics ever since I was little.

However, this class helped me improve in so many different ways. I learned how to become a

better writer in turn than I was a year ago. These 3 essays and reflection essays made me realize

that I still needed a long way to improve at my writing abilities but this class was able to show

me the ropes.

What I learned about the writing process from 3 essays was that it’s important to know

your materials and prompt topic. For instance, in essay 3 I had trouble finding out what the

purpose of the prompt was and what it tried to convey. However, when I read more into the

prompt, analyzed it and asked my professor for further clarification it helped me understand the

material adequately and led me to fully understand the prompt at hand. In addition, also

understanding how to properly cite in MLA format. Knowing this is crucial for the writing

process as it is the main format that we wrote in this semester for every essay from one to three. I

learned the proper way from my professor pointing out my format mistakes on essay 3. As I cited

my website wrong and forgot to cite the quotations with a page number. Knowing this from now

on I’m sure to write and format MLA correctly on all future college papers. The activities that
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helped me a lot this semester were the peer review sessions that our class did every other week

for every essay. This helped me find my mistakes that were pointed out by my fellow peers. This

also helped me gain insight on how other people view my papers. This gave me insight on who

my main audience was for the semester and every paper was geared towards this specific

classroom audience. This observation has led me to greatly improve my writing for other

situations. For example, in my Univ 1201 class I know how to write an effective paper for my

professor due to the knowledge I’ve gained from this English class such as correctly formatting

and understanding the prompt and main audience.

I’ve expanded my knowledge on analysis greatly by understanding and analyzing

rhetoric. Rhetoric was the focus for all three essays I wrote this semester. Analysis was hard for

me to do in the beginning as it was new to me learning all different rhetoric devices. Ethos,

Pathos, and Logos are a main part of analysis and was in every article, flyer, and album cover.

Images were also analyzed and was found to have these three devices. What helped me the most

about working through analysis was the fact that I was familiar with the devices before writing

the essays. However, I still had trouble so asking for help and the peer reviews and feedback I

got really helped me understand the process of analysis. For example, when peer reviewing, I

was able to read how other people analyzed their topics and was able to learn how to effectively

analyze the prompts and their associated rhetorical pieces. Learning from my peers and professor

really helped me improve my analysis skills and now I’m able to properly analyze any rhetoric

pieces in the future. This knowledge will help me in the future with research papers and

discovering what makes them rhetorical and appeal to readers.

The process of revision was the easiest part of the essay. This is due because of the peer

review process and the feedback given by the professor that pointed out my mistakes. The
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revision process made me learn that I’m supposed to use grammar and proper rhetoric to get my

point across in my paragraphs. For example, in my last essay the revision process showed me

that I wasn’t on topic of the assigned prompt and that I missed the point in some areas. In

addition, it also showed me that I cited my sources wrong. I made these corrections based on

what was pointed out to me by my professor. This feedback helped me improve my essay and

made it clearer to the audience what the prompt was and what I was trying to convey to the

reader. Peer reviews were also a big staple in my revision process, as I was able to get a

perspective from someone my age. My peers pointing out what I should fix really did help me in

the long run of this semester.

The most challenging part was rewriting most of my paragraphs as they did not meet the

prompt question and message. I fixed this by making sure that I wasn’t writing a full summary of

the rhetoric article, instead I had to write about what rhetoric they used to convey their message

to the readers. The least challenging part of the process was correcting the format which was the

easiest mistake to revise because I just had to find the page number of the article and put it next

to the quotations that I had used. In addition, fixing my citations from APA to MLA was a quick

and easy fix to do. Another difficulty I had challenge of overcoming was writer’s block. The

reason I had this block was because I wasn’t familiar with the topic and knowing how to word

certain sentences and paragraphs without sounding like a broken record was a challenge within

itself. I’d say this was the most frustrating part as I blanked and couldn’t figure out what to say.

The choices I made to convey course concept was my essay material. Most of my essay

topics were written about events or artists for people around my age. For example, for my first

essay I wrote about a vintage pop-up market, this event is very popular for my age groups and

was easy to convey rhetorical analysis on the flyer it was advertised on. In addition, my last 2
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essays were about Frank Ocean, a very popular R&B artist for my generation. I used his name to

convey my message and rhetoric analysis to hook the reader who might be a fan of Frank Ocean

also. Using rhetorical analysis was the main point I focused on in my first three essays which

involved an advertisement flyer, an album covers and an article. These were not easy to analyze

however, I was able to pull information from sources confirming my analysis, it also helped I

was familiar with both subject manners in my essays. Me using sources that I was familiar with

in turn helped my audience understand the genre of analysis because I explained how rhetoric

was used in all 3 categories. Such as, ethos that was seen all throughout essay three. An example

would also be in essay two where I analyzed the rhetoric used in a minimalist album cover. This

cover had very little rhetoric but the rhetoric I was able to pull from past research made it so the

story and message it was trying to convey became clear to me and my audience.

The most challenging parts of this course were the prompts and how to convey messages

clearly to readers. The prompts were hard to write and convey about because I wasn’t familiar

with analyzing rhetoric pieces. For example, in the last essay (essay number three) said to find

the devices used in the article and how they conveyed their message was difficult to understand

and first. This is because I was confused on how it was worded and what it wanted me to find. It

could also be that I was unfamiliar with ethos, pathos and logos that were needed to be found in

order to make a compelling rhetoric analysis essay. In addition, the first two prompts asked for

rhetoric to be found in images and pictures with only a few words. This was the most challenging

because I had to look for every single little detail in the image and find out its meaning. On the

other hand, having to word and convey the right message to the reader was the most challenging

part yet. Using the correct keywords and making the paragraphs cohesive was a challenge within

itself as I found myself repeating over and over again in almost every paragraph. Finding
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different ways on how to rewrite my paragraphs and most of my paper was a common

occurrence in every assignment. This was a hurdle that was hard to overcome and that I still

struggle with in any writing assignment I have be working on. However, practicing and

proofreading my paper will help me improve on this weakness. The repeating of words and

sentences in paragraphs is a challenge I will always face because it’s been a hard habit to break

ever since I was in elementary school. Although, it has improved over the years the more I’ve

written.

Learning these weaknesses helped me evaluate my strengths in writing composition. I

learned that I was very strong in writing a good thesis statement for my essays as the points I

chose to write about were relevant to the topic. I also found that my analytical skills had a small

strength and that was I understood whatever I was trying to analyze and got the message it was

conveying. Take essay two for example, the message was obvious the more I investigated the

subject and researched every detail it had. The subject at hand was minimalist though however, I

was able to get the artist’s message through his rhetorical choices. My other strength that I

learned I had was good hooks for my paragraphs. These hooks helped engage the reader because

I used certain keywords for the audience, I was writing for which was my peers and professor.

These hooks helped me a lot while writing and were the easiest part of every paragraph from top

to bottom. If it wasn’t for this class and the difficulties of the essays, I wouldn’t have found out

these strengths that I had for writing.

I feel like this English course has prepared me for to become a part of the academic

writing community. This is because I’ve learned so much about writing a proper academic essay

this semester. Wither it was the feedback from my peers and professor, or the textbook chapters it

showed me that I still needed to learn how to write academically. In addition, this course taught
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me to be a better writer. As it showed my weaknesses and strengths in every essay, I wrote this

year. What helped me the most was the peer reviews and professors feedback on my papers.

They were able to point out my mistakes and in turn I was able to learn from the mistakes and

evolve into a better writer in the meantime. My professor was also very helpful and insightful

because she was able to help me understand what I did wrong and was able to teach me how to

understand analysis and making sure I get the prompt message straight and correct.

In conclusion, this first semester of university English taught me that I still need a lot

more to learn to become an effective writer. This class helped me become more prepared for

future academic paper other than English. I was able to intake everything and learned to analysis

certain text and look for errors. This will in turn benefit me because I will know what I am doing

in future papers. English 1301 was just the beginning of my academic paper writing journey.

Knowing this I will need to learn more and improve my writing for future and more difficult

English classes I might have in the future.