Running head: REFLECTION ESSAY 1

REFLECTION ESSAY

Deyanira Stephanie Posso Ayala

Composition & Rhetoric

REFLECTION ESSAY

Composition and Rhetoric is a very useful class for me. In my career

(Biotechnology engineering), we must write a lot of scientific papers, based on what we

do at laboratories and investigations. English is the main language for science, so our

papers should be written in this language for it to have better acceptance in the scientific

community. Thats the reason why I find this class important in my career and in my

professional life in general. Along this class, I learned a lot about how to write and talk

properly in English.

Before taking this course, it was difficult for me to write any essay or project

correctly. I couldnt organize the ideas I had and thus I couldnt do a good job. My main

trouble was that I never knew how to start writing. But in this class I learned that

therere plenty of tools to use before writing an essay. One of the elements that is so

helpful when you dont know how to start writing is making a brainstorm. This tool

allows you to write random ideas you have related to the main topic, without any order,

and once you finish, you can reread them all and find a sequence between them all.

Then you can write a first draw and review so you can change or make it better. Making

brainstorms and writing outlines helped me a lot to write better essays and projects.

Another interesting thing I learned this summer was the MLA style which is new

for me. This is also important for me to know due to my career and my professional

future as a researcher. Some papers and scientific publications are written in this style,

and some magazines prefer the authors to use MLA on their essays for them to publish

it. There arent other classes at USFQ that focus on teaching how to employ this format,

but I consider that its important to know about it because as professionals we may be

required to use MLA in the future.

I also enjoyed of oral presentations. This activity brought many advantages for

us as students. I consider we enforced our skills on working as a team. When we had to

prepare these presentations, we shared our ideas and what we researched about the

assigned topic. We also had to be creative to figure out how to make an interactive

exposition. Every group tried to create activities to make us an active part of their

presentations. These activities helped us to retain the information received and most of

them were focused on practicing exercises so we could apply what we learned on each

exposition.

Oral presentations also promoted us to have a better preparation for us to talk in

front of the class, and we had to prepare ourselves to explain things that were also new

for us. We had to research more about the designed topics, we had to go beyond the

book used in the class. That was a positive aspect we should highlight about

expositions.

On the other hand, the class contents werent so attractive for us as students and

that may have caused that some classmates got bored or they didnt pay attention to

some of the classes. Also, the class schedule was difficult because it started early in the

morning. This could have influenced in our participation and how we paid attention. I

suggest to do more proactive activities that promote a very active participation of every

student. An idea for this could be to create debates for us to improve our speaking skills.

This can also be a better way for us to interact with each other and to research a little bit

more.

What I disliked about the course was the fact we couldnt choose the topics for

our essays. I think writing about a given topic is even more difficult because its harder

to find the right ideas than when youre writing an essay with a desired topic. I think

when we are able to choose the topic we can find easily the sources of information
REFLECTION ESSAY 4

about the topic and the ideas flow better. For me it was hard to talk about a topic I

wasnt attracted to.

In conclusion, I think this course was so helpful and useful for me because I

learned a lot of things I didnt know, and I improved my writing and speaking skills.

This also means that my English level is also higher than before taking the course.

There are some few things that the teacher could do to make it a little bit more

interesting but it was good anyway.

OUTLINE- REFLECTION ESSAY

Along the time taking this class, I learned how to start writing an essay

There were many things about writing that I didnt know before taking the

course.

One of the most useful things I learned this summer was to write outlines or

brainstorms.

These tools helped me to write better essays because I could write previous

random ideas related to the main topic and then I could organize them, and write

a first draft.

Something new I also learned in this class was the MLA style. I never used this

format to write essays, but its interesting and it seems to be easier to use than

APA style.

Oral presentations were an interesting activity as a class because we could

interact with our classmates.

When preparing, and making oral presentations we had the chance to share ideas

and think about activities for our classmates to be an active element of our

exposition.

I enjoyed the special activities prepared by our mates because each one of them

were different and theyre focused on what they talked about in their

presentations. That was an important part of the learning process because we

could practice what they taught us.

The class could be more interesting if there would be different activities. For

example, there could be debates so the class could interact and share thoughts.

Also it could help us improve our speaking skills, since the students would have

to prepare good speeches and arguments.