Wynton Hough

ENG 103
5/11/14
Reflection
In this reflection I will demonstrate to the reader what Ive learned throughout the course
of this semester as well as the skills that I have obtained and reinforced. I will use my pieces of
writing for the course as examples of how I used these skills.
My prewriting process is fairly simple. I construct my intro first because to me it sets the
tone for the rest of the essay. Then, I brainstorm and create topic sentences for each body
paragraph and next I create sentences that stay relevant to the topic of the paragraph. I create my
conclusion last because to me its always been sort of a reflection of the subject of the paper.
I already knew how to create stories well as far as fiction goes but never with real life
experiences. In fictional short stories, that I would write, I would always pay attention to detail
and create vast visual imagery. So I had trouble writing a personal narrative essay for this class
because I didnt really expand on any certain part in the story, which made my essay shorter than
what it should have been. When we had a peer review day, my partner suggested that I had too
many broad overstatements. I had to learn how to expand on the several events without being
overbearing. It took a lot of practice but ultimately I developed the skill to expand on events by
using detail and other tools like dialogue.
In the Resume and cover letter I had to display a more professional tone than what Im
used to doing on most of my essays. I had to use the professional tone well because the resume
and cover letter depended on it. The professional tone is the base and core of the writing. This
enabled be to be brief and concise. My flow also had to ongoing and consistent so I can appear
organized rather than a bunch of subjects squished into of piece of writing. By engaging in these
pieces of writing I learned how to change my tone and flow of how I write in different situations.
When it came to the interview paper, I had a particularly difficult time creating a paper in
general. It was hard to rely on the answers of the interviewee because you had to create rather
well open ended questions so that the answers were enough to carry the essay. I had to provide
questions so that the responses would further expand the ideas in the paper or else the essay
would perish. It was the most difficult piece of writing of the course but I used my skills of
organizing and expansion of ideas to complete the essay.
In the media analysis essay, I had to analyze a piece of media as well as expand on the
ideas provided from outside sources such as the internet. I analyzed the music video Tip Drill by
Nelly. It was a very controversial video because of its total excessive use of over sexualized
content, its subjection of women and even had a part when the artist slid a credit card between a
half naked womans buttocks. I explored several cultural constructs and stereotypes within the
imagery of the video. I used my prewriting skills to construct my essay well according to my
research. This essay wasnt as hard I thought it would be because I used what I learned from my
interview paper, which was how to expand on ideas from info given from an outside source.
After writing so many different kinds of pieces of writing, I have improved my skills and
have progressed as a writer. Each essay enabled to either learn a new to skill or reinforce a skill
already known.