Joseph Abramowitz

ENC 1102 Composition

Professor Murray
December 6, 2014
Semester Reflection
I can honestly say that my perceptions of this class at the beginning of the semester have
drastically changed throughout the semester up till now. I never had to take Comp 1 in college
because I passed the AP Language Exam while in high school. Because of this, I just assumed
that a Composition 2 class would be similar to one of my high school writing classes; just write
some essays, take quizzes on some random readings that were assigned, and discuss what good
writing was. While we did take reading quizzes, discuss what good writing was, and do a lot
of writing this semester, I could tell there was more of a clearer purpose for why, compared to in
high school were the idea was to just get by till college.
I have gained a plethora of skills and concepts about writing this semester that I had
never heard of before. For example, I never knew what a discourse community was, or what
Grant Davies rhetorical situation was and how it would affect my writing. Before this semester,
my writings primarily consisted of a thesis statement, some information, some support, and a
conclusion. My writings this semester and in the future, now take concepts such as exigence,
genre, rhetor, and many more into consideration. Learning to frame my writings this
semester has been the single most beneficial tool I have learned in my opinion. Framing forces
me to really find out what I am writing, who I am writing it for, and why I am writing it. Doing
this allowed my writing to flow better, and have more of a conversation with the sources and
experts I brought in to my writings for support, rather than having an argument.

The one thing that I did not like about the class this semester was that it began at 8:30
AM. Seems like a minor inconvenience, but sleep for college students is a rare commodity today,
and having class later than 8:30 AM probably would have increased my attention and motivation
in class at various times throughout the semester.
I did like the way Professor Murray had our class planned out and organized. We never
had random or pointless reading; it was always beneficial vocab words and concepts to help with
our writings. Also, I enjoyed that as a class; we would have peer review days before a Task was
due. I found these peer reviews to be very beneficial, and all of my grades on the final tasks
increased because of these peer reviews. Finally, I liked how willing and available Professor
Murray was to our class to help with writing our papers or whatever else we needed help on.