Reflections for Project 2 -- Annette Bowers

Reflections for Project 2

·         Rhetorical Knowledge

·         Audience: What have you learned about addressing an audience in evaluative writing?  I need to make sure that I identify an audience that will find what I have to say interesting.  I need to answer all of their questions clearly and truthfully and present all sides of an issue as completely as possible.  My voice and tone need to reassure my readers that what I’m saying can be relied upon. 

·         Purpose: What have you learned about the purposes for constructing an evaluation?  You need to understand your subject and your reasons for evaluating it.  Clearly defined and explained purposes will engage audiences regardless of whether they agree with your assessment or not. 

·         Rhetorical situation: How did the writing context affect your evaluative text? How did your choice of subject affect the research you conducted and the way you presented your evaluation?  Since my choice of subject was one that I was personally familiar with my research plan was very simple and clear.  I knew right where to go on the Web to find the information I needed on the hotel.  My evaluation was based on personal experience.  I had a good experience at the hotel.  I wanted my readers to understand that and want to visit the hotel to have as good a time as I did.

·         Voice and tone: How would you describe your voice in this essay? Your tone? How do they contribute to the effectiveness of your evaluation?  My voice is confident and knowledgeable.  The fact that I’ve been to the location several times gives me the power to talk about the location with confidence and authority.  My confidence and experience enables me to convince my readers that what I am saying is truthful and accurate.

·         Context, medium, and genre: How did your context determine the medium and genre you chose, and how did those decisions affect your writing?  One option for this assignment was to write an informative piece about one of my favorite places.  I immediately remembered the hotel and decided to write about it.  After deciding that my topic was about travel, of the two options given in the assignment:  a blog or brochure, I chose a blog because I feel that a blog will reach more people.  The decision about what type of genre to use was simple at that point.  A blog about a favorite place involved persuasive writing.  My assignment was to try to convince my readers to want to visit and like as much as I did the hotel.    

·         Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing

·         Learning/inquiry: What process did you go through to focus on a main idea, or thesis? How did you judge what was most and least important in your evaluation?  I used concept mapping and clustering to help me lay out as many possibilities I could think of to consider incorporating into my essay.  I decided to treat the information I had had personal experience with as the most important and aspects that I had lesser knowledge about were treated with less importance. 

·         Responsibility: How did you fulfill your responsibility to your readers?  I believe I laid out the criteria of my piece simply and clearly and explained fully each one of my criterion.  I tried to offer readers an opinion of as many aspects of the hotel as I possibly could.

·         Reading and research: What did you learn about evaluative writing from the reading selections in this chapter? What research did you conduct? How sufficient was the research you did?   Evaluative writing needs to include identifying your audience, the purpose of your piece (criteria), the correct voice and tone and an examination of the type of context, medium and genre to be used.  All these aspects need to be reviewed to determine the most effective way to present an evaluation to a particular audience.     

·         Skills: As a result of writing this evaluation, how have you become a more critical thinker, reader, and writer? What skills do you hope to develop further in your next writing project?  This assignment has shown me how to look at more than one side of an issue.  It also has made me work harder at trying to be as clear as possible in describing to my audience what it is I’m trying to get them to visualize in their own minds.  I want them to see what I see.  I hope to improve my research abilities – ask more questions – in an attempt to present a complete discussion of an issue. 

·         Writing Processes

·         Invention: What invention strategies were most useful to you?  For this piece I used freewriting and listing as a means to lay out my criteria.  Concept mapping was also a useful tool because it enables me to see a visual picture of what direction I want my essay to go.  Clustering was a good way to identify everything that I could say about a topic and then from that master list I chose which aspects of the location I wanted to write about.

·         Organizing your ideas and details: What organization did you use? How successful was it?  I first attempted to identify what type of audience would be interested in what I had to say (people who like to travel).  From there I had to determine why they were be interested in my essay (they wanted to travel to the place I was writing about).  Identifying my purpose was next as I tried to explain as many of the points of interest I could regarding the hotel.  After reading my essay my hope would be that the reader came away with information about the location that would enable them to make a better informed decision on whether to go or not.  I think I did a pretty good job of describing the hotel and feel readers would be able to decide The Hotel Del was a place they would like to visit.

·         Revising: What are the strongest and the weakest parts of your essay? Why? If you could go back and make an additional revision, what would it be?  I think some of the strongest aspects of my essay were those parts that were describing actual experiences I had while visiting the hotel (i.e., interaction with staff, my Sunday mornings).  Those types of stories, I feel, could do the most to sway a reader to want to come visit the hotel.  The weakest parts of the essay were those talking about the more boring aspects of describing a locale – how to get there and the weather.   If I were to expand my essay I would include more comparative aspects of the area I was describing.

·         Working with peers: How did your instructor or peer readers help you by making comments and suggestions about your writing? List some examples of useful comments that you received. How could you have made better use of the comments and suggestions you received?  I received input from one peer reviewer and Nettutor.  I had requested an appointment from the ASU Writing Center but never from them.  Comments from my peer reviewer included moving my paragraphs around to make the piece flow better.  She also suggested how I could strengthen my thesis paragraph by adding additional information regarding my criteria.  She also had suggestions for how I could make more interesting the part of the essay that dealt with more mundane aspects of travel, such as directions.  I could have expanded my piece to include comparative information on surrounding/similar establishments in the area.   

·         Visuals: Did you use photographs or other visuals to help explain your evaluation to readers? If so, what did you learn about incorporating these elements?  I think pictures add a lot to an evaluative essay on travel.  It allows the reader to visualize the place the author is describing.  I learned that choosing the right picture to go with your narrative is harder than it looks.  You can spend as much time adding just the right type of picture to the piece as you do writing the piece itself.   

·         Writing habits: What “writerly habits” have you developed, modified, or improved on as you constructed the writing assignment for this chapter? How will you change your future writing activities, based on what you have learned about yourself?  I like to use a form of “process mapping” when laying out the purpose, criteria and final intent of my writing pieces.  I continue to like to talk things through out loud.  Talking out loud seems to make what you’re trying to write “real” and many times quickly reveals issues that need addressing like grammar and editing, sentence flow, logic and chronological order.

·         Knowledge of Conventions

·         Editing: What sentence problem did you find most frequently in your writing? How will you avoid that problem in future assignments?  The biggest problem I had with editing was trying to find words that weren’t cliché or overused like “amazing” or “wonderful” or “breathtaking”.  I don’t think that I will ever avoid that problem in future assignments.  Perhaps over time experience gained will help with that aspect of writing. 

·         Genre: What conventions of the genre you were using, if any, gave you problems?  I used the less formal site review for this exercise in persuasive writing.  I don’t feel I had any problems using it. 

·         Documentation: Did you use sources for your paper? If so, what documentation style did you use? What problems, if any, did you have with it?  Yes, I used two sources.  I used the APA style of writing.  I did not have any problems with using it.

Process followed for this assignment:

1.    Brainstormed ideas;

2.    Used the who, what, where, when, why and how process;

3.    Used steps of Invention to lay out what I wanted to say (brainstorming, freewriting, listing, criteria, concept/process mapping, organizing, clustering, research and reflection);

4.    Determine what my thesis was going to be;

5.    Completed 2 peer reviews of classmates’ rough drafts;

6.    Completed the two discussion assignments;

7.    Submitted my first rough draft to one peer reviewer and Nettutor.  (I was unable to get a second peer reviewer and the ASU Writing Center did not respond to my request.);

8.    Reviewed and incorporated many of the suggested changes submitted by the peer reviewer and Nettutor to my rough draft;

9.    Submitted my revised draft;

10.  Completed a last check of my final draft for submission to my instructor, including APA format requirements;

11.  Spent considerable time trying to load my assignment onto my blog.  Had A LOT of trouble trying to make all that work (I’m about as computer illiterate as it gets);

12.  Completed reflection document;

13.  Submitted all to instructor.