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As I sit here typing my reflection for this class, I’m thinking about how strange this year was. Not being on campus, taking all online courses, and struggling to meet deadlines. W131 was easily one of my favorite classes I took this semester and it served as a distraction from everything going on in the world. During W131, I learned a lot of things. One of the things I learned is that I already took this class my senior year in high school. I learned how to be come a better writer as well as interpret reading and texts more.  The two projects I revised during the end of the semester were my multi-modal writing project and my immersion experience. Throughout the course, I achieved many goals, learned how to become a better reader, and I learned many new writing techniques.

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While reading the course goals on the syllabus, I noticed there were a few course goals of factors I should be taking away from W131. The first goal that I feel like I successfully achieved is learning to read with greater confidence. This goal is big for me because throughout high school as well as college, I’ve always had trouble reading a large text and then interpreting it. According to an article written by Nancy Chick regarding metacognition, "A key element is recognizing the limit of one’s knowledge or ability and then figuring out how to expand that knowledge or extend the ability." I feel like this quote resonated with me because after I acknowledged that I struggled with reading large texts, it made it easier to understand where my struggled lied and how to overcome them. After reading Pratt’s “Arts of the Contact Zone”, Percy’s “My Terrifying Night with Afghanistan’s Only Female Warlord”, and Berehulak’s “They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals”, I learned how to read a text, break it into the main idea of each section, and then piece together what the article is about. Another goal I successfully achieved is participating in online and conference discussions about writing. This goal is another big goal for me since this is my first time taking a writing class online. I am so used to being able to communicate and share ideas face to face with other people in my class that I was nervous to take an online course like this. I really liked the fact that there were many discussions where we could receive feedback from other classmates. A final goal that I feel like I achieved is learning to reflect on writing practices to improve them. During my usual writing or other English courses, I never really had the chance to sit down and truly reflect on what I wrote about, how I felt, as well as changes I would have made. I liked the fact that we had the chance to reflect on our writing because it gave us the chance to correct mistakes on our future writings as well as make them stronger.

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The way this W131 class was designed was new and interesting to me. I loved that instead of being given a list of topics to write about, we got to choose our own. Specifically, I loved the immersion experience and film review. I was able to choose a topic I was passionate about and wanted to know more about. This made me feel excited to turn in assignments for the class instead of dreading it. During the film review, I was able to watch a documentary that related to my immersion experience and then make a review that educated people on the film. Through this, I was able to achieve the goal of shaping, revising, and editing writing to meet the concerns of purpose and audience. I found I target audience whom I felt would benefit from reading the film review as well as watching the film, and it helped me to learn how to direct my writing towards a target audience. During the immersion experience writing section, I was able to learn new ideas on how to improve my writing such as how to introduce papers using in-media res, how to integrate ICE-ICE, and how to correctly cite sources. Through all of this, I was able to focus on a topic that interested me which made learning the rest of the factors fun and interesting. Most importantly, I learned how to revise writings and create a WIX website which was really fun. Below is an example of how I revised a section during my overview. I added updated pictures, an abstract to explain what the writing piece is about, and I added more details.

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Overall, W131 helped me to acknowledge and correct some of the most prominent issues I had with reading and writing. I was able to learn new tactics while improving my reading and writing. Even though I took this class as dual credit in high school without realizing it, it felt like an entirely different experience and I am taking away a lot more beneficial information. As I’m finishing one of the last writing pieces for W131, I know this class will help me during my future writing courses, and I am excited to apply the information I learned.

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Works Cited:

Chick, Nancy. “Metacognition.” Vanderbilt University, Vanderbilt University, 27 Mar. 2020, cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/metacognition/.

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