OVERVIEW Reflection is an important part of learning how to write not only in the academic context but in any field that requires carefully considered communication. Reflection helps us to understand why we might have made decisions in our writing and what those decisions might reveal about our ways of thinking about, and initially approaching, writing. We can then use this insight to gain greater control over the writing that we produce. DIRECTIONS In this Writer’s Journal, you will have the opportunity to think about your own reflective processes and practices. To help you in this reflection, please respond to the following questions: - What do you think might be gained from reflecting on a completed piece of writing? What might reflection help you understand about your rhetorical decisions or your writing process? - In what ways do you think reflective writing differs from other types of writing? - What are some ways that you might reflect on the writing you do for this course? Where and how would you do this reflection? - Which of the WPA Outcomes does reflective writing seem to relate most directly to and how? Be sure to be as detailed and thorough as possible, and use examples to help explain your response. From reflecting on a completed piece of writing, we could review the process of our writing and have a rethinking on the question that whether we use a prorper structure and stragety to response our targeted readers' concerning and attract their interests in a proper way.
During the reflecting of our composition, we could read our works again and get the flow of ideas. Usually, at the first time, we write freely and write whatever in our brains on the paper. However, these ideas and examples are not well organised, although they may be related to the topic. Of course, we could hardly consider who the readers are, what they hope to see and their way of thinking when we are focusing on the content of our works. Therefore, some logical mistakes and unappropriate arrangements may be easily found through such kind of reflection. In my opinion, the aspects the reflection could help us on our rhetorical decisions include:
Frankly speaking, I have little ideas about the types of writing before because I am also an English learner right now, so I search on the Internet. The types include Expository writing, Descriptive Writing, Narrative writing, Persuasive writing. After knowing these types, I can say that the most important difference of reflective writing from others is that reflective writing is a new writing which is written by the author himself and based on one former writing of the same author. However, in Expository writing, the author intends to inform, explain, describe or define their subject to the readers. In Descriptive Writing, writers use a lot of great visual words to help the readers see the person, place or thing they are writing about. As Narrative writing, it is very common in novels, poetry and biographies. At last, Persuasive writing takes on the opinion of the writer or issue the writer is writing for. * For the writings I do for this course, in my opinion, I could do reflective thinking after a whole working package or a whole essay finished and write one refelctive writing when I think is neccessary or when it is required. I could put these writings on my website or on the discussion board to let my classmates and the tutor to read them. The Outcome 3 (Process) of WPA Outcomes is highly related to the reflective writing. It mentioned that "Reflect on the development of composing practices and how those practices influence their work" and "Use composing processes and tools as a means to discover and reconsider ideas". In reflective writing, we could refect the arrangement of the composition and this is actually a process or a tool that to be used to make our writing better. * SOURCE: http://www.teach-nology.com/themes/lang_arts/typesofwriting/
0 Comments
People tend to mean a wide variety of things when they refer to “The Learning Process.” Developmental psychologists, educational researchers, even sports coaches can have different definitions and conditions of the “learning process.” These varying definitions can enrich our understanding of learning in general and learning how to write in particular. This reflection will involve two parts, a discussion, and a writer’s journal. Part I – Reflect and Respond to the questions about “The Learning Process.” Part II – Reflect and Submit your writer’s journal reflection to “The Learning Process.” What does the term “learning process” mean to you? How does one learn according to your understanding? Where does your sense (or definition) of “the learning process” come from? Please give these questions some thought; share your reflections with your classmates, read what they have to say, and then respond to the posts of 1 or 2 of your peers. A typical post is 1 or 2 short paragraphs. The learning process, in my opinion, is a period of time you spend to obtain a speical area of knowledge or a special technique. During this period, you will get acess to a variety of learning materials, obtain the ideas or the guidelines from these materials, understand these ideas and guidelines and practice them in your daily life or some special circumstances. According my understanding, one learn from materials or other ones' sharing, understand them and practice what they have learned. Only through these steps could one person learn what he or she what to learn successfully.
However, I was also inspired by reviewing other people's opinions and the teacher's comments to this question. BellaDD used the example of how people learn to fix the pipes to show us the process of learning. To conclude, he give us four items, 1)Find a topic, 2)Get information about this topic, 3)See what others have to say/do about this topic and 4) Participate in it yourself. The using of examples and her short and clear conclusions were convincing. Some other people mentioned that learning process is a never ending process, from ancient to now and to the future for the human being, from birth to death for a person. This was also a good point to the characteristics of learning process. In Elzettte's comments, she said that learning came from repetition. She also quoted her mother's words "earn something not just to remember it, but to KNOW it. " It is true in my opinion because I learn the rap song from Ed shreen by over 100 times repetition. At first, I could not speak very fast no mention to sing the lyrics with the fast pace of the music. However, the situation is improved significantly after a long time of repetition and practising. In hamarek(staff)'s reply to Langers365, she said that "failure tends to make us feel uncomfortable, and as we age, we try to avoid situations that make us feel uncomfortable. Failing is a great practice, it makes us vulnerable and shows us what we need to learn. To embrace this step in the learning process can help any learner grow". This also made me to rethink the failure I have experienced and what I have learned from my failure before. My sense of learning process comes from my personal learning practise both during my study period and my working stage. I should mention that I have tried a variety of ways of learning for a couple of years. Before my colledge, I, as an ordinary student in China, got a traditional way of education, during which the teacher and the textbooks play dominate roles. Students seldom asked questions and had few opportunity to communicate with each other especially in the classroom. Right now, I am participating online courses and joining a online community to learn English writing. This is a totally different way of learning when compares with the Chinese school education. Furthermore, during my working time, sometimes I just try to learn some techniques or finish some tasks by informal learning progress as soon as possible which include some personal web searching or the guidence from my friends or workmates. And now, I can also say that some of my sense of learning process also come from my review from other people's opinions about this topic. At last, I hope this essay helps me to build a deeper understanding of learning process and throng this online course, a totally different learning environment from my former experience, I could improve my writing and critical thiking skills, both in English and my native language, step by step. - What do you find surprising about the course outcomes?
- What do you find confusing about the course outcomes? - What do the course outcomes tell you about academic writing, and how is this different from or similar to writing you do in other contexts of your life? Be sure to be as detailed and thorough as possible, and use examples to help explain your response. When I first read the course's outcomes, I was surprised by the number of items at the first glance. There were four main outcomes for this course and each of them contained four to seven smaller items. In addtion to some basic pricinples raltated to the composition, such as Rhetorical and conventional knowledge, the goals of this course also included writing process and critical thinking, which were easy to be ignored during our daily practice and my former learning about the English writing. At last, habits of mind were also be introduced in the page of course outcome. These were also not traditional knowledge which should be included in a writing course, but vital to our future success. After reading these introductions, I had a deeper understanding about the content of this course and value the following practise woule bring to me. Frankly speaking, I was also a little bit confused about the above content. In which way this course could teach us so much knowledge in such a short time? What kind of practise should we do in order to achieve so many outcomes? Research suggest that people's mind are difficult to be changed when they become adults. In our daily life, we can find that few people could . Therefore, whether could we tranform our orignial habits of minds through this course? When I preparing for my IELTS test, I found that the writing part is the most difficult one. My instinct tole me that I should remember a large number of words, sentences and paragraphs. However, it seems that I am a bad learner in terms of memory. So, I also hope to find the answer for the role of memorising in writing learning. Is it very important for this course and realising the outcomes? What is more, when I try to read the outcomes in detail, I do not find any words related to the vacabulary, collations, cohension, grammar and the technique about focus on the subject. My further question, or I can say confusion, is that whether the aspects I mentioned earlier are not so important during this course or we can achieve these naturally after we obtain the outcomes of the course. The course outcomes also let me pay attention to the conventions, gengres and rhetorical knowledge when I try to finish an academic writing in the future. In Outcome 4, we can find that we should "practice applying citation conventions systematically" in our own work. In my opinion, this is vital important when we doing an academic essay. We can always find the well-structured citations in academic reports and published papers. Furthermore, when we talk about the rhetorical knowlege, there are significantly differences between writing academic essays and other literature articles and bussiness letters. Academic works do have their own languge. On the contrary, it is obvious that critical thinking and a proper writing process will be needed whenever and whatever we write. In conclusion, the outcomes of the course give me a suprise in terms of its number and broadly coverning. This inspires me about the English writing style and some rules which should be highly regardly in the composition no matter when we writing academic ones or other kinds of writings. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |