Reflecting Upon the Quarter
… and before we knew it, the quarter was over. The hope is that over the course of ten weeks (and after some more student loans) one acquires new knowledge that can be carried on throughout the rest of one’s time in university, and eventually into life beyond. This being said, I am very delighted to say that this ten-week period in the University Writing Program has been a time of growth on my end based on my progress within each of the UWP1 learning outcomes. In this reflective piece, I will be highlighting my growth in three of these objectives: Rhetorical Knowledge, Processes, and Metacognition. Additionally, I will be using textual evidence from this portfolio to show the ways in which I’ve incorporated these outcomes into my work, and ultimately to prove that I’ve indeed attained new knowledge from the quarter.
Beginning with Rhetorical Knowledge, it’s interesting to reflect upon this area since it refers to what’s implied in a given literary work, and not otherwise stated: audience, purpose, context, mode, genre, and discourse community (UC Davis UWP, 2017). Authors will typically never directly refer to rhetoric explicitly, though I’ll say that I’ve made a point to reach out to my audience at the start of this given essay through means that are less direct. Which group of individuals do we know (and relate to all too well) whom goes through the struggle of “more student loans”? … University Students! If you’re reading this and if you managed to stumble upon this portfolio, I’ll assume that you, specifically a UC Davis student or faculty, had access to this link through some form of community (as I don’t think that this website would show up on the first page of Google.) This being said, I am writing this essay to the university community, not only because I know that those in this community will be the ones able to access and read it, but also because it pertains to topics that they encounter frequently: writing essays, reflecting upon their work, and gaining knowledge from this process. As a writer of any form of literature, it’s important to be aware of rhetoric in order to effectively deliver the intended message of a given work, and this new knowledge will help me achieve further clarity in my future writing.
Moving onto Processes, writers go through a series of steps in order to reach their final literary product. The first step in the writing process may be doing outside reading or discussing ideas with peers in order for an author to get a better idea of his or her purpose, or what he or she may wish to write about to begin with. In my Discourse Community Analysis Essay entitled “How Participation in Music Translates into Academic Success,” I began with the vague idea of wanting to write about a musical discourse community, but I wasn’t exactly sure how I would connect this community’s infrastructure to a greater idea. That’s when some classroom discussion gave me guidance. In talking to the peers around me about my potential discourse community essay idea, they gave me some cool insights and curiosities regarding how music students may transfer their musical skills into their academic lives. It was thanks to this session of class that I was able to move onto step two of this writing process: conducting research. In order to answer my essay’s thesis, “how do the genres of learning and communication presented in high school music programs set students up for success in academia?”, I needed to browse relevant articles from scholarly databases, along with conduct primary research that would give me additional perspective. These sources provided me the information needed for the third step: composing the essay. What’s really cool to me is that once I had the research done, writing the essay was cake. Seeing sources from varying disciplines come together into one literary piece was almost magical! For the “last” step, I received feedback from my peers in UWP1 and was able to apply these comments to make my writing clearer and more insightful for my audience. However, I must note that despite any of my essays’ appearances in this “final product” portfolio, no essay is ever finished due to all of the possible perspectives and criticisms that varying individuals can have towards one’s literary piece. Learning about and experiencing this writing process in UWP1 has made me more open-minded to feedback since I’ve grown aware that much of my writing is a product of outside opinion.
Lastly, in the area of Metacognition, I’ve discovered that in addition to receiving peer opinion, I must also reflect upon my own writing in order to create clear and effective literary works. As I’ve become aware of through Sandra Giles’ piece, “Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You Thinking?”, metacognition refers to the act of “thinking about your own thinking” (Giles, 1). The literary work in which I most exercised metacognition, "thinking about my own thinking", is my personal literacy narrative, “Music as Communication.” With this piece, I had to frequently take a minute to ponder messages that I wanted to convey to the reader - in Giles’ words, “think about my thinking” - and how I would present them in a clear manner. It's also worth noting that I revised this piece the most of the three essays in this portfolio due to me struggling at first to convey such clarity, and if I were to do it again, I would likely structure/initially outline this essay differently to set up my potential readers for the best possible understanding. Being aware of how rhetoric helps in creating a clear message for a perspective reader, I mention my take on rhetoric in terms of making sense of music: “Rhetorical devices provide context that hints at meaning within a piece of literature, just how changes in tempo or dynamics can exhibit an idea within a musical passage.” I’ve come to realize that metacognition and rhetoric are linked in the sense that metacognition requires analyzing one’s own thought process, and that this analyzation often develops on the basis of rhetoric, or “context.” Composing a literary work requires drawing conclusions related to and geared towards rhetoric, and metacognition is the reflection of how such a process came to be and whether or not this process is communicated clearly. My newfound awareness of the importance of self-reflection will be something that I carry with me in writing and also into other disciplines.
In conclusion, my experience in UWP1 has given me new tools to go about both composing and revising my own work, and interpreting and enjoying others’ ideas. Rhetoric serves as a basis for one’s writing process, and one “wraps up” this process by taking a step back and exercising metacognition to further clarify the message in which he or she is trying to convey. Though the quarter is complete, the formation of new ideas towards a given literary work will never be.
Beginning with Rhetorical Knowledge, it’s interesting to reflect upon this area since it refers to what’s implied in a given literary work, and not otherwise stated: audience, purpose, context, mode, genre, and discourse community (UC Davis UWP, 2017). Authors will typically never directly refer to rhetoric explicitly, though I’ll say that I’ve made a point to reach out to my audience at the start of this given essay through means that are less direct. Which group of individuals do we know (and relate to all too well) whom goes through the struggle of “more student loans”? … University Students! If you’re reading this and if you managed to stumble upon this portfolio, I’ll assume that you, specifically a UC Davis student or faculty, had access to this link through some form of community (as I don’t think that this website would show up on the first page of Google.) This being said, I am writing this essay to the university community, not only because I know that those in this community will be the ones able to access and read it, but also because it pertains to topics that they encounter frequently: writing essays, reflecting upon their work, and gaining knowledge from this process. As a writer of any form of literature, it’s important to be aware of rhetoric in order to effectively deliver the intended message of a given work, and this new knowledge will help me achieve further clarity in my future writing.
Moving onto Processes, writers go through a series of steps in order to reach their final literary product. The first step in the writing process may be doing outside reading or discussing ideas with peers in order for an author to get a better idea of his or her purpose, or what he or she may wish to write about to begin with. In my Discourse Community Analysis Essay entitled “How Participation in Music Translates into Academic Success,” I began with the vague idea of wanting to write about a musical discourse community, but I wasn’t exactly sure how I would connect this community’s infrastructure to a greater idea. That’s when some classroom discussion gave me guidance. In talking to the peers around me about my potential discourse community essay idea, they gave me some cool insights and curiosities regarding how music students may transfer their musical skills into their academic lives. It was thanks to this session of class that I was able to move onto step two of this writing process: conducting research. In order to answer my essay’s thesis, “how do the genres of learning and communication presented in high school music programs set students up for success in academia?”, I needed to browse relevant articles from scholarly databases, along with conduct primary research that would give me additional perspective. These sources provided me the information needed for the third step: composing the essay. What’s really cool to me is that once I had the research done, writing the essay was cake. Seeing sources from varying disciplines come together into one literary piece was almost magical! For the “last” step, I received feedback from my peers in UWP1 and was able to apply these comments to make my writing clearer and more insightful for my audience. However, I must note that despite any of my essays’ appearances in this “final product” portfolio, no essay is ever finished due to all of the possible perspectives and criticisms that varying individuals can have towards one’s literary piece. Learning about and experiencing this writing process in UWP1 has made me more open-minded to feedback since I’ve grown aware that much of my writing is a product of outside opinion.
Lastly, in the area of Metacognition, I’ve discovered that in addition to receiving peer opinion, I must also reflect upon my own writing in order to create clear and effective literary works. As I’ve become aware of through Sandra Giles’ piece, “Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You Thinking?”, metacognition refers to the act of “thinking about your own thinking” (Giles, 1). The literary work in which I most exercised metacognition, "thinking about my own thinking", is my personal literacy narrative, “Music as Communication.” With this piece, I had to frequently take a minute to ponder messages that I wanted to convey to the reader - in Giles’ words, “think about my thinking” - and how I would present them in a clear manner. It's also worth noting that I revised this piece the most of the three essays in this portfolio due to me struggling at first to convey such clarity, and if I were to do it again, I would likely structure/initially outline this essay differently to set up my potential readers for the best possible understanding. Being aware of how rhetoric helps in creating a clear message for a perspective reader, I mention my take on rhetoric in terms of making sense of music: “Rhetorical devices provide context that hints at meaning within a piece of literature, just how changes in tempo or dynamics can exhibit an idea within a musical passage.” I’ve come to realize that metacognition and rhetoric are linked in the sense that metacognition requires analyzing one’s own thought process, and that this analyzation often develops on the basis of rhetoric, or “context.” Composing a literary work requires drawing conclusions related to and geared towards rhetoric, and metacognition is the reflection of how such a process came to be and whether or not this process is communicated clearly. My newfound awareness of the importance of self-reflection will be something that I carry with me in writing and also into other disciplines.
In conclusion, my experience in UWP1 has given me new tools to go about both composing and revising my own work, and interpreting and enjoying others’ ideas. Rhetoric serves as a basis for one’s writing process, and one “wraps up” this process by taking a step back and exercising metacognition to further clarify the message in which he or she is trying to convey. Though the quarter is complete, the formation of new ideas towards a given literary work will never be.
Works Cited
Giles, S. L. (2010). Reflective Writing and the Revision Process:What Were You Thinking? Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, 1, 191-204. Retrieved December 9, 2017.
UC Davis UWP. (n.d.). Retrieved December 09, 2017, from http://writing.ucdavis.edu/
UC Davis UWP. (n.d.). Retrieved December 09, 2017, from http://writing.ucdavis.edu/