Reflective Letter
This final reflective letter allows you to gain some critical distance from your own work. You can think of all the writing you've done this semester as "data" or "evidence." You should look at everything you've collected to help you consider and articulate where you are as a writer. Through the act of reflection, we can understand more about our progress, what we understand, and what we need to work on. So, with this reflective letter, you are taking a step back, looking at all you've produced this semester, and selecting evidence that helps to explain where you are as a writer.
This reflective letter is your opportunity to explain what has challenged you this semester, what your successes have been, and to introduce me to the work you have compiled in this portfolio. You also need to explain what revisions you have made to your Creative Nonfiction essay and why.
Requirements
- The letter should be the last thing you write for this portfolio. The portfolio should generate ideas for this letter - not the other way around.
- The focus of your letter should be on your work, not on me, the course, or classmates. Of course, if these subjects come up as part of your discussion of your work that is fine. This reflective letter is not a critique of me, the class, or your classmates.
- The letter needs to explain what revisions you made to your Exploratory (since the draft you turned in to me) and why. Be specific - include examples from your revision to support the claims you make.
- The letter should address your experience of the whole-class workshop, and how your peer review skills have evolved over the semester. What are your strengths? Weaknesses? How has being involved in the workshop shaped your understanding of writing?
- Your letter should touch on all aspects of writing you've done in the class - it should explain how the work in this writing portfolio exemplifies your engagement in all aspects of this class.
Suggestions
- A successful reflective letter for this writing portfolio will be about 3 pages single-spaced. You can organize the letter any way you choose. The following questions are suggested topics - you do not have to answer all of these questions, and you are free to discuss issues outside of these questions:
- How have the different types of writing (forums, writing journals, peer review, proposals, annotated bib., essays) in this class worked together to help you evolve as a writer?
- What risks did you take?
- What has been your most important work in this class?
- What challenges have you faced in this course? How did you deal with these challenges?
- What are some strengths and weaknesses that you notice appearing often in your writing?
- How has your thinking, about writing, reading, or research changed throughout the semester? What accounts for this change?
- What have you learned about the relationship between inquiry, research, writing, and your peers?
- Has your awareness of audience evolved since we began the semester? Explain.
- Have your ideas about research changed at all? Explain.
- How have your ideas about revision changed? Explain, and give examples.
- What questions do you now have, about writing, research, your topic, reading, etc.?
- Whatever you choose to discuss, support assertions you make about your writing with specific examples from your writing throughout the semester.
What not to do:
- Don't feel you have to create a dramatic narrative of how much you've changed in a semester. Writing is something you work at your entire life - and it's often a very slow process.
- Don't be a salesman. Recognizing weaknesses and shortcomings are a sign of an in-depth, honest reflection. If you've worked hard, it will show.