Overall Critical Reflection

In English 1040, I have learned a lot about how I can improve as a writer and improve my writing through research, organization, and revision. Before this class, I mainly focused on completing assignments and making sure I answered all the questions. Now I understand that writing is more than just putting information on a page, it is also about understanding your audience, organizing your ideas, and ensuring your writing has a clear purpose.

Another really helpful thing about this class was that all the short assignments added up to major paper one. As a Professional Golf Management major I was able to look up a field I was interested in. It was easier to complete these assignments since I already wanted to go into that field when I graduate from the school. I was able to create an annotated bibliography and look up sources that were credible; I also completed a textual analysis of a type of writing that is used in the golf world. Because of this it helped make the writing process easier because I had a head start on my research and ideas.

Another thing that this class helped me with was revision in my writing. In previous classes I had only left time at the end to look for spelling or grammatical errors and then submitted my paper. Over this course I learned that revision is not only catching errors but also to look at paragraph organization, continuity of ideas, and to add more information when necessary. In my textual analysis for example, I had to add some more content to explain the differences between the academic article and the internship webpage rather than just mentioning the differences.

I also found feedback and looking at samples of writing useful because it gave me a better idea of what good writing is. It showed me how much introduction and topic sentence or paragraph development and supporting information is necessary in a paragraph, and it made me more aware of the flaws in my own writing, most of all when I had to expand or clarify my ideas.

The structure habits of mind also relate to my learning in this class. Curiosity helped me research various pieces of Professional Golf Management, persistence helped me push through the sometimes-difficult academic articles, flexibility enabled me to adapt my writing for various audiences, and metacognition allowed me to recognize my strengths and weaknesses as a writer.

English 1040 has ultimately increased my confidence in my writing skills. While there still are areas I can improve with more analysis, I now have a better understanding of how to go about doing that. Those skills will translate to my profession in the golf industry as well and will aid me in all my future writing.

I think that I received a B in English 1040 because I put forth effort in my assignments but, they were late, I improved my writing in this class, and I showed that I know the importance of research, rhetorical analysis, and revision.