Metacognitive Essay

Metacognitive Essay Through the many project builders and writing projects I had to develop for this class, I learned many things about myself as a reader, a writer, and a reviser. The course objectives were completely relevant to the assignments in this class and I feel that I was able to accomplish all the learning objectives. The strengths and weaknesses I learned about myself as a reader, writer, and reviser came from forming an analytical essay on genre conventions for a specific audience. Few strengths I learned about myself was that I was able to stick to the subject without straying and was able to find conventions in genres. Some weaknesses I found while writing these essays were that I had a hard time expanding on an argument which made my essays shorter than it should be and I was not able to form rough drafts. Through this portfolio, I was able to strengthen my weaknesses and stabilize my strengths. While reading, writing, and revising many writings, I matured in all aspects. As a reader, I was able to learn the many ways which writers write and learn why they use such conventions for their purpose and their audience. With this teaching, I thought about what I should focus on and used the previous readings as an example. I was able to learn what I used as a reader to improve myself as a writer and follow through the purpose of why I was writing this essay or paragraph. For example in WP2, I was not clear on the values that the economic discourse community has. While revising for this portfolio, I was able to make each topic sentence clear for each paragraph about what values are needed like credibility, accuracy, and objectivity. I found out that in all my writing, I was not very clear about my thesis and arguments. I spotted this while revising both my WP1 and WP2, so I was able to fix that. Upon revising my writing, I also realized that some sentences did not flow or did not have enough explanations to back up my thesis or argument. I had to expand on an idea and be consistent with the idea I was arguing for or against. The learning objective in this class was clear and through repetitive analysis, I was able to read like a writer. It did not occur to me when I was reading anything that the author specifically used certain words or structure for their genre purpose whether it was for a new article, a horror story, or a cartoon. Therefore as a reader, we learn to be better writers. In the reading that was assigned “How to Read Like a Writer” by Bunn, he thoroughly uses examples on why a genre must be consistent with its conventions. For example, a short story rarely has an extensive or argument. Also, he explains that when writing or reading about any genre, the purpose and the intended audience must be in sync with the conventions. When reading about Cinderella, there are simple words to tell the fairytale. Because fairytales are for younger kids that ends happily ever after, the author considers those factors in mind to pursue his purpose as a storyteller of the good and rare moments of the world. With the audience and purpose in mind, conventions of specific genres benefit writers to analyze any piece of writing extensively. Through the past 10 weeks, I learned many things about myself, especially as a thinker. Because it takes a thinker to create any form of writing, I realized that I was not a creative and productive thinker. When I had a piece of writing assigned to me, I had a hard time brainstorming about the writings I would have to generate. Because of this, my rough draft was scattered in an unorganized manner. As it came to work on my portfolio that’s worth a chunk of my grade, I decided to deeply analyze my paper and I had to start a new paper with the old final draft as a manual. The comments really helped me to add on to my writing because I was not able to fully achieve the mandatory 4 pages in both my WP1 and WP2. My ideal writing process would be to brainstorm and be given an example essay of the essay I have to write. With this example, I will be able to know the structure and format I have to write in. After I brainstorm, I would use this example essay to generate my essay. I have a bad habit of not revising my essays, so I would like to be better at revising my essays. In this class, I have learned things about myself as a writer as well as the learning objectives. I learned that I have a bad starting point which ends up in a shaky final draft and because I’m not very prompt with my assignments, my writings looked very rushed. The learning objectives I learned in this class stabilized my understanding of conventions in a genre. Also, I learned that a lot of things can be a genre. I had no idea that writing genres involved articles, lists, and more. The only genres I knew of were movie genres such as romantic, comedy, horror, action, and more. Even after this class, I intend on reading more books that help me to become a better writer. Because reading is a support system in becoming a better writer, I intend to read some classic novels that provide an moral insight. In addition to this, I hope to be able to achieve the writing process I want without procrastinating. In order to achieve these goals, I plan to manage my time and read on a daily basis or constantly. In the near future, if I take another writing class, I hope my writing will be strengthened through my writing and aptly utilize the mechanisms I learned about conventions in a genre in that class.