Metacognitive Reflection Paper 4f1m3t

WRT310 Karoline Karlsen Zack De Piero 12/01/1014

Metacognitive Reflection Paper As this is my first quarter at Antioch—but also my first school-experience since I finished high school in spring 2013—I found Academic writing somewhat frightening. First of all, my English have not been a part of my education since I was 17. I have never attended a university before, and having a class where I was actually going to write—in a foreign language—in an academic way made me a little nervous. However, it also made me curious: “What was I going to learn? Would I improve my English as much as I hoped? Would it be too hard?” After 8 weeks I can answer most of the questions that was stuck in my head. Yes, I have improved, I have learned a lot and I am more confident when it comes to my writing. What I also learned is how much I know that I do not know yet, how much I will learn about writing during my lifetime and that I will never stop learning. In our first assignment—to write an “exploratory” social justice paper—I learned not only about the writing, but also what social justice is. I now know how important it is to be aware about these issues, not only for individuals, but the whole world as a society. Also, how important it is to use rhetorical strategies—ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos— to reach your audience the way you want. As defined in one of the course readings

Understanding Rhetoric: Ethos refers to the writer or speaker. The reader wants to know that the writer is well informed, have expertise on the subject and is trustworthy. Pathos is about the use of emotion in a debate or argument in all types of writing. By using Pathos you can get the power to convince the audience to make decisions and take action. Logos refers to the logical, the facts or statistics to a claim or an argument. Kairos is about the opportunity for an argument, the combination of recognizing and creating the right time and place when making the argument. I have heard about these rhetorical strategies before, but I have never truly understood them completely. Now I do, and I understand the importance of each of them; how important they are in writing if you want to affect your audience. Now, when I read something— anything—I notice how the writer has used these strategies and I reflect over why it is important in the specific writing. Reading the chapters in: Everything is an argument taught me a lot about writing. Arguments are around us in everything we do. An argument can be any texts that express a point of view; it can be written, spoken or visual. The importance of arguing is not always about winning (which is what I thought before I started this class.) It can also be to inform, make decisions, explore, propose, or meditate. An academic argument can easily be identified by the way it uses sources and builds arguments from research done by experts and are also reported in articles or books. It is all about the carefully structured research, that when I write a proposal in an argument I should always back it up with facts and research.

Before taking this class, I had the comprehension that good writers where born good writers. That they just knew how to write the perfect paper, the perfect article, or the perfect book, without ever having to write a bad first draft or to brainstorm and get ideas from other people to be able to write as good. After reading the: Shitty first draft article, I know that I was wrong. By writing those shitty first drafts I will be able to get everything down on the paper. This can lead to clarity among all my ideas and just get something—anything—down on the paper. This is how I start writing my papers now, and if I am stuck it helps to know that “very few writers really know what they are doing until they have done it.” These are just some examples of what I have learned in the course reading, but also from class discussions. What we have been trough in the class has also helped me improve as a writer. I think the writing tips we have every week is a great way to advance my writing; careful explanations, examples, and questions are effective tools to make it all understandable. I think the use of italics was a great writing tip. I barely used it, but now I think about it all the time. I use it when I want to make a word stand out, to make the reader aware of what I think is the most important word in the sentence. The “Oxford comma” has also helped me, before this class I have never even heard about it. To use the comma before the word ‘and’ in the end of a list is a great way to clarify the meaning of a sentence and make the last word as important as the rest of them. The last and most memorable writing tip in the Academic Writing class for me is the use of Hyphens (-) and Dashes (—). Hyphens are used to combine multiple words into one grammatical unit. Dashes are the ones I have never used before, now I use it all the

time, even when it comes to non-school assignments. It is used as a way to add more detailed information within the middle of a sentence. By showing us videos of how it works helped me a lot with understanding the use of it. One of the class activities/discussions we had was very helpful: what “argument” is each beer bottle making? The activity made the class discuss what the beer bottle actually wanted to say about the beer. It made it easier for me to understand the whole argument subject on a higher-level than just reading about it in the articles. It is also very helpful for me to work in a group. To discuss the reading together and then come back as a whole class and present the most important takeaways in the papers. It is very helpful to get someone else to read your writing, the artifacts, the interview questions and the research paper. It is a terrific way to cooperate and get ideas from other people, and I know for a fact that it has helped me a long way in my writing process. I have improved these past weeks, and it is first now, when I sit down and reflect about all these things, that I really understand how effective this class has been for me. I have to add that the Metacognitive reflection paper is an incredible way to open your eyes and really think about what you have learned. I have struggled some, especially with the social justice “”. At first, no one would get beck to me and then I did not get any artifacts. But I got my interview in the end, and it turned out really good. I have struggled to find out what is actually wanted in the research paper, and how to even start. The thesis statement is something I have started to understand now, but I still think I need more practice and knowledge to be able to write a really good thesis statement.

As a conclusion I am happy to say that the Academic Writing class has given me a whole new understanding of writing. Writing was something I have always thought about as boring, now I actually enjoy it sometimes. I still do not know all the fancy academic words, but I am on my way and I am ready for new challenges. I have learned that good writing is important in any education and career. I do not know what I want to work as when I graduate, but I know that writing is going to be an important part of it, no matter what.