Peer Reviews for Reflective Cover Letter

Paulina Ayala

Loretta Kennedy

English 10

29 November 2021

My Reflective Essay: How I have improved as a writer

Dear Professor Kennedy,

When I first started class English 10, I thought writing would be as simple as it was in High School. But I was wrong, I have learned that writing in college goes more in-depth than it would in High School. At first, I thought I was going to fail the class but overtime I learned how to be a better writer. Now that this semester is ending, I can say that I have improved so much in writing. In my reflection essay I am going to show how I have improved in writing through process and analyzing. The way I’m going to show it, is through three writing assignments, Writing Project #1, 2, and 3.

In the beginning of the semester, I struggled a lot because I wouldn't even have a clue on how to start my first essay and I would have this mindset that it has to be perfect the first time. In the beginning of the semester I had to write, writing project #1. But on the way of writing my first writing project, I was taught that it’s okay to have drafts. In the beginning of the semester, I had another Professor who taught me that having drafts is okay and that it’s okay for them to be terrible because that’s the whole point of drafts. The more you revise the better your writing gets. She also taught me that sometimes a way to start an essay is just to write down something, once you get into the writing you can either revise or change what you first had written down. She taught me this before she left. This is how my process started as a writer.

Writing project #2 is a Rhetorical Analysis about a discourse community that I was part of called JROTC. Which stands for The Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) which is a four-year program that is taken during High School is a discourse community. A discourse community which is defined by Dan M Melzer, is “a community of people who share the same goals, the same methods of communicating, the same genres, and the same lexis (specialized language).” The Rhetorical Analysis I used for writing project #2 is an analysis called STRR which is a four-step analysis that establishes the pitch, complaint, moment, and audience. What I analyzed was a recruitment video from JROTC and why it was rhetorically effective.

When I started, writing project #2 I wasn’t that great of a writer but I had an idea on how to being it. I started writing down what I wanted to say. I started to do research on what type of advertisement JROTC could have that could fulfill the STRR analysis which is when I found the “JROTC Recruitment video.” Then I started to see how the “JROTC Recruitment video”, could fulfill the areas of the STRR analysis. For example, for the area of complaint, I stated, “The complaint of the video is in the title itself. Like I said before, JROTC has helped so many young people. JROTC has been around since 1916 and has been remarkably successful. To keep it alive, there is a need for members. The complaint would be that because it has been so successful it needs to be kept alive. For that, there need to be members. Which is the whole point of this recruitment video. It is to gain members.” Complaint means what the discourse community is worried about. I talked about how JROTC is worried about not being able to keep a great community alive. After that, I started to write down whatever came to my mind and that’s how I started. Once I was done, I revised and revised until I was satisfied with my work. My first writing project is what taught me how to start my essay without stressing and helped me improve.

Writing project #3 is about, “Taking a position on a problem of a discourse community”. For writing project #3 I did the same process I did from what I had learned in writing project #1 which helped me a lot on how to get started. When I started this writing project, I saw it as a way to be able to propose a solution to the problem. Even though JROTC is an amazing community that has impacted so many young people’s lives, the problem is that JROTC’s staff are being overworked. I talked about how being overworked can be dangerous in a student’s life. For example, in my essay, “The problems of being overworked as a High Schooler” I talked about, “High Schoolers being overworked could lead to health issues due to stress”. I talked on how stress could lead to a hypertension, stroke, and a heart attack. I wanted to persuade my audience to take a stand with me. How I was able to do that is from what I learned in writing project #2 which was the rhetorical analysis STRR. I realized if my essay could fulfill the STRR areas then it could make my essay rhetorical effective. The pitch was what I want the audience to believe. I wanted the audience to believe that JROTC should reduce the amount of work on their staff because they are already getting so much work for their 6 or 7 class and students being overworked can lead to many health issues in a young person’s life. The complaint was what I was worried about. What I was worried about was that students were being put into risk just to learn leadership skills from being part of the staff. The moment in my essay was the present because JROTC is a community that is still going on and they are still giving huge amounts of work to their staff. The target audience was for JROTC instructors and students.

All three writing projects have helped me grow so much as writer. The first writing project helped me with my process of writing and how to get started without stressing about it. It also helped me with learning how to revise and improve my writing the more drafts, I make. The second teaches me with how to analysis through the rhetorically analyzation of STRR. For the last writing project, I was able to use what I learned for writing project number 1 and 2 to be able to write writing project number 3. Over time I was able to improve so much in my writing.