Adam Shewell

ENG 101
September 28, 2017

My Theory of Writing

Writing is an individual experience, unique to the writer and based on their feelings, beliefs and
ideas. During this course, I have learned many things about writing and have developed a new
understanding of what writing is and how I can improve my writing processes. I understand the
act of writing to be a way sharing my thoughts, beliefs, and ideas to the world. In the course of
this essay, I will explore this theory of writing through a discussion of my identity as a writer and
thinker, a reflection upon my writing in terms of the course outcomes, and an exploration of how
this course has prepared me for future writing endeavors.

Myself as a Writer
There have been many projects throughout this course, including the writing projects and
writers journals, many of which I have had struggles with, whether it be the rough and final
drafts of the writing projects or answering the questions the writers journals ask. It is always
hard to come up with ideas when writing. Sometimes I would have ideas, but I would have no
idea how to create a sentence around those ideas. I even had a difficult time coming up with what
to base my autoethnography and ethnography on. When I first started brainstorming what I
should write my autoethnography about, I spent around two hours trying to find something that
relates to me. I came up with a few ideas, such as, origami and how it has shaped me in some
way. I also thought of how reading has benefited my life in many ways. But, I eventually reached
video games and how they have shaped my life and how beneficial they are. Sometimes I may
not have to struggle as much, such as when I had to observe and study a place I visit frequently
for writers journal #13. I had no trouble coming up with an idea of where to go, and what to
observe considering I walk through the A.S.U. Polytechnic campus at least 5 times a week since
my school is located on its campus. However, there have been times where I have had trouble
when uploading my writing projects to my Weebly. After putting them on the site I would
always get a pop up saying Document converting. Sorry, we cant display the document., but it
would always fix itself after a day (See Figure 1). I have been having that problem with every
writing project after writing project #1.

Additionally, I also had a hard time reading some of my peers writing. Sometimes I would have
to read writing from people whose native language was not English, which were hard to read.
Some of their writing just had mistakes. For example, one of my peers, I believe, meant to title
their piece Do Not Lie, however, put Do Not Lay instead and that threw me off. Other times
I would get some people who made some mistakes in their grammar and I would have to read
some of their sentences more than once to understand the meaning.

Throughout this course I have had many accomplishments recently with the new skills I have
learned. Writing the autoethnography and the ethnography have been quite the learning
experience for me. My rough drafts for both assignments were not my best work, though that is
the same for everyone, but people still enjoyed reading them and learning about video games
from a different perspective. Even with all the errors I made people still loved reading them. My
autoethnography final draft was far better than my rough draft. Using the knowledge I gained
from this course, I was able to fix many of my mistakes, such as, changing more that to more
than, otherwise my sentence would have made no sense. Another skill I learned was how to
provide feedback to other writers that benefited their needs and writing process. For example, I
was able to help others correct grammar and spelling errors, as well as formatting problems on
their electronic portfolio sites. I learned how to give specific examples of solutions and provide
feedback in a way that was constructive and did not make them feel bad.

Figure 1
My abilities as a writer and a reader are not perfect. I tend to make a lot of errors every time I
write something and stutter most of the time I read something out loud, though I am a pretty
good silent reader. Nonetheless, my abilities have had some growth in the past few weeks.
Recently I have been able to write a decent rough draft with only a few errors, and I have learned
to read my writing out loud to help me fix my grammar errors. On the other hand, when it comes
to critical thinking I can generate large amounts of ideas, though I always seem to have trouble
creating sentences that revolve around those ideas. That is just one of my many struggles I face
when writing, as well as how to present the writing and to who. Additionally, many of my other
abilities have grown over the past few weeks as well. My observational skills have improved to
where I can notice almost every little mistake I make in my writing. Furthermore, when it came
to observing a specific image for writers journal #14, I was able to observe the image with more
detail and notice things that I would have not been able to without improving my observational
skills, which this course provided an opportunity to do. My descriptive skills also improved
during this course. Before this course I would have problems with either being too descriptive
with too many words or not being descriptive enough with not enough details. However, after
completing some of this courses assignments, my descriptive ability has grown to the point
where I can describe something with around the right amount of detail required for the
assignment or to create an image in the readers mind.

Outcomes and Habits of Mind

This course has four major categories of learning outcomes, which are Rhetorical Knowledge;
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Composing; Processes; and Knowledge of Conventions. My
writing has developed in each of these areas. In this section, I will focus on one point in each
area, starting with Rhetorical Knowledge. In this course, I have learned that there are many ways
that writing can be presented with todays technology. Anyone can read an authors writing
anywhere in the world, such as, the portfolios we made for ENG 101. Using an online format
like the portfolio, a writer can include multimodal elements in their writing. I included photos in
most of my writing projects to help illustrate my points and enrich my writing and the experience
of the audience.

Additionally, it takes a large amount of critical thinking to generate ideas for composing writing
and to interpret writing when reading. Many of the writers journals included readings that were
a crucial part, and required critical thinking to generate answers to the questions. For example, I
had to learn to read the prompts carefully to understand the purpose of a writing assignment or
project and to determine what I was supposed to write about. Critical thinking can help one come
up with ideas on how to organize their writing in a way that is easy for the readers to understand.
For example, many of our prompts included language that helped me decide how to organize my
writing and make it flow smoothly, while also grouping ideas together in a coherent manner.

However, that alone cannot help one fully when it comes to presenting their ideas. A write must
understand that writing is a process and includes many steps. A writer may have to go back and
revise a piece of writing many times before the final product reveals itself. One important
process I have come to understand is peer review. Through peer review, students can give other
students advice about their writing and even help some organize and improve their writing. I
myself have plenty of ideas, but other may have better ideas that can be helpful. Peer review has
helped me improve my writing significantly. Furthermore, giving feedback to others is a great
way to help others improve their writing. Even though some might not use the feedback they
receive, it still is a great way to help others. For example, I received feedback that was helpful on
my rough draft for Writing Project #3 (See Figure 2). There have even been some pretty creative
ideas that I have received from my feedback. One person may think a piece of writing is
amazing, while another could have ways to improve it. So, it is important to try to get feedback
from several different sources.

Despite having great ideas, and getting feedback from others, if there are mistakes in writing
conventions, they can distract the reader and obscure the true purpose of the piece of writing.
Thus, it is important for a writer to remember the rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling,
while also keeping in mind linguistic structures. During this course, I realized that I often make
mistakes in grammar and punctuation. Through the peer review process and revising my writing
many times, I was able to improve my understanding of grammar and punctuation, and make my
writing clearer to my audience. I also improved my understanding of how to use citations
professionally in my writing. For example, in Writing Project #1, I included many citations with
mistakes. By revising and composing additional drafts, I was able to fix those mistakes and
better support my writing with correct citations.
 Figure 2
As part of this course, we focused on habits of mind, which include creativity, openness,
engagement, persistence, responsibility, flexibility and metacognition. One of the habits of mind
I developed in this course was flexibility. Specifically, I developed flexibility in uploading
documents to my electronic portfolio. In more than one instance, when I uploaded a document, it
would show Document converting and a spinning wheel, and then never display the
document, or would display the document much, much later than expected. In some cases, it
wouldnt display the document until the next day (see Figure 1). In those instances, I was able to
use the technology to add a link to download the document as a way for my audience to view the
document despite the technological problems. I also developed persistence while working on the
writing projects. At first, I wasnt interested in writing such long essays or doing long periods of
research. But after finding ways to relate my writing to my own interests, I was able to increase
my focus and finish my projects on time.

The Future of My Writing

While taking ENG 101, my knowledge of writing and the process of which people go through
has grown. Before, I only understood a few of the aspects of writing and its process. However,
now my new knowledge of writing and its process can help me in the future on future
assignments. In the future, my writing will be able to relate to a specific audience more than
before. No matter the assignment, the knowledge I learned from ENG 101 will help me solve
problems and succeed. Additionally, I can use the knowledge in many ways, it could even help
me at my job in the future. There will be times in the future where my job may require me to
write a report or something similar. My new understanding will allow me to be more specific in
my writing and will have less errors. Additionally, if I wanted to even write a book, my new
understanding that I gained from ENG 101 will help me generate new and more creative ideas
with a specific audience in mind.

Writing has so many aspects to it that there is more than one way a writer can share their
opinions and ideals with readers. Additionally, todays technology continues to increase that
number every day and even evolve old ways as well. Sure, some writers will face struggles and
challenges, but peers can always help them move passed those obstacles. However, writing will
always continue to evolve so ones understanding of it will always change at some point. Writers
will always learn new things in terms of writing so their understanding of writing could change
or improve in some way. My understanding may change later on, however, it will be similar to
my understanding now. Writing can always be improved upon. Perhaps I can share my new
understanding with readers in a new way.