Adam Fry

Gregory Graham
Composition 2
5 May 2016
WPA Reflective Essay
In my two semesters of Composition, both of my classes have used the WPA outcomes in
a major way to help us become better writers and better scholars. In my second semester of
Composition, there was a large presence of critical thinking, reading and composing. We had to
do research for our papers, read out of our book and do summaries, and then compose well
written papers. For every written assignment we had, Professor Graham put a large emphasis on
using our sources respectfully but to our full advantage. For our very first assignment about the
morality of eating meat, we were challenged with expressing our own opinion in scholarly way
while integrating the opposing opinions. I personally took the stance that there was no moral
issue with eating meat, but that their was an issue with the production of meat. Before this
assignment, I honestly had no clue about some of the major issues in the meat industry. By
applying our critical thinking, reading and composing WPA outcomes, it helped me to learn so
much pertaining to the meat industry. In this paper, and our final paper, we used what is called
the sandwich method to integrate our sources into our papers. With the sandwich method, we
first opened with our voice, then added the information from the source, closed with our voice
again. This method helped us as the writer to not lose our voice in the paper but to also allow
credit to the source for the information we used.
In composition 2, we used the book titled They Say, I say. It helped as well with using
sources in our paper in an appropriate way. It helped us voice our opinion while backing it with

facts from others. After our first assignment, we moved on to our argumentative essay. We
started with an annotated bibliography, which really helped with writing my paper because we
had to first break down our sources and summarize them so when we went back to write our
paper, we knew what each source contained and could easily dive in. After the bibliography, we
began writing our argumentative essay. I chose to write about using technology in the classroom
to involve all students, even those with disabilities. With this major paper, it took quite a bit of
trial and error, many drafts, and alot of research. In class, we used our classmates to help us
better our papers by reviewing each other's writings and communicated our likes and dislikes.
After Composition 2, I find that I have much more knowledge in doing research now and wont
panic at the first sign of a research assignment in my classes to come.