Emma Jones

ENGL 2250

Reflection

English 2250 helped me improve my writing. Something I want to mention, is the

discussions and peer reviews we had to do during the semester. A lot of previous

teachers would just look at the word count and make sure it met the requirements. But

in this class, we were encouraged to actually have a discussion and give critical

feedback, and that’s what we were graded on. I also liked that the teacher gave specific

feedback to our assignments, it was more personable.

When I first starting writing my memoir, I had a difficult time coming out with

descriptive wording. After reading the feedback from my peers, I was able to use their

suggestions to make my memoir better. It’s funny when you have a memory in your

head, and can remember and see every detail - and then trying to get it on to paper,

how much detail you have to add for a reader to see how you remember it.

A risk I took when writing my One-Act Play was that I’m not familiar with drama

nor have I ever written a drama piece. We had the option to create poetry or a drama

piece. I love poetry, I love to write my own, but I’ve never shared my person poetry with

anyone. So, when I tried to come up with poems for the assignment I got stuck, I didn’t

know what to write about. I decided to try the drama piece, and I think I actually did a

good job for having no experience with the subject.

I think another reason why the One-Act Play stood out to me was because of the

discussion we had to do before we started the signature assignment. The poems

weren’t like any i’ve written before. I had a hard time relating to them. But the drama

pieces we read from the textbook, made sense to me. For some reason, the One-Act

play came easier to me than poetry.

I wouldn’t say I’ve mastered this, but I have definitely improved over this course -

but writing a peer review and receiving feedback from a peer review. I get very nervous

when people are reading my work, I get embarrassed really easily. I think it helps when

you also write constructive feedback to your peers, and actually discuss with the other

person what could be better, helps. Instead of just writing “Good job”, you’re actually

telling the person what you liked about their work, and what could be improved.

Overall, I think this course helped improve my writing skills, as well has helped

me overcome my fear of peer reviews.