1

Reflective Essay

Derron Thompson - 620111413

Department of Social Sciences, University of the West Indies, Mona

FOUN1013: Critical Reading & Writing

Ms. Nekiesha Reid

August 22, 2020

Reflective Essay
 1

Michael Jordan, the six-time NBA champion, once said, “I visualize where I wanted to be, what

kind of player I wanted to become. I knew exactly where I wanted to go, and I focused on

getting there.” Similar to Jordan, I have had to visualize where I wanted to be at the end of this

semester, trust the process of what I had to do in order to pass this course, and focus on getting

the necessary work done. The course of Critical Reading and Writing has shown me this

semester how deficient my skills were in critically analyzing written material, as well as the

mediocre state of my writing skills. This course has definitely pushed me to my breaking point a

couple of times where I felt I was going to drop the class. through my creative writing course.

The collaborative documented essay was one of the biggest reasons for this. After reaching out

to a few members of the class, a team was formed and we had preliminary discussions available

for selection. With very little brainstorming it was decided by the other three members that they

would have gone with one topic, but after discussions with the lecturer, the team realized that not

much thought went into it. We went back to the drawing board and found something that I

thought we all found interesting and wanted to read and write about, however, some members

were still unclear what the document required of us. Withstanding this, researching key points to

formulate the three topic sentences for the thesis became difficult even after we had the library

session. I decided I would delegate the points I found, where I realized persons needed help I

tried to assist. We reviewed the document so many times, we realized that our thesis was

constantly changing based on how well the points we found linked with the narrowed topic. At

the point of the hand in of the outline for the essay, we still had not develope supporting

sentences for each because members still insisted they did not understand the research topic I did

my best to try and explain what members needed to do, I Out of frustrated out as a four-member
 1

team, ended up being a two-member team due to the fact that two of the members decided they

were doing what was best for themselves and dropped the course. We had began the proc

Reflect on the process of writing the collaborative documented essay and say how it has assisted
you in improving your critical reading and writing skills

The process of deciding on the narrowed topic, researching, drafting, reviewing, revising, editing
etc.
Working collaboratively/ taking a team approach to preparing an essay

Where you were in january and where you are now re critical reading and writing

What have these processes and experiences done for you in relation to your language and literacy
development

outline / explain the critical reading and writing skills that you have developed on account of the
processes and experiences.