Description
University of Memphis / ENGL 1010
Autoethnographic Essay
Purpose
The purpose of your final writing assignment for the course is to reflect upon your writing process.To do this, you should consider what you read in this course alongside your reflections from each major writing assignment. Reflection allows us to make connections and build knowledge, and thus the primary purpose of this course is to help you build your knowledge about the writing processes that work best for you, so that when you write in other courses, you can make conscious decisions about your writing process. Your textbook explains:
For this assignment, you will conduct a study similar tothose conducted by Perl, Neto, and Berkenkotter, but instead of looking at someone else, you will examine yourself and your own writing processes and write an autoethnography in which you describe them... Your purpose is to try to learn some things about your actual writing practices that you might not be aware of and to reflect on what you learn using the terms and concepts you’ve read about in this chapter. (873)
You can approach data collection in two ways:
1. You can record yourself (via audio or video or screen recording) as you write for an assignment. Then you can watch or listen to that recording to better understand what happens when you write.
2. You can return to the writing reflections you completed in class after you submitted each of the first three assignments and use those reflections to compose a cohesive autoethnography.
Process
Data Collection:
• Review the Threshold Concepts about writing processes on page 707. How does your own writing process confirm or challenge these concepts?
• Plan Ahead: Think about the writing you have due in other classes (or this one). Consider recording yourself talking about what you are doing as your write or use screen recording to actually recordwhat is happening on your screen.
• Gather your major writing assignments from the semester: The Literacy Narrative, the Discourse Community Analysis and the Writing Research Essay. Reread them and jot down anything you think might be important when discussing your writing processes.
• Receive your “Goals for English 1010” homework and your autoethnographic reflections from your instructor and reread them. Look for constants in your writing process. Did anything change about your writing process from the beginning of class until now?
• Look back through the textbook and consider the effect that the readings had upon your writing decisions.
Analysis:
As Giles notes, in “Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You Thinking?,” you should think about each of the essays that you have written this semester in the context of the rhetorical situation each one presented.
• Use the Reflections to consider how your writing process changed. Did you use office hours, or theELC, or the CWC? What effect did these have on your process and writing? How did you utilize peer review?
• Consider environmental factors that influence your writing process. Do you need to be alone? Do you like to work in public (in a library or coffee shop)? Do you need music or silence? Etc.
• Consider the different stages of the writing process: invention, drafting, revision, editing, etc. What did you do during these stages at the beginning of the semester? Do you do anything differently now? What could you still work on or try to do differently in the future?
• You might want to review “Autoethnography” in Writing About Writing, pages 873-85.
Planning and Drafting:
Determine a structuring principle for your essay and construct a brief outline:
• You could choose to follow your progression through the course, focusing on the challenges and/or successes for each essay.
• You could choose to examine how your writing process changed for each assignment and analyze the consequences on the finished essay.
• Explore other structuring principles that are unique to your writing.
Your essay should be no less than four pages, and don’t forget the interesting title.
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Explanation & Answer
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Brianna Holland
ENG-1010-E07
April 27,2022
Professor Black
Autoethnography power
Throughout the course of this semester in English 1010, I have learned to improve my writing and outlining
skills. I have grown my skills in writing through the writing assignments assigned as well as the reading
and responses we were assigned to read. As the semester went forth, I learned more about my passion
for writing starting with my literacy narrative where I learned to be more open minded. I progressed with
writing more open mindedly rather than just writing by the standard essay format. Writing my literacy
narrative helped me to understand that my writing can be by the book as well as also be able to flow from
your mind onto the page. Although I also had challenges with learning to write with an open mind such as
writers block and just constantly referencing my outline and assignment sheet. In my journey my passion
for writing has grown throughout the semester although my journey had obstacles but as any good writer,
I learned to overcome the obstacles thrown at me. Throughout the semester I also learned new research
skills to make my research papers more interesting and not as formal and monotone. Through me writing
my Discourse Analysis assignment I learned to write a more interesting and informative research paper. I
learned to interview members of a discourse community as well as how to research using credible sources
to learn more about my discourse community. Throughout my discourse analysis essay, I struggled with
finding credible information and writers block although I found the discourse community interesting it
was hard to answer some of my assignment questions without being a member of the community.
Although I prevailed with my interview by asking narrow questions to answer what I could not find from
my sources. I learned a lot about discourse communities in general just from researching the community
I chose. My main struggles throughout the semester had to be constantly dealing with writer's block and
constantly trying to find ways to overcome that issue.
I’m impressed with me, and my advance in general. In the past I had a hard time concentrating on the
subject and flowing with ideas to write, but now is easier to me express ideas and different points of view.
I supposed that open my mind helps me to understand better different and new topics.
If I analyze by the eye of “reflective writing and revision process”, I can see two different persons, for
example, nowadays I know about my writing process, and the feeling when I start to write is extremely
different, in the past, writing means stress for me, but now writing it is like unwinding and distracting
myself. I mean, the attitude that I have during the writing, in the most part of the time, is positive because
I fell that I am contributing and learning new ideas that in the future would be necessary.
For me, one of the most important changes to be different when I am writing, is improve the process, I
mean, in the past I did not have an appropriate process, my process was disorganized and that made me
feel stressful an anxious, I could say that I seem restless and anxious, and my face reflected distress and
sometimes boredom. I transmitted unsafety in the things that I did and the ideas that I tried to express.
But now, I am more organized in the process to writing, it means, that I have all the necessary materials
to organize mi ideas and know exactly what I want to write. I have the information, books, pages, notes,
audios, highlighters, extra papers to do the drafts that I consider necessary.
In this part I would like to mention the importance in the information before writing, when I have enough
and confinable information to writing I do not have the requirement to interrupt my writing time to search
more information, it means, I feel comfortable with my information, and I can continue relax the process
to writing. That help me to stay quite when I am writing because I have all the information and materials
with me, and for me, I looked like an organized and secure person, who know about the things that
express.
In this way, I can say that my writing process is completely different in a positive way because it has made
me easier to flow and express my ideas in any context. It means, nowadays, writing for me does not make
me look like a disorganized person.
By the time, I have organized my time in the better way, and I noticed that I feel good when I use the
office hours to write because I think that I work better in those hours. I could notice that in those hours I
felt less stressful, and I could concentrate better, but, at the same time, I learned to use my time
effectively. Aforetime, I did not use my time efficiently and I used the night to do all my pending tasks at
the last time and it causes me unnecessary problems sometimes. But now, the organization of my time
helps me to stay relax and now I have more time to spend in other activities. And I used the open peer
review when I do not know a lot about a specific topic, it simplifies me to correct some mistakes.
Then, if I talk about the perfect environmental for my writing process is easy to specify. I love be alone to
write because I am feel more comfortable, and also because I like silence while I writing, I think that is
easier to concentrate and let flow better the ideas, I mean, when I am alone I look calmer and free to take
my time to think and analyze my ideas and the words that I tries to express. But, to be honest, I also
writing on a coffee shop or library, those things depend on my mood, situation and the time that I have
to complete my writing.
I think that the most important for me is to feel comfortable because I do not like to write on a loud place,
but I can work with a good music, in point of fact, sometimes I prefer to writing with music to relax and
let flow my ideas and connect. I think that my mood also depends on the topic and the exigency that the
writing demands.
In the other hand, if I talk about the stages of the writing process, I can say that the invention is one of
the most difficult part because take time, but if I compare me, thanks to my organize process, i...