Reflection
Writing, like many things in life, is a
process that takes time, dedication and skill. Throughout the semester my writing
abilities, and consequently the quality of my blog, has evolved. Creating a
strong first and last sentence for my posts is my constant struggle after
working so hard to write works that flow smoothly. The way I would seamlessly
connect my blogs and try to tell a story became my greatest concern when I
designed the order of works for my project. My first blog post lays out a very
general and literary base, involving two key terms-audience and genre. In this
post, I outlined the importance of their relationship in writing. I choose fundamental
groundwork as the introduction for my project because it explains how the genre
and audience always must be addressed in all works. My second blog post is one
of my personal narratives, which expresses my feelings and provides my
experiences as evidence for my argument. In my third writing, I build a bridge
between food, observations, and enviroment. Descriptions, imagery and film
directions transport my reader in my fourth post into the realm of cooking
shows. Finally, my favorite, the last blog post compares and contrasts my
grandmother’s and my own perspective surrounding food. The post is completed
with this final sentence, “The comparison of our perspectives toward food
mirrors this clash of our generations and gives so much meaning to the
evolution of women’s role in society.”
I chose these particular blogs because I
believe they exemplified moving themes and I enjoyed writing them the most.
However, they were far from perfect as they had some errors that needed
revising. Revising has always been an arduous task for me. With time it has
gotten easier, but I still struggle with some aspects of it. I credit much of
my growth in the editing sphere to in class activities, such as peer review.
The feedback from my classmates taught me to be a more efficient writer, who is
aware of their flaws and limitations and acts to eradicate them. One of the
most common writing issues found throughout my posts was being too vague, using
pronouns such as “it”, in descriptions.
For example, in my Ethnography post I wrote the last sentence too
generally and being biased began my sentence saying: “Cox Hall proves to be one
of the best culinary choices for Emory students…” In order to correct this, I
changed the beginning of the sentence to “Emory first year students” as most of
my first-hand accounts came from them.
My primary problem when revising and
editing is that I always look at my work from the same perspective, finding it
hard to approach it from another angle. This class has helped me view my
writing objectively, allowing greater room for improvement. This objective eye
has forced me to face my greatest writing flaw- grammar. My common mistakes
span all regions of the English language rulebook-Verb tenses, sentence
fragments and punctuation errors. For example, in this sentence: “Thanks for
tuning in we’ll see you next week on Chef Chu’s Culinary Adventure.”, I missed
the comma after “in” something I realized when revising my writing. The
instruction from this class has heightened my sensitivity to grammar flaws, so
that I as a writer may better with time.