Self-Reflective Essay – In the end your education is about you: the papers you write, the things you research, the thoughts you express.  Part of learning to write is learning to think about the process of writing and the effort, or craft, of your compositions.  This essay is an opportunity to reflect upon the work you’ve done throughout the semester. It is your chance to think and say what you’ve learned; consider what you have done well and where you can improve.    The essay should demonstrate and reflect upon the work of revision and writing as a process. 

Be sure to include specific examples of your improvement over the semester. 

Your Self-Reflective Essay should be 1 – 2 pages and include:

• An overview of your writing improvements. What skills have you developed in the areas of reading, research, and writing?
• Some writing prompts: A description of your writing habits and processes.   How do your habits differ from when you started this course? A thorough and specific discussion of the revision process. Discuss the choices you made in revising your work.  Consider addressing the peer-review process as part of this section.  What effort did you put into drafting, editing, and revising your papers?  What was helpful in this process?  What was missing that could have helped?  Hint about: How does the writing in your portfolio compare with writing you did in the past?  What do you know now that you didn’t know before about audience, claims, evidence, research, and argumentation?  What can you do that you couldn’t do before?

• Challenges: What was new and/or challenging, and how did the challenges push you to develop writing strategies? 
• How have your study habits changed?  How has research changed in your mind and efforts? What made a difference for you?  What was helpful?  What would you change?

• What application do you see this class having to your life beyond this semester?  

• Typed, double-spaced, 12-point font. Follow the style guide and include an interesting title.

Grading

The reflective essay is a pass/fail essay.  Clearly it needs to be well-written and free from grammatical error. But as a reflective essay it can be less formal than a scholarly paper.