Eloise Kunu

4/20/2015

UWRT 1102: Midterm

Throughout this class, different key concepts were implemented to help enhance our
writing. Based on these several weeks, I believe that the top five key concepts which further
helped and guided my writing along are independent inquiry & curiosity, responsibility for
your own learning, getting out of your comfort zone, providing & receiving feedback, and
making connections. Within these five key concepts, independent inquiry & curiosity,
responsibility for your own learning, and getting out of your comfort zone are being engaged
with mostly. Allow me to further explain. Starting with independent inquiry & curiosity, this
was the first concept we learned about in class, when our first blog post asked us to commit
to 3 possible inquiry questions that could drive our research. By coming up with an inquiry
question for our research topic, such as with ethics, and morality being an issue, to what
extent will one goes to obtain or sell his or her own organs? Drove my curiosity to learn
more about my chosen topic, which is organ trafficking. Although this process was a little
difficult; like I stated in my pre-research assignment it was hard deciding how to go about
with this topic, it became much easier to work with over the class once we started warm-ups
which asked us to figure out our audience. Eventually with the help of blog post and more
class period, everything started to make more sense.
Aside from the concept of curiosity, I believe that the responsibility to teach oneself was
the most important key concept within this class. This is due to students having to teach
themselves about their topic, by doing different research. Also to further go in depth with
ones writing, and learn more about where one can make their writing stronger, the blog post
assignment helped. The blog post assignment allowed one to not only research more, but also
learn new ways to go about it. An example of this was seen in the three column note where I
stated the only time most human beings do anything nicely, is when they know they will be
getting benefits from it, related some of my source to my inquiry question. All throughout
this course, aside from small lectures and guidelines given by the teacher, half of the work
and teaching is being done by us. An example of this can be seen when one did the MultiModality assignment with different websites. Through interactions between students, more
understanding about multi-modality was gained.

Eloise Kunu
4/20/2015

The third key concept which one engaged in during these few weeks is finding a way to
get out of ones comfort zone. This concept was implemented several times by the teacher
especially when one has group work. The concept of getting out of ones comfort zone can be
viewed from two perspectives. One deals with having to talk to group members about warmup or sharing our ideas on someones annotated bibliography or blog. This was a little
challenging at first due to being seen as a shy girl most of the time, which was stated in the
About section of my portfolio, but as time went on, it became a little easier. I became freer
with my writing, when I started giving a much better feedback such as the Dear reader note,
where I wrote I cant seem to find a middleman perspective, and so maybe you can help me
out. Usually, Im not the type to ask for help, but by getting out of my comfort zone Im
starting to do that more and more. The second perspective is not being used to writing in
different ways with the same research topic. One was used to being given a topic, and from
there one develops ones paper based on the research gathered. This way of learning, did help
get one out of ones way of writing.
On the other hand, providing & receiving feedback, and making connections are the two
challenging key concept. In regards to providing & receiving feedback, one has always had a
problem with providing feedback without seeming harsh. Also I was always taught in
previous English class, to focus on ones grammar and or change things needed to make the
paper flow when peer reviewing. This idea was discouraged by the Improving Peer Review
handout, which states that the goals are not to fix, change, find what is wrong with it or edit
another writers draft.To help fix this issue in the second part of the semester, I will use the
key words in the back of the handout to give better peer reviews without rewriting ones
paper.
Another aspect which one deems challenging is making connections to certain things,
especially with ones topic. With the different genre of writing, it is sometimes hard to make
connections with what is being asked. A prime example was with the annotated bibliography
assignment where in the third column it states that this box is a place for reflection and for
you to explain how this source connects to others in your 3 Column Notes. One way to start
figuring out how to make connections is by doing more research, or actually finding primary
source like teachers, or students who are interested in my topic to learn more from. Overall

Eloise Kunu
4/20/2015

with these five key concepts, each one played a role in this first part of the semester, to help
one to grow and develop writing skills.