Synthesis and Reflection Final Essay: this assignment is worth 25% of your final course grade. Please ensure that you submit it as a .pdf or .docx or .doc file only.
Assignment Description
For this final assignment of the semester, you are going to engage in reflection and synthesis of your own. Focusing on at least one online essay that you access through a MacEwan Library catalogue search and looking back over your own work from this semester, you will develop what is often referred to as a “theory of writing.” A “theory” can be a system of explanation, a particular way of thinking that helps explain a phenomenon in the world. Throughout this course we have been working to understand how writing works: what the major conventions are, where they come from, and how to see and understand them. If you have been reading carefully, you should at this point be able to explain how you see this all fitting together.
In this essay, you should reflect on your development as a reader and a writer and explain how your learning has led you to a particular theory of writing. For instance, what do you now know about writing, how might you approach writing assignments or tasks in the future based on this knowledge? Your theory of writing should be informed by how you read and write, and by the reflections you have done in class. It should also suggest how your prior experiences with writing and your current understanding of writing will prepare you for successful engagement with future writing tasks.
Your essay should include a thesis that makes a claim about what you understand the act of writing to be, and your essay should be organized in such a way that a reader can follow your thinking and reasoning from paragraph to paragraph and within each paragraph. Because this essay is in part a reflection essay, you should write in the first person using “I statements” and develop your ideas through specific reference to your writing process in this course this semester.
You should support your claims about writing with specific and concrete references to your own work (essays, class discussions, etc) and the reading that you have chosen from your MacEwan Library catalogue search. Your job is to synthesize your own words about writing and someone else’s words about writing to generate an understanding of how writing works and how you yourself write.
You might consult a GenAI tool to help you complete this work. If you do, please include a short note in your essay about how you incorporated GenAI. Did you have GenAI proofread your work? Did you ask it to organize your response? Did you ask it for some ideas on how to get started with the writing process? Remember that I am GenAI-positive so I don’t mind if you use GenAi to help you write. You just need to be transparent and honest about how you incorporated the tool into your writing. Just make sure to cite the GenAI tool. I will provide instructions on how to cite GenAI in a References list. Also, if you use GenAI, I will provide feedback based on Dr. Phillipa Hardman’s AI Learning Taxonomy. This feedback will help guide you as you develop your GenAI skills.
Please indicate at the conclusion of your essay how much feedback you would like. I will send instructions for what I mean by the different types of feedback.
Assignment Requirements
For this essay you must do the following:
- Find an online essay about writing or the writing process that you access through the MacEwan Library online catalogue. Your chosen source cannot be a general internet source. You must find it and access it through the library catalogue. Practice your ability with keyword searches. Search keywords like the following: writing, theory of writing, writing process, writing tips. Your online essay does not have to be a scholarly essay, but you must access it through the library catalogue. At some point in your essay, you should provide a brief summary of the essay’s main ideas and at least two short quotations from it.
- Read through your own writing from the course. Take notes about your process. I.e. how you approached the writing process in your assignments. What patterns or habits are important to your writing? What do you still need to work on? What successes have you had?
- Develop a thesis or argument that encompasses your thoughts about how writing works.
- Write an approximately 750-word essay that supports your thesis.
- Include in-text citations in every paragraphs and a Works Cited or References page in MLA or APA formatting.
Because this is the last formal assignment in this course, you should try to integrate my feedback and suggestions into your writing for this essay. In particular, pay attention to the following:
- Avoid passive voice verbs. Write all of your verb in the active voice. I.e. place a subject BEFORE your main verb in every sentence.
- Avoid major sentence development problems: comma splices, run-on sentences, and sentence fragments.
- Develop your ideas through effective verbs: argues, suggests, states, emphasizes, discusses, examines, describes, compares, contrasts, writes, observes, notices, replies, expresses, represents, etc.
- Avoid the following list of weak/ineffective verbs: uses, utilizes, is able to, goes, shows, makes, says, allows, keeps, gets, brings, highlights, showcases, etc. These verbs are especially ineffective when they are in the passive voice.
- Frame all quotations in your own sentences. Never let a quotation exist on its own as a sentence in your paragraphs. Instead, contextualize quotations. Set them up with a voice marker (Martin argues that, Lee writes, etc). Try to follow up quotations with a new sentence that explains their significance to your main idea or thesis.
Good luck on this assignment! I’m looking forward to reading your theories of writing.
