Reflection Of Writing: Short Story Analysis And Writing

The first half of the composition course was marginally successful in my opinion. There, I determined where my prose was weakest and how I could improve it. The topics in that course were also easier to work with, because the paper style was the only locked attribute. Therefore, entering the second half of the course concerned me, because I now had to write about literature that had possibly infinite numbers of ways it could be interpreted. Literary analysis is something I am acutely aware is one of my weak points. But I believed I have substantially improved in this area, best shown through the first two papers.

The largest reason I chose the short story analysis and the poetry explication is because it constitutes the two highest grades I

These papers also comprise my best thinking, which becomes part of my portfolio’s loose theme: analysis. The first paper was difficult for me to write, because it required several rereads and a substantial amount of notes. Admittedly, I actually had the initial theme of the paper wrong. The papers I reviewed on the same story from my peers were centered on “survival of the fittest,” something I did not consider. Luckily, my notes provided enough of a backbone to where my chosen thesis of “educational assimilation” could be viable, even if it was broad. One way I facilitated the argument was marking quotes on pages in the story, advice I found in the class text Making Literature Matter. I took that a step further in the pre-write: every quote I marked was accompanied by my thoughts. This was helpful because I was able to have my thoughts organized in one place, and in my opinion, my final draft of the paper is essentially a cleaned up version of the pre-write. For example, on the note marked 230, I claimed that “instructional material is often rigid and poised, and it allows very little room for creativity.” This became a central part of my argument for the paper, where I compare