Metacognitive Reflection

Sammi Beach

December 8, 2015

Academic Writing 310

Metacognitive Reflection:

Throughout Writing 310 I have gained an extreme amount of knowledge. English has always been an easy subject for me and have never really felt challenged in any of my previous classes before, until I took this class. This class with Zack has made me think about things within writing, which I have never thought about before. Between all of the readings we had to project through blog posts, group discussions, journal questions, and visual support I have furthered my critical thinking sills to the fullest. All of the reflection that we have done with our class has prepared me for our final paper/portfolios.

I’ve had friends who have taken this class in the past quarters and told me I was going to love it. What I appreciated the most about this class was the tone of the class in general. The way Zack taught the class, it felt like, he was obviously my teacher, but he made the interaction between teacher- students extremely comfortable. The first couple of weeks of class was when I had my “aha! Moment” when it came to terminology with academic writing. One the first articles we read was: Murder! Rhetorical Speaking. This article really opened my eyes to what rhetoric actually is. I’ve always heard the word being thrown around in previous classes but never truly was able to grasp what it actually meant.

When Janet Boyd explains the assignment given to her students which was, writing a report from a detectives point of view based around the following information: who, what, when, where, and why. When you are given a scenario such as this, as a writer you automatically know the type of “tone” that needs to be used. When you are being told to write from a detective’s point of view you wouldn’t use the tone of if you were writing a column in the newspaper about “best restaurants in town”. You would use the type of tone that is used from a detective’s point of view, which is a more serious tone full of facts and a specific type of jargon. Jargon is described as types of words that would be used in that type of field that you wouldn’t typically use when describing something else. For example: when describing a crime scene you would not use legal type words yet because right now you are just talking about the crime scene. This article really gave me insight on terminology about rhetoric and how to write in an academic paper that I have internalized through studying/researching the topic of my paper.

When writing an academic paper you need to know the “genre”. Before this class I have never made the connection that genres can also be correlated to academic writing. The examples shown in class helped me recognize that. When we listened to the four country songs and created a table to what the class believed were the components to the country songs and to see if they matched together by each one, was a genre. The genre of country music typically talks about love, alcohol, trucks, farms etc. By listening to each song almost every song fell into the sub-points of what, we as a class, believed a country song was.

Another example used for the genre lesson was horror films. We did the same thing that we did for the country music genre. Almost every time the movie correlated to the table we made as class. Horror films usually have scary/creepy music leading up to what is going to happen next, knives, ghosts, blood, etc. By associating these characteristics with the specific genre demonstrates what components needs to be in that film to make it a horror film. It goes with writing; you chose a genre and make the components of the paper build into that specific genre.

I thoroughly enjoyed how everything tied into each other within every lesson taught. By having journal questions every week to start off the class helped as little recap of what is going on. Breaking off into groups before having a large class discussion about it helped get my peers perspectives on certain things that we were doing that week. I feel like it really brought the class together and clarified what was going on and what was expected.

Thank you Zack for such an amazing class. You have made my first quarter here at Antioch a fun one, and that’s no bullshit! It’s a bummer to see you leave but I know you’re going to kick ass wherever you go! This class has improved my writing tremendously and I couldn’t thank you enough!

REALLY shitty rough draft

“To succeed… You need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you. “ -Tony Dorsett. This quote by famous former NFL player could not be more related to district manager of Natural Café: Clay Adam. At only twenty-two years old Clay Adam has climbed the latter into uninterrupted success by finding his niche in the restaurant business. Clay has worked for Natural Café for five years and immediately gained an assistant managing position only after three weeks of starting. After six months another promotion was in store to become a general manager at the top selling restaurant out of the ten Natural Cafés. Growing within the company and understanding that communication and writing are the two focal points; after one year he was then offered to become a district manager. Focusing on the end-goal and finding that something to hold on to and using tools, such as writing and communication, to motivate you to continue to work and succeed.

How To Read Like A Reader

How authors build up their texts is useful for writers to understand the effort and the meaning of the texts. It’s how we read that is based upon our information that we are taking in. We read to gain information, such as the example given in the reading: “if we are interested as architects, we may or may not know about the history of the Corinthian style; we must, however know all about the construction of the building, down to the last nail or peg in the beams. We have got to know this if we are going to put up buildings ourselves”. Allen Tate’s example of reading as if you were an architect goes to show how reading like a writer will further onto improving your writing. Examining the details of the reading awakens your subconscious to build upon the text. “You are reading to see how something was constructed so that you can construct something similar yourself”. Taking previous writing experiences throughout the school courses contributes to the success with reading like a writer. The theme of reading like a writer is being able to “see the choices that the author is making in the texts that you read”. Questioning what you are going to write is what you should be doing while reading. Questioning what the author is writing influences the reader to dig deeper and understand what the author is conveying. Reading within the readings with a certain context will be the succeeding factor of growing as a writer.

Interview Questions

Interview Questions for Clay Admas

·      How old are you?

·      What is your position in the company?

·      How long have you been working for Natural Café?

·      What is the most challenging part of managing 10 different restaurants?

·      Is this something you see yourself doing for a long period of time?

·      Where would you like to see yourself in 5 years?

·      What is your favorite part of being the district manager?

·      What motivates you?

·      If there is one thing you could change about your job what would it be?

·      Would you ever consider going back to college?

·      Are you happy doing what you do?

·      Do you have any regrets?