Reflection on Open Letter Draft

Reflection on Open Letter Draft 

Peer review is a great resource to use in order to improve upon one's writing. Below is my reflection on the peer review process and my first draft of the open letter. 

I peer reviewed both Aaron West's draft along with Bailey Mattox's draft. Upon reading Aaron's draft I was happy to see that we have a similar length in our letters. He effectively used some great hyperlinks to earlier blog posts which I think might be effective if I added to mine. Aaron had really solid claims but needed to expand a bit more with his analysis which I think is similar to my draft. Contrarily, Bailey's draft was very long and had great depth. That being said I think her draft can be cut down a bit in order to still convey the main messages yet be more concise so the reader does not get bored.

Samdogs, "Christmas Cookies"12/3/08 via flickr. Creative Commons Attribution. 

"Revision" Questions: 

• Did you demonstrate an ability to think about your writing and yourself as a writer? 
• The revision process helped me recognize how important it is to get a different view on one's writing in order to perfect it. That being said, while I conducted peer review it helped me recognize that writing is really just an interpretation of the world through the writer's eyes. As I continued on with my work it was even more apparent that writing is my expression of myself. 
• Did you provide analysis of your experiences, writing assignments or concepts you have learned? 
• Analysis is one of the areas which I always struggle with in my writing. While I feel as though I am capable of putting different facts into a writing assignment I feel as though I find difficulty in analyzing this material appropriately in order to make a unique work that is my own. The revision process helps me to recognize where the analysis is lacking and then determining how to make it a better piece of writing. 
• Did you provide concrete examples from your own writing (either quotes from your writing or rich descriptions of your writing process)? 
• For this specific piece of writing I mostly used hyperlinks to refer back to previous blog posts and writings. While at points I did refer to specific quotes I mostly utilized these hyperlinks in order to allow the readers to fully appreciate the entirety of the blog post or deadline assignment. 
• Did you explain why you made certain choices and whether those choices were effective? 
• Although usually I have more difficulty with explaining my choices I feel as though the informal letter genre really allowed me to express the reasons behind my choices. It's easy to acknowledge the choices but then takes an extra step to effectively convey to the audience the importance of the decision I made. Revision always allows me recognize how to do this more effectively. 
• Did you use specific terms and concepts related to writing and the writing process? 
• By referring to previous blog posts as well as deadlines I was more capable of indicating the important terms and concepts throughout the course. I tried to convey to the audience the terms and concepts which I had the most trouble with and what I was able to improve upon and what I had more difficulty with.