Reflective Writing a Paper Expository Process Essays

Reflective Writing a Paper

In writing a paper I often start out full of ideas and methods of analysis about the topic or issue at hand. However, I find it tedious to have to connect those ideas; yet, I want my paper to be cohesive and organized. My rough draft paper often seems as if someone crumpled it up and threw it in a blender. I always know what I want to say and feel that I have a good development of ideas, but often struggle in drawing out my main points. The paper that I am revising is my analysis paper because it lacks an assertive thesis and an organized plan. These are important global revisions that need to be revised in order for my paper to truly be reader friendly.

When I first got my analysis paper back I felt that the grade was justified because I thought that I had developed my ideas and analyzed them well while providing evidence and support for my claims. However, I also recognized immediately upon a quick glance over my paper that my claims were not clearly stated and therefore my readers were not sure what the point of my paper was. I was not sure how to go about fixing this problem until I heard the presentation in class about global revisions. The presenters talked about how important it is to make sure that your introduction and your conclusion are similar in that they discuss the same points because this means your paper stayed focused. Also, in order to keep my paper focused it should have a concise structure laid out and then followed. When it came down to it, my paper was lacking two major things: a thesis that incorporated and strongly stated what the purpose and main points of the paper were and a paragraph detailing the structure of my paper so that the reader could easily follow my ideas.

Knowing what I had to do I then sat down to revise my paper. Thinking I knew exactly what needed to be done I told myself it would take a half hour flat. An hour later I was still staring at the computer screen trying to rationalize to myself the long new bolded areas. How did I ever get by without providing that information in the first place? I had some areas where I inserted whole new paragraphs and then other pages that I left completely the same. I feel that this is because I did not have too many local revisions to make nor did I need to further analyze or develop ideas. I just needed to forecast and make my ideas more understandable to the reader in the first place.

The first thing I attacked was my thesis. As stated before it simply said, "McBride succeeds in connecting with her readers and providing a persuasive argument about the importance of women's work through the use of techniques such as logos and pathos." If I do say so myself this is a fine sentence, but too bad it's a lousy thesis sentence because it does not incorporate all of the ideas I then go on to discuss in my paper. As stated in a handout from class I needed to "Make my central question as precise, important, and engaging as possible. Without a focused claim, the rest of the essay will wander and not teach your readers much or provide any real insight." So, the way I revised my thesis then was to create a whole paragraph that narrowly discussed what McBride's purpose in writing her essay was and the rhetorical methods she used to express her ideas to the readers. I made it clear what her strategies were, why they were important and how they worked. I then made sure that those ideas were reinforced in my conclusion paragraph, which luckily somehow they were. You see, that proves that I knew what I was talking about all along, but all this commotion about revising has taught me how important it is to recreate my paper so that the reader can also easily comprehend and appreciate my ideas and analysis.

Another aspect to writing that I found myself having to deal with was this concept of a paragraph that forecasted what I was going to talk about in my paper and how I was going to do so. I just couldn't believe that that was what I was really supposed to do. I thought that I must have misunderstood somehow because that seemed too simple and boring. I felt like it was a paragraph that only required me to fill in the blanks after the opening of "This paper is about." Even on the assignment sheet though it listed a forecasting paragraph, or partition, "that would delineate the steps I would follow in my argument." Well, I decided to take that requirement as a suggestion and went about my merry way only to find that without such a paragraph the reader is more easily lost and the structure to my paper is unknown. Well, so fine. The presentation about global revisions also talked about making sure each paragraph had a purpose and was consistent to my thesis. I can see now how a forecasting paragraph helps me to lay out the points that need to be accomplished in my paper so that it is easier for me to create paragraphs that do so and flow together.

Basically, this came down to the addition of a whole new paragraph, but I found it actually quite easy to write. It is now my third paragraph and immediately acknowledges the rhetorical devices used. I then go through and discuss what each of those rhetorical devices was used to accomplish and what McBride longed for the reader to grasp as the purpose of her essay. I also continued my train of thought into the next paragraph by revising the topic sentence and reinforcing yet again the purpose of McBride's essay. I feel through this added paragraph that I better intertwine the rhetorical devices and the purpose of the author together because both are important and they belong together. The reason the author chose certain rhetorical devices to use in the first place in writing her essay was so that a certain purpose would be fulfilled and demonstrated to the reader. This paragraph helps me set up how I'm going to explain the author's purpose and prove it through analysis of her rhetorical strategies.

With these two major problems fixed I read over the rest of my paper searching for more revisions that I could make. However, I felt satisfied. I was able to organize the shredded pieces of my paper together nicely simply by introducing my main ideas clearly right away and then diagramming how I was going to discuss them. This way, by the time the reader got to the middle and end of my essay where my development of ideas was solid they were right on target and able to understand what I was talking about. At first I had been dismayed that of all the aspects of writing and revising the thing I needed to work on was my thesis. It seemed so elementary; yet, I am keenly aware that it remains one of the most challenging and important parts of a paper. I found it comforting that mine now seemed more focused for the reader and delighted to be finished. I'm glad my paper doesn't seem like jumbled popcorn anymore.