The best way to become a better writer is improving your ability to see your own writing from different perspectives. Who do you want to reach by your writing? How do they feel about your writing? Which words, sentence or structure will good to explain your opinion? All these can be answered by yourself if you can see your work from different view. In this sense, a different view means an object view from target readers. When you write something, you start thinking what you want to write from subjective view as a writer. So, you need to have an objective view on purpose.
In reflective writing, you are required to see your work from an objective view. You must ask yourselves how much could I express my feeling? Was it easy to understand? Seeing the past work by asking these questions is a good opportunity to have an objective view on purpose. Additionally, the reflective writing help us estimate our writing processes. Not only see the work itself but also, we can check our processes. Which process we spend most of our time? How can we get ideas for writing? Like this, knowing your own writing habit or the struggle point tells me what you should do next. They would be advice from your own experiences.
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The most challenging process is to organize the work. In first drafting, I wrote observation part and interview part looks like a research paper using bullet. However, I was advised to change it to full sentence form. Because I lost the idea that ethnography is an essay, I misunderstood.
In first project, I start writing a draft soon because it is all about myself basically. I could finish on time but I changed an example to another one. In second project, I prepared well before starting. Used time to brain storming more. Schedule how much I should write for the day. Then I started. It worked well and I did not have to change contents. So, I think the most important part is planning, before writing phase. Well prepared plan guides me correctly. I would like to share about planning phase with someone if I talk about what I learned in the second project. However, what I learned in the first project, thinking about readers is strongly related to it. To think about writer before you start to write is significant and help your process of writing surprisingly. When I reflect on my own work, I can realize many things including how efficiently I could conduct my project. Thus, even the reflection is not required as an assignment, it is a good practice to improve writing skills. Proofing my work is significant as a writer because its accuracy and easiness to understand affects how the contents reach to the reader. The work can attract the reader and change their opinion and even their life. Or it can be just ignored by the reader. As a reader, I experienced a lot of case related to this. For example, if an article talks about political issues but has poor grammar in the sentence, I feel that the contents can be not true. I judge its reliance based on the writing skills.
Although there is much information on the internet, these articles tend to have misspelling and poor grammar and I just see it as information close to a rumor. I know that a newspaper is well proofed by specialists who correct spells and grammar, so I values a newspaper as my information resources. In addition to these reliance problem, there is another problem in poor writing. I realized it from one of our peer’s post and I strongly agree with that. Once the reader encounter a misspelling, it bothers him to concentrate to the contents. It might lose his interest and he never come back to the article. This is a serious problem when your work needs to attract the reader. When I learned that revision means seeing the work again from different view, I felt that I need to focus on how the work can be more clear to the reader. I ask myself which part I should cut off or add more details during revision process. In the case, we have peer review, the peer is the first reader. So, I tend to try to change my work to the way that is preferable to the readers.
On the other hand, peers pay attention to make sure if the work is saying what they want to say. They value to maintain their own ideas in their work but express in the different way. This is a different point from my attitude to the review. These two reaction both can improve the work even they are seemed in opposite position. An important thing is that we are required to balance these two. Because it is not a diary, you should think about readers. However, you still need to make it your own work. You can use the review from peers efficiently, but you do not have to all the advisce. Trying to achieve the balance, the work can be the one that is unique but still easy to understand for readers. How students use café.
Step 1 Questions Q1. How often do you go to café? Q2. How do you decide where you sit? Q3. Do you like the café food? Q4. Do you eat alone? Q5. What are you talking about with your friends? Q6. How do you decide what you eat? Q7. Where is your favorite seat to sit? Step 2 Interview to an American Student She uses the café once two weeks. She chooses the seat where her friends sit. If there is an international group, she sometimes sits there. At breakfast and in the cases, she does not have time, she eats alone. Her favorite seat is by the window. The back of the café. She does not like café food because it is bad quality, no flavor, too much oil. In addition, it takes time to wait the pasta, the salad is not fresh, there is no option. With friends, she talks about classes, homework and how bad the café food is. She usually eats soup& salad. If she has time, goes to pasta station. Sometimes uses rice station. Cafe in my college
Step 1 1. What do I see? Entrance: Students come in and go out, there is a staff who check the ID card. Table and chair: Students sit there and eat food, talk with friends. All chair is same, but there are some kinds in table. Square, round, and small square table. On the table, usually pepper and salt, paper towel, sometimes advertisement card is put. The case of pepper is cream brown and salt is white color. The table and chair are harmonized in red brown. There is a place to get food on the left side of the café when you see from the entrance. There, you can choose salad, sandwich, pizza, potato and desert every day. Pasta, tacos, rice, fish and meat depend on the day. You also can choose drink and cereal there. The ceiling is high and cream color. The floor is cream color. There is a place to return your plates. You just put your plates and the machine carry it to wash place in kitchen automatically. 2. What do you hear? I can listen the bell that tells time. Student’s conversation. Worker’s conversation. Student’s order. 3. What do you smell? I can smell cooking. 4. What do you touch? The food, plate, knife, fork, spoon, cup, table, chair. 5. What do you taste? It almost all time tastes bad. Too sugary, oily and the spice does not work well. It does not have mush flavor. Step 2 1. How do people move through the place? Students can eat breakfast (7:15- 9:30), lunch (10:45- 1:15) and dinner (4:45- 7:00) there. Swipes the ID card, take a seat, get food and drink then eat at the table. After eat, you should return the plate. While eating, students are chatting about classes, breaks, tests, home, family, friends. Students laugh, enjoy the conversation. Students meet the friends. 2. Do you observe any special patterns of behavior among the people you observe? When someone drops plate, all students make a big sound beating the dishes. 3. Do you notice any special patterns of speech? Students talk to friends “Hi, name,” and join in the group. Then say “Bye guys,” to the group member when they leave. The way of speaking is more casual than class talking. They feel relax to talk. 4. What else jumps out at you as you observe people in this space? Students tend to gather to the same group of people such as band club, same class and international students. Where children sleep: Risa, 15, Kyoto, Japan
The room is harmonized in moss green color The room has wall, shoji (sliding doors with paper ) and tatami There are vase, flower, Japanese cushion, mirror,fan and somehing coverd by white cloths The vase is on the brown plate In front of the vase, there is somthing orange red, long and narrow A flower is white and big, others are small and white The big flower has many petals Branches wihth leaves are also arranged The vase has two long narrow pipes On the center and each corner of the moss green cusion, short moss green strings are attached The cushioin is not so thick The mirror stand is olive brown and the cover is also olive brown There is something coverd with dark red The fan is gold and dark red The fan is bigger than the everyday use one The sliding door has woodedn frame The ceiling has someting like a pillar The wall's moss green close to yellow The cushion's moss green is darker than wall and tatami Space: A café in my college
Read the space: People sit in group rather than eat alone. The café is mainly for students who have ID card. English is spoken a lot. Japanese, Chinese, French, Spanish and others are used by international students. Students are about 18-22 or old wear casual clothes such as T-shirts, jeans and hoodie. Table, chair, food, drink, kitchen and plates are there. Take plate and wait in a line then get food what you want to eat. Choose side and drink then take it by yourself. Find your table and put your dishes then sit the chair and start to eat. When you enter the café, your ID card should be read by a card reader. Analyze the space: Students are required to buy a meal plan and the ID card records the information, so students should have the card. Students use the café daily but they think pajama is not suitable for the café. Because students are required to pay for the meal plan and there is a little choice to eat on compass, they have to use the café. Students who want to eat other food or do not like the atmosphere of the café feel uncomfortable there. If there is professor, president or international students, they stand out. Otherwise, students who eat alone is rare in the café. A typical American student blends there because he or she is majority of the student population. There is always pizza and seldom fish showing American’s food preference. The café put round tables rather than square tables explaining students like talking face to face. This café is designed for typical American students. It reflects the preference of them. 1. How is my position in my community (an international student) influenced by the place where I study?
I am studying in the small town in KS. That means students have less interest to us Asian international students. It makes us difficult to find friends. 2. Are there places/spaces I am not allowed to enter or participate? Why? Because I am not catholic, I cannot join the ministry activity. 3. Do my friends have access to different places than me? Yes. They can go out of the town more often than me. 4. What spaces are private and what spaces are public? My room is my private space. Others are all public. In this work, I had an opportunity that my rough draft was reviewed by peers who are probably better English users than me. Because my writing is always assessed by professor or international students, this opportunity is useful for me to improve my writing and see it from general English user’s view. In addition, I had a little experience that I followed all steps to complete my writing, so it helped me to think about the process of writing.
For me, the most challenging part was using an example. I wanted to explain about a unique concept in Japan, but I could not explain well at rough draft and readers could not understand the concept. I hope final version is more clear than previous one. Daily custom to see events from multi perspective will help me to use easy example for future writing. The most important part of writing process is to think about reader’s perspective. I know the importance before the project, however, I felt that again when I was struggle to explain the unique concept to readers. This is the most difficult and useful tool to achieve better writing, so I want to share it with someone who need suggestion for his or her writing. Because reflection gives us farther practice to assess our own work that contributes to improving future work, WPA value the process, I think. |
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