Jordan Parker

Professor Colombo-Russell

ENG 101- Freshman Composition

December, 5 2025

Final Reflection 

Throughout the course of course one thing that stood out to me during the process of learning and writing is the process of research. The synthesis essay was the first research paper I have done since high school and in the process of creating the research aspect had a lot of emphasis. The process of using trustworthy and peer-reviewed sources was something that I wasn’t previously familiar with. The whole class dedicated to teaching us how to properly research was very beneficial in the process of my learning. Especially when considering I hadn’t previously known about the OneSearch feature. I think the couple of worksheets given to us to do before we started writing the synthesis essay were also really helpful. Things like finding keywords and brainstorming made researching easier. I think learning how to research effectively makes the whole process of writing an assignment like a synthesis essay much easier. All my sources were very similar to my thesis statement so it was very easy to find evidence within my sources. I think more formal sources like peer-reviewed sources were better because they are longer than something like a website. This meant it had more information and allowed me to pull more detailed evidence that directly supported my argument. Overall, learning how to find and use these kinds of sources made me feel much more confident in my writing and in my ability to put together a research paper.

Another thing that I learned this semester that stood out to me was how much language impacts me and other students . Before this class I never really thought about how someone’s dialect or the way they talk could make teachers see them differently. But while working on my synthesis essay and reading different sources, I saw how students who don’t speak “standard” English are sometimes judged or even disciplined more. Reading and learning about how marginalized students can feel shame or feel like they don’t belong just because of their language opened my eyes. My research spread to many different niche sections of language biases that I never knew before and it was nice to see aspects of the topic I never thought about before. The writing process also made me care more for the topic.

I also learned a lot about working with different genres. The cover letter assignment especially helped me understand how writing changes depending on who the audience is. It wasn’t like the synthesis essay or the literacy narrative. I had to think about what kind of tone to use which differed from those other types of writing. Reading and writing in different genres made me realize that I can’t just write one way all the time. Each assignment needed a different approach to it and knowing that made me feel more comfortable switching between styles of writing even if I’ve never wrote in that way before.

Revision was another skill that I improved a lot. In the past I didn’t really revise much or think too hard about rewriting sections. But this class made me see how important it is to go back and fix things. Doing stuff like peer reviews is something that isn’t accessible in everyday writing but there are other ways to get my writing looked at and revise it. The instructor’s feedback was also very beneficial because it was nice to get a final say after making all the revisions to see what final tweaks I may have needed to finalize my writing. AI could be seen as another way to revise my writing. During the course of the class we used AI to sometimes look at our writing and although not always, it was sometimes beneficial. Making a habit out of revising my work can make my writing much stronger.

Overall, I learned a lot throughout the semester in this course. I was able to find out how to better research as well as put that research to good use in my writing. I also learned new things about language and biases and how to revise my work. This course not only taught me how to write better but also how to understand language in new ways.