Reflection 3

Throughout my I-Search process, i was satisfied with what i found out. After doing all of my research, i felt like i had a solid answer to my question. I found out many different characteristics that are used to differentiate players and that is exactly what i wanted to find out. A question that i was left with though was how can players improve to be like superstars? I found out many aspects like speed, strength, hang time, athleticism, and defensive ability but how does a player go about in improving these aspects? I was going to put this in my conclusion but i figured it wasn’t too important because some of the aspects like coaches, lengthy hands, or being tall are not necessarily things some one can improve in a offseason, for example.

What influenced my writing throughout the course of this paper was the peer response we did in class and also other people that i told my topic too. The peer response in class helped me identify a lot of stuff that was irrelevant. Anyone who read my paper crossed out some information that was either not needed or was repetition. After going back over my essay, i realized i did have a lot of repeated information. Other people helped me write my essay as well; it was like they were writing it for me. When i told people (NBA die hard fans) about my question, they exploded with information that really helped me include only the important parts of the articles I read.

My meeting with Mrs. Jankens was very helpful. I was able to develop a layout of my research so i knew what i was going to do at each step along the way. I was also able to fix up some small grammatical errors and some wording issues. Some questions i asked about were about the requirements of the essay like if we had to have an interview. I wasn’t 100% at this point if i was going to be able to connect with someone and get an interview done so i wanted to clarify that. Another question was about the layout of the essay. I asked whether i should keep a long quoted paragraph from the article or explain each sentence by sentence and got her professional opinion which i ended up using.

One reading that influenced my writing process was Peter Elbow’s article about reading aloud your essay. When i read aloud my essay, i noticed more mistakes than i did when i read it to myself in my head.

As a learner of this class, i would describe this as someone who pays attention in class and actively participates in discussions. A learner’s job in this class is to listen to what other people have to say their essay and also give feedback on other people’s essay. Receiving feedback allows you to improve your essay and giving feedback enforces recognizing the types of errors you shouldn’t make. A learner also should participate in the activities we do like the activity of combining sentences. I see the role of a learner as this because the goal of this class is to improve your writing ability. Also, this class is heavily based upon what we write and discussions in class.

I feel like i have overall improved at editing and revising essays by doing this essay. I learned to stay on topic and remove things that are not needed. I even recognized small grammar errors more often. Before this class, i haven’t written an essay since junior year of high school so i feel like this essay helped me get back into the groove of writing a structured essay about a specific topic.  I feel like i have become better at the research learning outcome. I learned to use the Wayne State library and databases to find scholarly articles in almost an instance.