Self Analytical Letter

Final Draft due Thursday, May 7, 11:00am

Project Description

Your final project for this class will be a self-analytical letter, reflecting on your work over the course of the semester. You are asked to consider what you did well, how you could have done better, the decisions you made along the way, and why.

During a normal semester (when we are not in isolation due to a global pandemic), this project is mandated by the university, and you are asked to answer the following questions:
What aspects of your writing are effective and why do you think they are effective? Please be specific: for example, rather than saying “I used good examples,” identify one or two examples that you used and explain why these examples are good ones.
What do you think could be improved in your projects and how could you improve them? Again, please be specific. Rather than saying that, for example, your organization could be stronger, say what you might do to make it stronger.
Briefly describe the process you used to write your projects. Do you think the process you used was effective? Why or why not?
Have you applied anything that you learned in previous WI courses, including English 1100 and 1200/2201 (or equivalent courses taken at another institution), to the writing that you have done in this course? What have you applied and how have you applied it?
These should not be the only questions your self-analytical letter answers, but they should be addressed.

To complete this project, I suggest that you refer to the memos you wrote for previous projects. For project 1, your memo discussed the audience and purpose for your personal statement: the application materials you used, what research you did on your specific audience, and what personal information you chose NOT to include. For project 3, your memo discussed the differences between a lab report and a scholarly article, and the decisions you made when translating one to the other. For project 4, your memo discussed what scholarly article you chose to base your poster or popular article on, and the decisions you made when translating one to the other. And while Project 2 did not have a memo, the project itself could serve as a reference for this self-analytical letter, as well. It may remind you what you learned about the differences between popular and scholarly articles, which may help with how you talk about projects 3 & 4.

Using these memos (and project 2) to write this letter will help you to draw a chronological line through your work for the semester, tracing the decisions you made on each project, the work you put into them, and how they each helped to inform those that came after.

My word-count expectations are always flexible, as I grade on content first. But based on past experience, this letter should be roughly five pages double spaced (or two and a half single spaced) to adequately cover all of your work this semester. It should also be formatted like an actual letter or memo. Not just a wall of text, but something addressed to your audience (me), and complete with salutations, dates, and names where they belong. Do a google search to see how such documents look