Reflective Writing

For your reflective writing-both your Unit TW Reflections and your Journal Entries, you need to begin to develop your own reflective writing.

Generally speaking, to write reflectively, students craft personal self-reflections that accounts for their experiences as writers, their relationship to writing, their sense of creativity and purpose, their strengths and weaknesses as a writer, and related issues.

According to Nedra Reynolds and Elizabeth Davis, co-authors of Portfolio Keeping: A Guide for Students (2013), reflective thinking and writing may be described in a few ways. For instance, reflective thinking and writing is how students "develop the ability to identify and discuss their choices, strengths, and learning [and composing] processes". In addition, a student's reflective writing "might outline the skills and strengths" demonstrated in that student's ePortfolio and might explain why the student chose certain ePortfolio artifacts, i.e., explain why certain audio files, PowerPoints, hyperlinks, Word files, images and/or video, etc. were chosen for inclusion. In general, Reynolds and Davis think reflective writing not only explains artifact choices but also represents students analyzing their own written and visual rhetorical choices .

Definitions of Reflective Writers

Students who engage in reflective writing...
• Develop the ability to self-curate their writing and writing process over time

• Learn to change their identities as writers by writing for specific audiences using appropriate media

A reflective writer...

• Invites critiques of his or her writing from readers.

• Cultivates self-criticism and/or accepts criticism and changes his or her writing practices as a consequence.

• Casts back into his or her past to explain a present change and positive development in his or her writing practice.

• Uses course content as the catalyst for self-reflection.

General Reflective Writer Questions

• Have I changed my writing practices as a result of this assigned paper? Why?

• How did I respond to constructive criticism in the form of instructor comments, peer reviewer comments, or Writing Center tutor comments?

• How did my writing process help me discover new ideas in this assigned paper?

• How exactly have my writing skills improved while writing a paper?

• How has my newly improved writing process influenced writing assignments that I completed in other courses?