Freitag

James Freitag
Professor Collins
ENGL 1302
16 Aug. 2016
From Green to Gold
I learned many things about communication this semester, most of which concerns
academic writing. Academic writing is very different than regular day to day communication as it
is more formal and refined. Small mistakes such as improper formatting or grammatical errors
can cost valuable points when submitting a paper. Proper placement of commas and diverse
sentence structure can make all the difference in receiving a desired grade. I found that a good
peer review of my rough drafts of essays went a long way in improving the quality of my
writing before submitting assignments. Having someone else to read my papers really helped to
catch errors that I couldnt spot on my own and to have other opinions on the direction my essays
should go. Peer review and ratiocination were the two greatest things I learned this semester that
helped in the development of my academic writing.
Peer review and ratiocination are very helpful in the writing process of developing formal
academic essays. I best learned the importance and helpfulness of these two processes on the first
essay that we wrote for the semester. Our first essay was to be written as a rhetorical analysis of a
speech of our choosing. I chose to analyze a speech by Adolf Hitler defending his
implementation of Operation Barbarossa, in which he planned to invade the Soviet Union during
World War ll. I struggled to formulate my rough draft, drudging through to try to reach word
count. When I finally completed the rough draft I felt relieved, but not very confident in my
writing. In class, we conducted our first session of peer review. Peer review is when classmates

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read each others papers to find mistakes, check for sensibility, and give insight on what the paper
does well and could improve on. The first session of peer review was a big eye opener for me, as
I got to see how others viewed my work and what they could point out to help in my writing. By
the time it was over, my paper was marked head to toe with corrections to be made and mistakes
found by others. This sounds like a bad thing, but in reality it helped a lot in writing that first
paper. Here I would like to give a special thanks to my boys Charlie and Will who helped with
the peer review and ensured the production of quality work for professor Collins. After peer
review came the process of ratiocination, which dealt with varying of sentence lengths and
making sure that every sentence did not begin with the same word. I found that in my first essay
my sentence varied little in length, as most were of medium size, and my sentences tended to
begin with He or Hitler. This process helped me to find where I needed to make changes to
vary the sentence structure in my paper and ultimately allow for a smoother flow. Implementing
the two processes of peer review and ratiocination in my writing process greatly improved the
quality of my Hitler speech essay.
Academic writing is not something that comes easy to me in any way. However, I learned
much this semester on how to improve my writing and how to communicate more effectively.
The writing process is one that can be grueling at times, but rewarding once the final product has
been finished. Whenever I would finish an essay, I felt proud that I had accomplished a
challenging task that took hard work and concentration to achieve. I benefitted greatly from peer
review and ratiocination in the writing process, as having others input gave me an opportunity to
improve my papers. In the future, I hope to use what I have learned in this class to continue to
communicate effectively, both verbally and in academic writing.

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