Reflection entries (B & A contract).

Given the difficulties of transfer, as we’ve said, it is especially important that we periodically consider what we’re learning, how that’s happening, and what, in turn, we can do to make the most of our discoveries. This is the primary purpose of the reflection journal — it’s a space for you to record what you’re doing, thinking, and learning about writing. You might consider what’s been challenging, what’s been helpful, what your most or least grateful for, what changes you might want to make in how you’re doing things. These entries may, in turn, help you write both your process notes (for P1, P2, and P3) as well as your final reflection itself. (It doesn’t always work to reach the end of a 15-week course and only *then* begin asking yourself what you’ve learned.) The B contract requires at least three journal entries, one submitted during each unit, as follows:

  • Exploring Our Assumptions (Jan 20-Feb 12)
  • Reviewing Expert Research (Feb 15-Mar 5)
  • Analyzing Expert Writing (Mar 15-Apr 9)

Minimum requirements to complete each reflection journal entry:

  • Label the entry with a submission date and a simple title that signals what kind of entry you’re including and/or highlights a significant discovery or question.
  • Make a good-faith effort to write at least 200 words about the work you’ve done and what you’re learning in the process.

Style Play entries (A contract only).

Another use of the journal, drawing from classical rhetorical exercises (such as the progymnasmata & commonplace book), is to experiment — indeed, to play — with stylistic choices and to explore the range of effects that you might achieve with those choices.

I will provide prompts for such exercises in the calendar, but you may also feel free to try out multiple iterations of exercises like recording (in which you write out several sentences from a favorite writer and then analyze the stylistic choices, trying to understand how the writer has achieved the effects they have) or imitation (in which you go one step further than recording, by mimicking the writer’s syntax or form, but substituting your own content) or translation (in which you take that writer’s content and rewrite it in a different form or style, such as changing prose to poetry, elevated language to slang, or even dialect to dialect). See also this index of exercises.

Of course, you’ll want to do more than just the exercise: you’ll also want to consider what you discover about language choices & their effects, grammatically or rhetorically.

Like the B requirements for reflection journal entries, the A contract requires at least three style-play journal entries, one submitted during each unit of the course (as defined above and in the calendar).

Minimum requirements to complete each style-play journal entry:

  • Label the entry with a submission date and a simple title that signals what kind of entry you’re including and/or highlights a significant discovery or question.
  • Make a good-faith effort to complete the exercise fully, following the instructions in the calendar or the guidelines above for recording, imitation, or translation.
  • Conclude the entry with a brief (100 word) reflection on what you discover about language choices and effects from the exercise.