My Paper

The Writing Process

For this assignment, I had to interview a family member to learn about my family heritage. Interviewing somebody was very interesting because it was something that I’d never done before. I learned that by engaging with the interviewee, you can get more information and details about the subject. Coming up with different questions to ask was one of the challenges that I had for this essay. However, it wasn’t much of a problem because I ended up creating some questions as I was doing the interview; it was one of the parts that I enjoyed the most. During the interview, some of the stories sparked my interest and by asking more questions about the subject, I was able to get more information in detail for the essay. With my first draft, I remember struggling to use quotes in my essay. It was hard to find the right spot to use the proper quote. Transitions were also one of the parts that took me a long time to work on. But, by re-writing the essay each time after getting peer edits, I think my final draft improved compared to my first draft. The oral presentation was another obstacle to overcome. I always had a hard time talking in front of people, but I think I’m getting better as I do more. Interviewing somebody required more skills and responsibilities than I thought it would, but overall, I enjoyed doing this assignment.  

Core Competency Reflection

I show that I value feedback from others in my group by looking back at the peer edit sheets and trying my best to fix those parts that they pointed out. I added parts that they told me that I was missing and handed my draft in.  

My strategies for collecting relevant information for specific tasks include coming up with questions before the interview and making notes on what they say. I asked more questions when I thought I needed more information about it and recorded the interview to make sure I could go back to it.  

When I need to boost my mood or re-focus, I take some time to rest before focusing back. I was able to balance my work time and focus on tasks when I needed to. Taking enough time to rest was important because I was able to not make my brain too stressed and therefore, focus back on tasks to the best ability.  

Others find my feedback useful because I try my best to give them suggestions that will make their work better. Whenever I saw some parts with errors, I made comments on specifically what points might be better if they were changed. But I also pointed out the good parts of their essay and what parts stood out. I feel that they were useful because when my partner showed her work after editing, the points that I commented on were all fixed and were written better than the draft she had before.   

A goal that I would have myself going on would be to contribute to and work with criteria to improve my work because I easily forget to check the criteria before starting work and have missing parts in my assignments at the end. To improve this, I will carefully look at the criteria before moving on to anything and listen to the teacher whenever they give instructions. I’ll achieve this goal by showing evidence that I worked hard by including all the requirements from the criteria without missing anything.