Reflecting on What You Have Learned

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In this chapter, you have learned a great deal about this genre by reading several profiles and writing one of your own. To consolidate your learning, reflect not only on what you learned but on how you learned it.

ANALYZE & WRITE

Write a blog post, a letter to your instructor or a classmate, or an e-mail message to a student who will take this course next term, using the writing prompt that seems most productive for you:

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  • Explain how your purpose and audience—what you wanted your readers to learn about your subject from reading your profile—influenced one of your decisions as a writer, such as what kinds of descriptive detail you included, what method of organization you used, or the role you adopted in writing about your subject.
  • Discuss what you learned about yourself as a writer in the process of writing this profile. For example, what part of the process did you find most challenging? Did you try anything new, like getting a critical reading of your draft or outlining your draft in order to revise it? If so, how well did it work?
  • If you were to give advice to a fellow student who was about to write a profile, what would you say?
  • Which of the readings in this chapter influenced your essay? Explain the influence, citing specific examples from your profile and the reading.
  • If you got good advice from a critical reader, explain exactly how the person helped you—perhaps by questioning your perspective in a way that enabled you to refocus your profile’s dominant impression, or by pointing out passages that needed more information or clearer chronology to better orient readers.

    Question