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Improving Essay Analysis Skills

Shiv Chauhan wrote a reflective essay analyzing their first attempt at writing an essay analyzing Kalam's cosmological argument. In their first draft, they focused too much on summarizing the original text rather than analyzing it. After receiving feedback, they rewrote the essay from scratch, planning its structure in advance. When rewriting, they analyzed rhetorical strategies used in the original text and presented the information in a clear, organized manner for their audience. The biggest improvement from the first to final draft was properly analyzing the text instead of just summarizing it. Through this process, Shiv learned important skills for becoming a stronger writer and reader.

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Shivansh Chauhan
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9 views1 page

Improving Essay Analysis Skills

Shiv Chauhan wrote a reflective essay analyzing their first attempt at writing an essay analyzing Kalam's cosmological argument. In their first draft, they focused too much on summarizing the original text rather than analyzing it. After receiving feedback, they rewrote the essay from scratch, planning its structure in advance. When rewriting, they analyzed rhetorical strategies used in the original text and presented the information in a clear, organized manner for their audience. The biggest improvement from the first to final draft was properly analyzing the text instead of just summarizing it. Through this process, Shiv learned important skills for becoming a stronger writer and reader.

Uploaded by

Shivansh Chauhan
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Shiv Chauhan

ENGL 108
Dr. Mercado
September 21st, 2020

Reflective Essay
My essay analysis on the kalām cosmological argument was my first ever. The first draft was
very off-point and didn’t qualify as an analysis at all. After the feedback I received from my peers
and instructors, I got a clear idea of where I went wrong and what I should’ve done instead.
In the first draft, I focused too much on toning down the technical and summarising the text. I
practically wrote a summary of the original text and there wasn’t any analysis of how and why
the text works. I believe my mistake stemmed from my failure to apply what I learnt in the class
in the project. So for the final draft, I went back to the theory again and started from scratch.
One thing which helped me the most while writing the final draft was planning its structure
before starting to write it. In the first draft, I ended up copying the original texts’ structure which
defeated the whole purpose of the analysis. Initially, I struggled with the whole idea of writing an
analysis and I had no idea where to begin. What helped most at that point was reading my
peers’ essays and getting a gist of what I am supposed to do and what I did wrong.
I was aware of the audience I was writing for and tried my best to organise and present the
information in a clean and easy to understand way. I felt that presenting the audience with the
syllogism in the introduction would give them context and spread out the information evenly.
The biggest change from my first draft to final was the structure. Apart from that, I actually
analysed what rhetorical strategies like inductive deduction in “For the second argument,
Waters first states its intuitive nature and uses inductive reasoning to back his claim.” and
allusion etc. My writing developed in the sense that I started treating the text as a whole and
started connecting things whereas at first I followed the text paragraph by paragraph which
deprived it of its flow. I learnt that I need to read the text multiple times to understand, analyze,
and comment about it. The feedback from my peers and instructor was the biggest help in
improving my first draft. I learned that my first draft could’ve been way better if I would asked for
help then. Through this essay analysis exercise, I have learnt some new skills which will not
only help me become a better writer but also a better reader who is able read and understand
more thoroughly and critically no matter what discipline.

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