Critical Reflection of the Essay Process

Over the whole semester, the second last assignment is the problem-solution essay which can be considered as a platform where we can put all the knowledge and skills acquired from previous tutorials into use. I spent much more time on writing and revising the problem-solution essay than other assignments. During the essay process, the writing skills and criteria of academic essay learnt from this module are really useful. After crafting several drafts based on the suggestions from my tutor and classmates, I finally finished the last version.

To begin with, I need to settle a general topic for the essay. I originally wanted to choose the same topic which is the relationship between environment and economy as my reader response. However, I found it hard to develop it to an essay, after which I shifted the topic to the cultural globalization.   Then, I narrowed my focus down to the preservation of traditional Chinese arts in Chinese society because I felt the urgency of the problem and was familiar with it. The next step was to write a thesis statement that distills the main ideas into one sentence. I incorporated the two problems and solutions into the statement in an organized way. But the statement did prove to be clear enough as it was not recognized when firstly read by my tutor. So I made some changes to the sentence structure so as to emphasize my main points. Thirdly, I collected adequate sources from reliable websites to support my identified problems and suggested possible solutions respectively. With all preparation done, I started write the essay. When working on the reference part, I kept referring to the criteria to match my different sources to corresponding forms, such as secondary sources. As a result, I became much more familiar with the APA styles. Based on the advice from classmates, I added more expert ideas to convince readers and polished my language further. Moreover, I made more improvements according to my tutor’s suggestions. As indicated by the tutor, the main problem is the unclear organization of the essay, and I made up for it by adding topic sentences to every paragraphs and transitional sentences between paragraphs. These sentences were really useful for readers to catch the flow of ideas and main points of the essay. After submitting several drafts, I eventually uploaded the final version to the IVLE workbin.

Through writing the problem-solution essay, I revised the writing skills and learnt several lessons personally. The focus of an academic essay should be specific and a clear and focused thesis statement is required. Next, an academic essay needs to be well-organized to guide the readers. Lastly, what I learnt was constant modification and improvements make a good academic essay. 

Although writing this essay is time-consuming, I felt a sense of achievement when I completed it. The experience of writing this essay is definitely beneficial to my future academic writing.