This is a self-reflection of my writing process for my narrative essay assignment.

Completing the narrative essay, as a food centered based essay, it aimed to tell a personal story of mine and to tell all my readers the lesson that I learned a lesson. From writing this essay I was able to evaluate the purpose, exigence, audience, stance, and genre. It also meant to serve the purpose of accomplishing the course learning outcomes.

The purpose of my essay was to describe to the readers my events and interactions by conveying my thoughts and feelings. While trying to write my purpose, I drafted out an outline by stating the significance of the topic and the significance of the topic to my readers. I followed this outline and presented it in my essay. I developed a strategy for drafting and editing my essay while writing the outline by writing all my notes in the margins and comments for myself. Looking back at my essay, I realize that I didn’t convey my purpose efficiently because of my lack of flow, irrelevant details, and redundancy. I combined three different stories, but it lacked transition and flow. However, this addressed the course learning outcomes of drafting, revising, and editing. I was able to write multiple drafts, edit, and revise using my original outline. I included all the notes that I developed over the period of writing the essay.

The motivation behind writing this essay was that I wanted to let my readers know a glimpse of my life. The tragic event that happened behind it was not meant for the readers to feel pity, but to understand that things happen with a lesson behind it. I used a real story and dialogue of my characters to express the purpose. I was honest throughout the essay, hoping to give off a relatability feeling and grasping the reader into the story. I wanted to display vulnerability using imagery and diction throughout my essay so that my readers can picture the events. 

This narrative essay targets readers with a connection between food and family bonds. I specifically wrote it with dialogue to express the connections between myself, my characters, and the readers. I included imagery of displaying facial features and the physical features of my grandma to show a tone of suspense leading up to the next event. The whipping motion of my grandma rinsing the rice meant to act as an image for the reader. I also included moods such as humorous and melancholy towards the climax of my story to also show imagery. However, I do not think that I did a good job at displaying tones because it was not thorough enough. Through the course learning outcome of engaging in a collaborative manner, my peers were able to edit and give feedback on my essay. They complimented on my use of imagery and told me what my essay lacked and what needed improvement. With their feedback, I was able to fix the necessary details, grammatical errors, and clearly present my thesis statement. 

The genre of my essay is a narrative essay. I followed the structure of a narrative essay, but my thesis statement was not stated clearly in my introduction. I wrote it in chronological order to explain the cause and effects of the event. This story is about my personal experience and I was honest about the situations that happened in it. Through exploring the narrative essay, I was able to accomplish the course learning outcomes by analyzing the rhetorical situations. Before writing the essay, I drafted the five rhetorical situations and made sure to include it in my essay. 

The stance that I was presenting in the essay is with the use of diction to show my position. I had a position of internal conflict and informing others about a lesson. My position on the internal conflict of my essay was built up with the climax and ended it with a solution. I felt that my word choices were able to describe the problem and the solution. 

From writing this narrative essay, I was able to determine the purpose, exigence, audience, genre, and stance. These five rhetorical situations helped me to understand and achieve the course learning outcomes. Although I would like to improve on my essay, I have learned to understand the basis of writing a narrative essay. My mistakes and feedback are a constant reminder of what to improve on next time.