English
21002
Sarah Perez
Josiah Rajgopaul
CCNY
While this semester was underway, I found myself working on writing about a wide variety of topics while also refining my abilities in a large number of areas, those areas primarily being highlighted through the course learning objectives. I enjoyed my most recent essay the most because of the challenges it had posed to me, as I was responsible for finding professionals to interview whilst also finding articles that would also back up my views. I felt like I had to be thorough, and I enjoyed covering multiple bases in order to find what I needed to make my argument the strongest it could be. This decidedly highlights the qualities listed in Course Learning Objective number four, by describing how to develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes. This was done because this was an essay where I would have to work with others in multiple ways in order to refine and strengthen my essay. For example, during class time, when my essay was presented to the class, my classmates had given me advice and constructive criticisms on how to improve, thus showing the collaboration and social aspects of this assignment. Furthermore, I had to collaborate and socialize with the people that I had interviewed, naturally, as I had to ask them questions and guide the discussion in a productive manner. Another Course Learning Objective that this essay had helped me achieve would be number two, which is to enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self assessment. The way this learning objective was achieved was because I had to read over my essay multiple times, while undergoing through 3 drafts, all which included me revising and editing the content therein.
Furthermore, throughout this semester there have been other assignments that have helped me reach other course objectives as well. For example, for Essay #1 the multicultural interview I was able to achieve and understand course learning objective #1, ( acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility ) as the assignment had me interview somebody from a different ethnic background, as such, I was able to witness the linguistic differences and draw conclusions from the rhetoric used. I found it especially interesting how the person I interviewed spoke differently utilizing different speech patterns, which went to show the sheer contrast in difference from how we were raised, and our backgrounds. Another course objective I was able to understand through this essay would be #6, formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing. I mention that because my stance throughout the essay was that despite how vastly different we could be, in the end, we’re all human so to some regard we’re all similar, and I was able to paint the difference in cultures and traditions whilst also being able to tie connections between myself and the person i interviewed, as such, I was able to keep my stance and support it throughout the essay. In addition to this, I was able to understand course learning outcome #8 as well, that including strengthening your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources) as this interview had me quote what my interviewee was saying in my essay, and paraphrase what was being said in some instances within the transcript. Furthermore, I had to summarize the interview in the essay, while also synthesizing and analyzing from my interviewee’s experiences, which all ended up being cited within my essay.
As you can see, a common trend occurring from my essays is that they call for me to reference several different course learning outcomes. Another example of this can be seen through essay #2, which had me do a deep dive into studying an online group through a field observational essay, in which I would have to describe the mannerisms and occurrences for the Star Wars subreddit. As such, while undergoing research for my essay I had to find a middle ground between what I had in mind for my essay and what the people of reddit would post. Obviously, the people who were frequenting these online subreddits were not having my essay in mind, which is why it was essential for me to utilize learning outcome #3, which required me to negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation in order to format the information provided to me in a way to elevate my essay. Naturally by design, this also achieved course learning #5 as well, which entailed engaging in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond. I mention this because I had to go through several instances in which I had to dive through the science fiction genre through several facets primarily within the subreddit, and connect the information to not just the given context defined from the essay, but furthermore I had connected the information beyond just what was required from the essay. Another learning outcome I was able to further understand and utilize would be course learning objective #7, practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects. This objective actually goes hand in hand with several of my essays as I had to reference the internet and library sources in order to strengthen my arguments and essays overall. For instance, in my field observational essay I had to use the Star Wars subreddit and other online databases like magazines and interviews for my essay. However, Another essay I wrote that strongly utilized this course objective among other ones, would be my literature review essay. My literature review essay required me to refer to several differences sources in order to strengthen my argument to support my view, which also connects to both #6 and #8 as well, as I referenced several different case studies and articles in order to support my viewpoint, using the CCNY library, and other online databases, primarily from Harvard, as sources for my writing project.
In conclusion, looking back at this course as the semester continued underway, it was obvious that it allowed me to touch base on various areas and become more capable as a writer because of the unique experiences and challenges I was thrusted into. As such, I feel like I’ve been able to progress and become stronger in these focus areas, where previously I didn’t have a strong head start or understanding, I now feel capable.
