Before entering this class, English 21003, at the start of the semester, I was not sure what to expect. However, after reading the course learning objectives and completing one of our first assignments, I started to get a glimpse of what this course was going to contain. The point of this class was to help us evolve as writers. In retrospect, it seems that this is the objective of most English classes. However, this course was more direct in establishing that from the beginning through a direct call for us to analyze ourselves as writers and realize in what areas we needed to grow in, instead of just being told.
One of the first assignments we received in this class was to reflect on our strengths and weaknesses as writers, and what were our reading and editing strategies. In this reflection, named “Reflection on Myself as a Writer” on my portfolio, I mention how much I struggle with word count: either writing too much or too little. That problem is something I acknowledge now to be something that could be easily fixed with the proper reading and editing exercises. However, in that first reflection, I also mention that my reading and editing strategies were nonexistent. Those strategies are something that I worked on throughout this class. Before this class, I nearly never reread a paper and if I did, I only fixed minor spelling or grammar mistakes that stood out. However, throughout the class I established an ability to reread papers and to make actual changes in the content I had. This is most notable in my General Audience Assignment. If you look at my draft and my final paper, there is a better flow of the sentences. An example of this is the change in the sentence “Although sepsis is most common in people who are over 65 years old or under 1 year old, people who have weakened immune systems, and people who have any chronic medical conditions- such as diabetes, lung disease, cancer, and kidney disease- anyone who has been in a hospital, especially after undergoing surgery, is at risk (CDC, 2018)” from my draft. I revised it by separating it into two distinct sentences as seen in the final draft: “Sepsis is most common in people who are over 65 years old or under 1 year old. However, people with weakened immune systems, people who have any chronic medical conditions — such as diabetes, lung disease, cancer, or kidney disease— and anyone who has been in a hospital, especially after undergoing surgery, is at risk (CDC, 2018)”. This addresses the class objective for enhancing our reading, drafting, revising, and editing strategies.
Throughout the semester, there were many different times that we engaged in the collaborative and social aspects of the writing process. For every assignment there were worksheets for our drafts to be peer reviewed, in an effort to aide us in the process of finalizing our assignments. However, I did not include all of these sheets because I realized that I did not actually consider what was said on them for my final drafts. There was only one sheet I included, which was the worksheet for the general audience assignment. I added this worksheet because the comments made under the question “are moral/economic/political considerations addressed? If not, can you make a suggestion?” forced me to think deeper into what the implications of my topic were and how that could be worked into my paper. The other assignment which utilized the collaborative aspect of writing was the lab report and poster assignment, since we all worked collectively on it and helped each other with our respective parts. This assignment also helped us to work on the “acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources…” objective by allowing us to divide up the workload of the assignment due to our strengths. Bilal was good at explaining the results, Raina was good at giving a step by step recount of what we did, and I’m good at summarizing, so I did the abstract. This sort of shared responsibility allowed for each person to express their abilities. However, we all shared the responsibility of reviewing and editing.
One course objective that I have always struggled with was establishing and maintaining a stance. This is something that I wrote about in the reflection for my New York Times summary assignment. I struggled with defining what exactly I was aiming to get out of the paper. Therefore, I was not able to accurately state it through a thesis statement. However, I progressively was able to work on this. In my Scholarly Article analysis, I had started to evolve in the area of editing so that aided me in establishing what my stance was. However, in my opinion, the most encompassing and concise thesis statement that I’ve had in my writing this semester was in my Literature Review: “With the analysis of the main factors leading to the misdiagnosis of epilepsy, the implications can be known, and a possible solution can be established.” The thesis statement was strategically placed at the end of my introductory paragraph. Additionally, it explained the purpose of my paper, to review the factors leading to epilepsy in an effort to discover what the implications and possible solutions were. This went in accordance with the flow of my paper as well- my body paragraphs were defining the different factors and the conclusion tied it all together to name the implications and the possible solution.
In the very first assignment I struggled with finding an appropriate article in the New York Times to write my summary on. This is still a course objective that I struggle with, as seen by a repeated mistake with one of my last assignments- the annotated bibliography. For the annotated bibliography, I chose an article that was a systematic review and not original research. For this reason, I have two different final drafts for my Annotated Bibliography, an original with the systematic review article and a revised one with a different article. While this seemed like an understandable mistake to me once I looked back at it because the article was in the IMRAD format, the title mentioned it was a systematic review and I completely ignored it. This shows that I need to be more cautious in searching for sources when writing papers. This is something that I worked on throughout this semester, but which I can still continue to evolve in because I am not 100% confident yet.
Throughout the semester, we have had to repeatedly summarize, paraphrase, analyze, and cite different article sources. It has become innate for me to use the CSE name-year form of citing, but at the beginning I had to do the citations while looking directly at the textbook. When summarizing or paraphrasing articles or sections of works, I have noticed that I am tempted to just write after every sentence I read. Therefore, I had to consciously force myself to read the article or section in its entirety before placing it into my own words. Summarizing is something that I don’t do terribly; however, it is something that I need to consciously force myself to do the right way. One thing I noticed does help was what we did for the annotated bibliography and literature review. Making the chart for the different articles and writing the main ideas in such a small box helped me both to efficiently summarize each section of the article and to organize my thoughts for the annotated bibliography. This furthermore helped me for the lit review. Since I already had the paraphrased summaries in my head, I was able to pick and choose which sections fit into my final lit review paper.
Overall, this was a very successful semester. From the first assignment to the last, my confidence in my writing has grown exponentially. Writing things like the reflections and this self-assessment help with that as well. Being able to sit down and reflect on how you felt about writing a specific assignment helps to analyze your thought process. This in turn allows you to pinpoint areas where you might have gone wrong and fix it up for the next time. I hope in the future to continue to develop the skills I have learned in this class.
