My Final Thoughts
Throughout the semester I have written a handful of essays such as literary narratives, exploratory essays, and critical research analysis papers. Most of the time, I wrote to meet the rubric but while these papers took a long time, I have gained a tremendous amount of knowledge on language and learned to admire the art of writing. Entering this course, I spoke standard English, slang English, proper Bengali, slang Bengali, and Arabic. I thought the only issues I would encounter in entering this course were some issues with grammar and writing. Instead of struggling, however, I embraced my weaknesses and found many shared hardships with other students in the class. Many people “code switch” in class. Most of my classmates speak slang with me. In a comfortable environment, I didn’t have a fear of writing and it made me a stronger writer. [Throughout all the challenges I faced writing, they have made me better for they helped me improve my writing and research a lot]. I’ve learned so many new things in this class which will help me in the future and everyday life. For example, there are so many attitudes toward language. Language has the ability to empower or oppress someone. In this first phase, my peers and I had the opportunity to write extensively on how the English language affected us in some specific way. In the second phase, we had to do a considerable amount of research on language and literacy. In the third phase, we critically analyzed a myth and used a visual example to elaborate more.
I faced many challenges in this course that took time and practice to overcome. Over the past four months I have learned many things and reached a lot of my goals in writing. While writing my literary narrative essay, my purpose was to make sure the audience knows what they were reading. The hardest part of this essay was to include literary elements smoothly into my writing. However, using phrases and words that portrayed imagery with literary elements helped. Furthermore, during my writing of the exploratory essay, the difficult task was finding sources. What helped me the most was attending the library session, which taught me how to navigate various research archives such as jstor.org. With the help of the library sessions, I found sources for all my essays and assignments. I really appreciate all the help I got on finding links and valuable sources. With all the challenges faced, I improved my goals for each essay and assignment. Every time I wrote, I thought about my stance, audience, and purpose. Figuring this out, helped me define my goal for the essays.
I’ve learned many strategies that will help me write essays in the future for school and skills that will help me in the future and in my career. The main thing I liked was peer review collaborations which were helpful in every sense. It made sure I was headed in the right direction for my essays. It brings a great discussion of recognizing each other’s mistakes and learning from someone else’s writing. These discussions helped me better understand the class during the times I would fall behind. Through peer reviewing, I could fully comprehend what was expected of my writing in the class. My weaknesses in writing essays were finding the right topics. There are so many things to write about. Once I found something that I was very passionate about, it was smooth sailing from there.
My first writing assignment in college was a literacy narrative. It was about an event that made me realize language is very important. We started off with introductions and shared it with our classmates. This narrative helped me write creatively and descriptively. After sharing my writing piece with my peers and vise versa, I read many genres and situations proving language is important. It was astonishing to see how everyone was assigned the same task yet resulted in a different essay. During that time I have done revisions and edits. I fixed misspellings and vocabulary checks. With all the feedback, editing was easy. My classmates were more than helpful. It was a great practice for the next essay to come. My professors always had time for questions and suggestions which helped me to understand much more.
Completing assignments and essays helped me develop and use new strategies in my writing. The exploratory essay has a stricter agenda. I had to present results from my sources. I wrote on how language plays a huge role in the workforce. This essay helped me to recognize how language attitudes and standards can empower or oppress someone. In addition to allowing me to practice using in-text citations, I learned to master the MLA format for citations which was a helpful learning experience. By the time my essay was finished, I was familiar with citing sources and acknowledging authors who imparted my research. With a lot of practice, I learned to effectively argue my claim and use many writing techniques. There were difficult times of thinking of a thesis for essays, but I was provided with help from classmates. They told me how to improve on and explained how to do it. From homework to free write assignments, each piece of writing helped me practice clearly transcribing my thoughts onto paper.
Completing all the assigned essays helped me develop many strategies that I can use in my life. All the essays helped me recognize my strengths and weaknesses. The purpose of writing to me is to express our feelings, ideas, and thoughts. Writing holds the ability to change the world.
