At the beginning of this semester, I didn’t have much experience doing discussions on BlackBoard. I have also only done one or two scientific papers in the past year. This class helped me improve my writing throughout the semester. In this paper, I’ll be going over to what extent have I achieved the course learning objectives? In what ways have my perceptions on what writing is and does evolve this semester? This paper will also discuss how my writing developed through the Technical Description, Scientific Controversy Paper, and Research Paper. These assignments helped meet the course learning objectives and honed my understanding of writing and argument.   

The course learning objectives are that you will acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility. Another objective is to enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment. The third objective is you will negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of the genre, medium, and rhetorical situation. The fourth objective is you will develop and engage in collaborative and social aspects of the writing process. The fifth objective is you will engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond. The sixth objective is you will formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing. The seventh objective is you will practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects. The eighth and last objective is you will strengthen your source use practices like evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources.

My first paper, Technical Description, was easy for me because I was actually enjoying doing this assignment. This is because I wrote about how each computer part functions and how they are needed to make a computer. For each part, I wrote the measurements and a picture labeled with “Fig.2”. By doing this assignment, it helped me negotiate my own writing goals and audience expectations. This is because when I was doing this assignment, I felt like I was teaching an audience that didn’t know anything about building computers. Another objective of this assignment helped me in enhancing my strategies for revising, drafting, editing, and self-assessment. After I finished this paper, I asked my co-worker to revise it for me because she worked for the writing center at NYU. I made a lot of grammar mistakes and there were some sentences that didn’t make sense. I first read through everything to make sure I understood the mistakes I’ve made and then I edited the paper. The mistake that I have to fix now is citing the pc part picker websites and the pictures, I also have to qualify a statement I made in the introduction and some minor fixes.

The second paper, Scientific Controversy, was pretty basic because I wrote about if video games can improve your cognitive and problem-thinking skills. I was pretty proud of the counterargument I made for this because when I started this paper I had no clue how to counter the fact that people get influenced and addicted to video games until halfway through the paper. I think this is because I read the sources through and through enough to find out what to do. Therefore, this paper helped me practice using library resources and online databases. This paper also helped formulate and articulate a stance through and in my writing and strengthen my sources. I also got this paper revised by my co-worker, read through my mistakes, and edited it. The only thing I have to fix is that I forgot to make my title and I have to be mindful of how I start quoting a text because I said “journal states”, but a better option is to say “the author claims”.

The group research paper was definitely the hardest assignment out of the three. This is because you have to work with people and sometimes they don’t have time to do work on the days you need help. I had a good group overall because we communicated and split up the work enough to make it easier for everyone. This assignment definitely helped me develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of the writing processes. Doing the paper was also very straightforward because I did the introduction and methods part. The method section of the paper is where we just had to explain how the experiment was played out. With this and talking online calls, this assignment helped us arrange our writing goals and audience concerning the genre of the research paper. This paper was also revised by my co-worker. The only thing we need to revise on is to be consistent with the terms from the text.

Overall, I feel like I improved on strengthening my sources, finding my sources, revising and editing, engaging in social collaborations, and stating my stance throughout the paper. I feel like I need to work on engaging in genre analysis and multimodal composing to look for more effective writing because I still need to work on new vocabulary with quoting and being consistent with terms with all sources. Another objective I feel I need to work on is to acknowledge my and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility because I feel like I need to read more resources to practice my rhetorical sensibility. This class has been very helpful with my writing and taught me how to work with people.