This class has been quite a learning experience in terms of my writing as well as personally. The assignments seemed interwoven into our personal lives and sometimes even made me take an insightful look at myself. It made me stop and actually made me question whether if I’m doing an assignment the way it’s supposed to be done. Should I be even worried about a correct way of doing things?

Let’s start with one of the first things that made me question my methods: the interview essay. The very start of this class was pretty interesting, even though it sounded like a lot of work at first, because I never did anything like the interview essay. Coming up with the interview questions was quite a challenge because along with basing the questions in objectivity, I had to take into account my interviewee’s personal feelings and not to make the questions seem cruel, as it was a sensitive topic we were talking about. Framing the questions were also extremely important, as I had to keep the questions completely devoid of biases personal opinions – to avoid influencing the interviewee’s response in any way – and to make them open-ended. The first essay is what made me realize the course is shaped with the CLOs from the syllabus in mind. As the semester went on, I would check off the various CLOs from the list in the syllabus, The first essay helped fulfill: (1) “acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility”, (2) “enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment”, (3) “develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes” and (4) “engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond”. CLO (1) “acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility” wasn’t hard to realize, given the essay involved interviewing someone from a different culture, and that the interviewee had moved to the US fairly recently, meaning English wasn’t her first language. Below is a picture of the duration of the interviews:

The completion of CLO (2) “enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment” came at the end of the interview essay process, when the periodic submission of multiple drafts ultimately led to the final draft. Moreover, I think the final A option revision helped further cement my learning of CLO (2), as seen in the picture below, where my changes from the final draft of the essay – the one at the start of the semester – are highlighted while in the process of doing the “A” option revision. Even in the first part of the essay, there are a lot of changes made, which is indicative of the massive amount of revision done throughout the paper:

With (3) “develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes” it was kind of the same process, with asking someone to do the interview, finding a place for the interview, coming up with the questions with having somewhat of a control over the responses. All of that culminated into realizing CLO (3). The interview, was the result of both me and the interviewee contributing both of our time and resources to create something greater than the sum of it’s parts. Below is a picture of a part of the transcript:

 

CLO (4) “engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond” was fairly confusing to me because I felt lost about how to include that multimodal component in our first essay until the peer review. Other’s responses to my paper and seeing examples from my peer’s papers cleared things up and helped see what to do about the multimodal element in my essay. I came up with attaching a YouTube video in the first essay that strengthens the arguments made in said essay, along with saying a few words about it:

And now with the very last discussion post, where we read a bit about genre and responded to the article assigned,I have a better understanding of genre and genre analysis.

The CLOs: (5) “negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation” and (6) “formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing” were fulfilled after the second essay where we had to research an online community. Focusing my observation for the online community around a specific topic, and writing about it objectively, as well as explaining the jargon to someone whose not familiar with it, accomplished (5) “negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation”. The picture below shows the description of a commonly used jargon called “Insta-locking”:

Building upon that focus on the online community and picking a side by formulating an objective argument, then using sources to strengthen my argument helped me reach (6)” formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing”. For example, here, I’m exploring my objective observations and then taking a stance from those observations:

I met (7) “practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects” during the process of completing the third essay where we had to find and vet a lot of sources before using them in the essay. I think the class with the librarian helped a lot in that it provided a lot of helpful context about finding, verifying and using sources. However, one thing I will note is that I have yet to properly learn and practice source synthesis. Some of the various sources I’ve used in Essay #3:

With (8) “strengthen your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources)”, I had to juggle multiple sources at once and sift through a lot of information. Scrutinizing each source down to minute details made it all that much easier to practice using my source, as I had all the information on hand. And as is often said, practice makes perfect so creating that 3^rd essay and using the sources over and over again in my essay helped to realize CLO (8) “strengthen your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources”. This also couldn’t have happened without editing my essay again and again for the multiple drafts, which culminated into the picture below, showing part of my 3^rd essay where I try and maintain that delicate balance between exploring the source, but also making sure my own input is there, as well as information about how said source contributes towards my argument:

I also think the nature of the CLOs, being that it can also be a goal considered outside of the bounds of academics – as made clear with the exploration of language and inclusivity in the interviews that we made with people outside of our own culture – gives the course a deeper and longer term purpose. I think academically, I learned a lot as well. The importance of drafting over and over again can’t be stressed. A draft can be very messy, even if it seems like you’re doing your best, and it may not be apparent until you’ve done some more practice and learn more concepts, then go back to revisit your writing. At that point, your paper’s limitations become quite visible and you can then sit down to edit and revise and make your paper better. This course taught me a lot.