Throughout the course of this semester my writing has changed in a positive manner. This course has made me grow as a writer, as it served as a reality check for me. I did not perform to my full potential in my pieces and the feedback I received allowed me to realize my mistakes. Coming into this course I thought it would be similar to my previous English course and in a away it was yet different at the same time. The idea was similar however more in depth and incorporating science which made it more interesting, yet more tricky.
The purpose of our first assignment, was to analyze an article that was not peer reviewed, based in the science field, through a rhetorical lens, hence it was called our “rhetorical analysis”. Initially I believed it would be easy as I got to choose the article, and a topic that I found interesting. However, to my understanding I interpreted the prompt entirely wrong and did not meet the requirements, like I should have. This served as an eyeopener to me as I had never done so poorly in an assignment. This ignited me to just want to do better every time thereafter. When editing my paper, I focused more on new learnings/techniques, such as jargon, the credibility of the authors, and trying to truly analyze a piece of writing as in how the authors accomplishes his purpose, and so forth, something that I was not used to doing.
Our next major piece was our research report, where I believe I performed better as a writer as it required more effort as well as trying to make up for my previous work. Before creating an actual essay, we were required to submit our topic proposal as well as our annotated bibliography. Both of which were new to me, the topic proposal gave me a chance to present my topic, and even give myself a better understanding as to what I was intending to do with this essay. The annotated bibliography was something I struggled with for the fact that finding adequate articles that back up both sides of an issue is difficult and knowing how to incorporate them within my essay was also a struggle for me. However, due to the fact that we created an annotated bibliography it made it easier for me to create my final piece, and it is something I will definitely do regardless if it required or not for a future research report. This essay was a fun experience for me overall because I spoke about Marijuana and the legalization of it and finding out new information based on this topic made it worthwhile.
Not only through these main writing assignments have I learned many new writing techniques, I also learned editing techniques as well. One of them being through peer reviewing, this has helped me not only edit my own papers through other feedbacks, but catch others mistakes and look for those same mistakes in my own writing. Overall this class was enjoyable because of the science incorporation, making it more interesting. Lastly something that was essential in making me a better writer as a whole and interpreting different writings were the five scientific journals. These journals made it easier to critique distinct authors and their way of writing, that way when it came down to a major paper it did not seem so difficult.
