View of my Writing Fundamentals

Throughout the semester, I believe I have grown as a writer in all facets, but I feel like I have grown the most in revision, argumentation, research, and thinking about the audience. When we started the course, to me it was just finishing the assignment without really thinking much about how my ideas were being communicated within my writing. Through this course though, with the myriads of major assignments, I learned how to adapt my writing based on the purpose, genre, and audience to keep them interesting and unique. As I looked back upon my work this semester, I did see myself grow in how I supported arguments, reflected on social issues in our world, and overall, how I explained my ideas. 

An extremely important thing I learned was adapting my writing to cater to specific rhetorical situations and audiences. During my visual essay that was about climate change denial I wanted to utilize symbolism and satire to share my message. In my artist statement for the visual essay I said, “The contrasts and strange expressions mixed with the slogans used creates a discomforting tone while also making you think about the deeper meaning of it all.” This quote shows that I did become a lot more aware with how visual choices and your tone could emotionally affect an audience. Rather than just saying facts on climate change, I went beyond and incorporated imagery and irony so I could persuade the viewers to think thoroughly on the issue. I then talked about the color and atmosphere of the picture, “Black and white in the picture makes the world look lifeless.” This color shows the danger and future if global warming stays on the backburner and remains an ignored problem by most. With the visual essay, I realized that communication can be utilized through a rhetorical lens with visuals and not just through words.

I believe that I grew in self assessment and revision. For most of my life I really just looked at revision as the part for correcting major grammar mistakes but through this course I realized that it was more than that, revision is where you improve integral aspects of your paper like, organization, clarity and analysis. With my first paper about the model minority stereotype, I moved past just doing what would be simple which would be just describing the stereotype and moving on but Instead I also analyzed the social effects and how this emotionally impacts people. An example of this is in John’s statement, “The model minority myth makes people overlook those who are struggling and may need help.” With this quote it let me further explain how harmful stereotypes can completely erase the struggles of Asian Americans. After looking back on the essay I could clearly see that I can connect the bigger arguments to evidence which certainly has caused my writing to improve a lot throughout the course. 

I noticed that my critical thinking and argumentative skills got a lot stronger. During the earlier part of the semester, I was scared to have a really strong stance on specific ideas because I didn’t want to seem opinionated in the writing. Throughout the course however I noticed that I started to become a lot more confident in presenting arguments which are aided by analysis and evidence. With my second essay about esports, I argued that the sexism within gaming isn’t just rare, isolated experiences but instead I said, “deeply instilled aspects of the culture which cause limited participation and reinforce underrepresentation of women within esports.” Rather than just giving examples of harassment, I related them to bigger cultural problems that plague gaming communities, stating that, “what initially seemed like incidents of toxicity, became clearly identifiable trends.” This proves the growth I had with being able to critically analyze patterns and then connect them to observations that I have noticed in bigger social issues.

Another skill I feel as though developed heavily with this course was source research and usage. I feel as though in the early parts of the semester I wasn’t very good at integrating sources in a smooth manner but as the semester went on I started to be better at using research to thoroughly support my ideas instead of just slapping quotes onto the essay without too much thought. An example of this is in my climate change essay, where I utilized evidence from the IPCC and NASA to strengthen the claims I had about environmental damage. I used a quote from the IPCC which said, “human caused greenhouse gas emissions have unquestionably warmed the planet and intensified environmental disruption.” I then further connected this piece of evidence to the imagery of the political cartoon with the glaciers which were shrinking and the droughts making it look like a wasteland. Another example of this is in my esports essay, where I then put in academic pieces of research from Kim and Kim and Nyugen et al. to further support personal observations about sexism within the gaming sphere. Using these pieces of evidence was integral in improving the overall quality of my writing by allowing me to better integrate, and analyze sources properly. 

In conclusion, I am very grateful for this course as it made me grow immensely as a writer by teaching me how to adapt my communication, create stronger arguments, revise in a deeper manner, and utilize research a lot more effectively. Throughout the course, my writing became more filled with purpose and started becoming more analytical, along with having more of my particular perspective as I have grown more comfortable. I look to make my analysis more concise as I now see writing as a powerful way to think about social issues in a critical manner instead of just as a thing I complete assignments for. I’m sure that everything I learned from this course will assist me heavily in the future.