Abrar Shafi                        
                                                                                   The City college of New York
                                                                                                FIQWS 10111
                                                                                                Brenna Crowe   
                                                                                             December 14, 2023  

Writing: A never ending learning process.
Writing is not just something you just think and write, it’s more likely a process of putting words together to express feelings. As the semester comes to an end, my experience and writing are taking a big step in this class. There were many ups and downs throughout the process. But my learning outcome is the most important thing that serves the purpose of this class. Writing essays or papers was one of my biggest fears. Now, I feel I was able to overcome it. As I started doing the first major assignment (Language & Literacy Narrative essay) in this class it made me realize I can push myself more to become better as a writer. Also, the feedback from my peers and professor is a great confidence booster. Which made me realize I have the potential for writing, I just need to know how to imply it. In this essay, I will focus on my learning outcome for my assignments or class which I have successfully met. 

    For the first phase of this class, the assignment was a personal narrative essay. In which I was able to establish the base process of writing such as drafting, editing, and revising. During the process, it improved my understanding of how to carefully craft and personalize the delivery of my writing. I also learned how to use pathos properly to appeal to the reader’s emotions. Which made me learn more ways to attract the readers’ attention, making them more engaged with my story.

           Through the process of writing my Op-ed and visual argument on unemployment, I have gained valuable insights into language and literacy. I was able to understand that it’s important to get knowledge about the situation, goal, and requirements of my audience. The main goal of the assignment was to talk about an important issue in my community. Since we are in an inflation period, I wanted to address unemployment. I carefully researched and included many viewpoints on unemployment to make sure my arguments were well-supported and honest. For my visual argument, I added graphs to prove my statements. In this assignment, I tried to use rhetorical devices to appeal to their emotions by interviewing one of my co-workers and putting his statement on how it went for him as unemployed. Also, from the readings in class, I was able to analyze the text better and get a brief idea of the main topic. From one specific reading “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott, I realized how important drafting is before writing about something. She stated in the book “Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts”(Lamott, Pg 1, 1994). It made me realize how not every writer gets it right the first time. That’s why draft matters in the writing process. Also, another thing I learned is that no writer feels thrilled when he/she sits down to write. My next assignment was the Nobel Laureate Review and for this assignment, we had to review a Nobel Prize Laureate who attended CCNY. For me, I picked John O’Keeffe who graduated from CCNY and became a neuroscientist. During the process of writing about him as I learned more about him, he inspired me more. The discoveries and research of O’Keeffe are really impressive. It demonstrates the value of patience and curiosity in studying the sciences.

      As I moved to the third phase of this class we had to write a research essay. When the assignment was given to us I was thinking in my head writing about science! This is not gonna be easy. But in this assignment my learning outcomes were great. For my essay, I decided to write about Genome Editing. Throughout my research essay, I was more likely against Genome editing because of its moral, ethical, and social concerns. I would say the writing process of this essay helped me to understand more about the topic. how to defend my stance more on the topic even though there is a good counter argument. In my writing, I had to use easy language while presenting a thorough analysis because there is a possible chance that my audience does not know about the topic itself. One of the learning outcomes from this assignment was to write very well in the first draft. Also, stick to the outline. I carefully researched and included many viewpoints on genome editing to make sure my arguments were well-supported and honest. Through the process of writing my research essay on Genome editing, I have gained valuable insights into scientific language and literacy. It helped me to learn more scientific terms and also how to cite my sources properly even though I am not sure if I did it correctly or not. Lastly, from this assignment one of the major things I learned was how to critically analyze the articles, scholarly and get the main idea from them. 

Altogether, I was able to complete all of my requirements successfully for this class. Which lead me to unlock my new writing qualities and lead me to learn new skills. It was an interesting journey and I believe my progress in this class has been proven through my assignments.

Source:
Lamott, A. (2007). Bird by Bird. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

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