My Journey to Improve my Writing

Writing, reading, and strategically planning out an essay, has always been a challenge due to how open the answer one can give. This freedom is both a good and bad thing for me as a writer, and as I improve as a writer this freedom becomes more apparent. When I got to my first course, “Composition for WCGI Literature FIQWS”, I had initially thought that it would be an easy class with how decent I am able to write but boy was I wrong. I realized the amount of writing I would have to do to pass the class, as well as making my first steps to improving my writing capabilities from what it was before. The realization mainly came from the fact that many experiences in the class led me to realize I still had to improve my writing by a mile. This journey was an interesting hike for me, so let me tell you about my improvement and experience, using the course learning outcomes.

You may be wondering, what is a course learning outcome, well it’s simply the tasks that I must have learned, experienced, and improved on as I stay within my course. For example one of the learning outcomes is “Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations”. What this is essentially saying is to analyze or understand genres and rhetorical situations. An example of me doing this was when I read the tales/articles handed, but also the text “The Norton Field Guide to Writing, ‘Reading in Academic Contexts’”. These texts allowed me to get not only a better understanding of writing, but also getting the audience to relate to my writing. I initially had a bit of experience in writing, towards certain audiences, but I was never great at keeping them engaged and understanding my topic. As I wrote and analyzed other texts, I came to realize that you should initially aim for one type of audience and as you continue to write, try to also garner the attention of the opposite view. This stems from the times in the class in which we discussed two articles that saw different views on race switching. The articles ““I Don’t Want a Black Ariel.” — Why We Shouldn’t Be Satisfied With Race Switching ” by The Final Cutback and “The white nostalgia fueling the ‘Little Mermaid’ backlash” by Brooke Newman, were the most interesting articles to discuss and analyze with how we got to see both viewpoints. Trying to approach their audiences and reach out to those who disagree, This allowed me to understand both due to how they are talking against each other in their argument. Although I am still having a bit of trouble on this topic, I am slowly improving. This was one of the learning outcomes and there’s still four more for me to share about.

“Develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing”, this is simply saying whether I was taught techniques that made it much simpler and easier to do the ones mentioned. When it came to this CLO, I truly did improve due to the new ideas I was taught. One of them being a “shitty” first draft, in which one just needs to write the first draft. Even if it makes no sense, simply keep writing any idea you have and within the second draft make it all make sense. This helps in actually starting the writing and having something written down instead of nothing. I have used this strategy many times and this writing is a prime example of the use of this strategy. I had initially made the third paragraph about “Examine how attitudes towards linguistic standards empower and oppress language users”, but changed it after realizing that it was not needed. Although a great portion was missing, I was able to have my ideas written down and a portion of my outline completed for the second draft. There were many strategies such as highlighting certain ideas in our writing, allowing others to peer review and give feedback, but in the end the first “shitty” draft strategy was the most effective and used strategy. 

The strategies mentioned were taught to help us effectively handle any writing situation we are in, which ties into the next CLO. “Recognize & practice key rhetorical terms & strategies when engaged in writing situations”. This CLO seeks us to understand the strategies we were taught to the best of our abilities to effectively face a situation in which the strategy is needed, such as identifying ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos, Pathos, and Logos are rhetorical appeals, and we were taught to find them and analyze them using the rhetorical situation triangle. This was the first time I had ever heard, and learned about such a strategy and it made me realize elements that were added into writing to secrete a certain emotion to the reader. With the triangle I effectively knew how to use the rhetorical appeals within my writing to show them emotion, seem more credible, or more informative in my writing. There were many more strategies that I used in my writings, but they are more suited to explain the next CLO.

The CLO “Compose texts that integrate a stance with appropriate sources, using strategies such as summary, analysis, synthesis, and argumentation”, when it came to this CLO learning how to make an effective thesis statement was a priority. What I mean is that this CLO is asking that we should have composed writings that used appropriate MLA citations, and effective thesis statements. This was the toughest aspect within my writing and was fairly evident in my second writing “Little Red Riding and Its Inappropriate Elements ”. Within this writing, I had a hard time writing an effective thesis statement for the critical research assignment. The thesis statement “this certainly goes for all tales that like Little Red Riding Hood are changed by social norms and the writer to have violence, and sexual connotations” was one that was okay but needed improvements. Although we were taught strategies to improve thesis statements, and had peer reviews to improve them, I had a difficult time improving my statement. But as time went on, and many revisions later it turned out better. “Although seemingly innocent, the dark themes are prevalent due to the views and issues at that time when it was written. “Little Red Riding Hood” is a perfect representation of how social norms, and the writer change tales to have violent, and sexual connotations to teach the young about the dangers in the real world” is a way better thesis statement from the one before but it still needs improvement. Even so it improved and in the end that’s all I need as long as I keep improving.

Lastly, the final CLO “Understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences” is very interesting. This is due to how the CLO is asking us to understand how to use technologies to reach larger audiences so that they can read our writings. This is by far the most fun part to me due to how we have to accomplish it. The fun aspect of making our own sites and uploading our writing to it for others to read, is something I have had experience doing. My experience in making websites from scratch helps me in trying to learn how to do it within my class. Even though I am in the midst of accomplishing this task. I can easily say that once I add all my writings to the website, this CLO is the easiest and fun one.

All in all, I can say I have improved. Although in some aspects it can be seen as a subtle improvement, the strategies and experiences I have had in this class, has allowed me to become a far better writer from how I was in high school. I even learned new strategies such as color-coded revisions, “shitty” first drafts, the rhetorical triangle, and many more. Many of these strategies were helpful and interesting to use for the first time and I see myself using them in the future. All I can give myself is a pat in the back for actually improving and I look forward to seeing how I grow within my writing.