This Fall semester I took a FIQWS course that helped to better my writing and helped me to better understand rhetorical terms. Even though I have not perfected my use of it, I do feel more confident in my understanding of it. I was able to explore and analyze a variety of genres provided in class and sources online and rhetorical situations. In this site, I include some papers I’ve worked on from the beginning of the semester to the end to show the differences in my writing.
The process of my writing usually consisted of a couple of steps. The first one is to read the task and understand what the paper should be about. I usually have to read articles/excerpts beforehand to start my paper so that’s what I do next. After reading the articles, I take a bunch of notes about what I’ve read or else I end up forgetting everything, so it’s very important I do this. Then I make a rough outline on where I want everything (meaning my intro, body, conclusion) and how I should gather my thoughts. I’ve realized that throughout the semester if I miss even a single step, it really affects how long it takes me to get my work done because my mind ends up being all over the place and I feel discouraged. The rough outline I make shapes how my actual paper’s going to look.
Some might start their final draft right after their formal one but I tend to take a small break so that when I go back to start it again, I’ll have a fresh mind and will have new ideas to bring into my final paper.
What I noticed from my introductory essay to my research critical essay is that it gradually got longer. At the beginning of the semester, I didn’t really think about my audience as I wrote papers just to get a grade. But now I know better and make sure to keep my audience, purpose, and interpretive problem in mind. Before I would just consider my audience to be my professor because I didn’t really like other people reading my work but now I consider my peers and anyone, in general, my audience.
Something I definitely need to work on is analyzing my work. For my final draft of my RCA, my professor commented,
“My primary concern is that your essay includes far more research than critical analysis. As a result, it reads more like an encyclopedia entry on rising sea levels than a research paper with a clear research question that disrupts status quo understandings of climate change. The questions raised in your intro–“How is it affecting us? Why should we care?” (1)–are good in the sense that they have more than two answers, but they are also very broad. A narrower focus would have allowed you to analyze your sources more deeply.”
I definitely agree because trying to put my thoughts into words is something I’ve always struggled towards. The questions I asked could’ve been narrowed down and I also need to work on analyzing the quotes I provide with more depth. It’s just that I feel like the quotes I use already are self-explanatory that trying to further explain them becomes really difficult for me.
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