In the first semester of my first year in college, I have learned a lot of things in one of my classes: Freshman Composition. It would be better if the class runs for a long time, but it’s still one of the engaging classes that feel memorable to me. Before I took this class, writing wasn’t my cup of tea. This time, I at least find writing to be tolerable, but still boring to do. Writing isn’t the only thing I did in class. Right now, I ask myself “To what extent have I achieved the course learning objectives this semester?”
One of the lessons I learned was language. Language itself is a powerful tool that is used by mankind. Language can be in any shape or form. What I mean is that language can be used in any situations such as heated debates, everyday use of communication, writing, etc. According to my notes, I was asked a question about a time I stand up for myself. It was when I argued back to a person that wants me to vape. This is a moment where I stand up to myself for standing up to my moral principles.
I said it before, and I’ll say it again. Writing isn’t my cup of tea. However, this class made me force myself to write my narrative and argumentative paper. These moments help me reflect what’s wrong with my essay. The fact that I got help from my peers help me fix my writing issues such as adding in more details. My argumentative essay is about why climate change is a huge issue around the world. The title of it is “Climate change: A Never-changing issue”. I got some bonus points from my peers about my creative title. However, my peers told me that going into more detail can help me flesh out my claims more. So, I created a second draft to fix my issues.
Now this is my favorite part of this class: Analyzing rhetorical situations. My strongest suit is analyzing texts that I’m supposed to read. To do that, I use the annotation method.
Annotation is a great way to understand texts. One of my favorite texts to annotate is Mother’s Tongue by Amy Tan. This short text shows the author’s mom’s struggles with her language barrier. This relates to my parents since they experienced the same thing as what Amy Tan’s mom went through. I learned a few new words in this article by circling undefined words, put notes on the side of the text, and underline main points in each paragraph.
So how do I overcome my practice in writing and rhetorical strategies? Well, freewriting is one of the best ways. As much as I dislike writing, I somehow find freewriting interesting. Unlike actual writing, freewriting gives me the opportunity to write what’s in my mind. And of course, I can write anything I want if it comes to my mind. On the other hand, actual writing made me think a lot, but write less. It made me lose a lot of time while writing. That’s why freewriting helps me get so many ideas that will benefit my actual writing in terms of time consumption.
Sources are very important to support claims in the essay. That’s when I learned about “Google Scholar”. The sources I used before in my past essays are sometimes outdated and non-credible. But when I reached Goggle Scholar, that changed that way I cite sources. The sources are up-to-date and are credible. One of the articles I used in my research essay is Fyre Festival: The good, the bad, the ugly and its impact on influencer marketing. It’s about how the Fyre festival is a scam by not meeting full expectations. That’s all due to a lot of influencing. It’s very interesting and I had a lot of fun reading it.
The way I create citations is by easybib.com. Easybib is a Chegg service that provides everyone to paste websites to write proper citations. Honestly, this isn’t what I learned in class
since I already knew about Easybib. However, this is certainly useful for my writing since I must include a “Works Cited” page.
To conclude, writing isn’t my favorite. It’s tolerable at least I can say. But it’s not just about writing. Freshman Composition teaches me a lot of things that I didn’t hear, or I may hear but didn’t get the full picture. Freshman Composition helps improve my writing a lot due to how engaging the class is. I learned a lot from my peers and from Professor Vicars.
Works Cited
Chowdhury, Wajih. “PDF.” OneNote, 12 Dec. 2022.
Gilbert, Loren Grace; Childers, Courtney; and Boatwright, Brandon, “Fyre Festival: The good, the bad, the ugly and its impact on influencer marketing” (2020). Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_chanhonoproj/2320
Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue, by Amy Tan – University of Missouri–St. Louis.” University of Missouri–St. Louis, https://umsl.edu/~alexanderjm/Mother%20Tongue%20by%20Tan.pdf.
*The beliefs, reflections, authenticity, autumn prompts are in classwork
*The freewrites in the extra section
HERE IS THE CLASSWORK FOR THIS WHOLE SEMESTER
FINAL DRAFT ESSAYS
EXTRA STUFF
THANK YOU PROFESSOR VICARS FOR TEACHING ME IN SUCH AN ENGAGING CLASS THIS SEMESTER. I’LL NEVER FORGET THIS CLASS!
