Think of Myself

The first semester of my college life is over, and it has ushered in a long-awaited long vacation. Looking back at the first semester, the dynasty, the heart has a lot of feelings. Time is such a ruthless head and does not go back, but we are chasing in order not to be left behind by it. Yes, no one wants to be left behind by time. And we grow up little by little with the passage of time. Every day of this semester has left a permanent mark on my heart because these marks bear witness I am such a new growth. The FIQWS class is every freshman must pass which is dedicated to helping students improve their writing skills. In the past semester, I have gained a lot through continuous study and writing.

As students, we often need to write, but why do we write, what is the meaning of our writing? Most of the reasons for student writing are because they are forced to write by the teacher or their parents. In other words, it is not voluntary, but it is purely forced to write. They regard writing as a burden, and their purpose is simply to accomplish the task. Before, I also think like that, but throughout this semester I think writing is meaningful. Writing is both personal and social, as students should learn how to write for different purposes and audiences. At the same time, we should learn to write on our own and use it as a hobby, rather than treating writing as a burden, then we will find that writing is much more interesting. This will also help us better improve our writing skills. In the FIQWS class, teachers mainly respond to the content of our writing and recurring surface errors because writing is a meaningful and communicative process. The teacher’s collaboration, discussion, and response have helped me to understand the goals of the course. In this semester, we also wrote many different types of writing which include the narrative essay, poetic response, researched critical analysis essay, reflection/self-assessment, peer review, blackboard discussion posts, and journals, these writings drafting, collaborating, modifying, and editing helps me improve my writing.

While writing a narrative essay, I wrote a narrative article about my own experiences and showing how my identity affects my relationship with literacy. In reading the narrative essay, I explored and analyzed various types of articles and their rhetorical situations. And in my own writing, I also will consider who the audience of my essay, what the purpose of the essay, and use rhetoric to make the essay more vivid. For the narrative essay, a lot of details are necessary because the details can better build the essay and making the essay rich in the image. When drafting the essay, I did not use a lot of rhetoric because my own consciousness did not think that rhetoric is very important. But in the process of revision and editing, I added more rhetorical devices on the basis of the original. At the same time, after writing the narrative essay, I often thought of include references to genre, audience, purpose, stance, rhetorical situation, media/design, and exigence when writing other writings. Not only narrative essay, poetic response, discussion post and journal entries in free write also help me explore and analyze various types and rhetorical situations.

In addition to the narrative essay, researched critical analysis essay also helps me get in depth as a different type of writing. As a final assignment for this semester, this assignment requires me to analyze the text, make a compelling argument, and use other sources as evidence of my own statement. This assignment requires in-depth analysis and specific statements, so I have to research the source in the library’s database or on the Internet before writing as my strong evidence to my argument. In order to make the article more convincing, we also evaluated the credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias of the source. This writing gives us the opportunity to criticize, ask questions and make claims based on our own research and experience. It also requires us to state our opinion or take a position on the issue and explain why, including and responding to the opposite. In the process of writing, I learned how to write my thesis statement because having a good thesis is the most important thing in an argument. At the same time, there is a new understanding of the form or style of writing the argument. In face of different claims, we can choose to tell the reader our own claim and then use the description and evidence to prove our claim. Of course, we can also choose to hide the claim, so that the reader can show his position with our explanation and evidence.

Regardless of the type of writing, we have the purpose for each type and theme. At the end of the purpose, which is at the end of writing, we can always learn a lot from our own themes. This semester is the same, I have learned a lot of new methods and knowledge in reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing that we did over and over. I believe that these knowledge and skills are helping me in writing in the future.

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