Looking back at my time during this ENGL 110 class during the spring semester, I see how I have progressed as a writer. Through each phase of this class, I was able to identify one skill I learned in each phase. I’ve learned how to examine linguistic attitudes, examine rhetorical situations, and how to effectively research. These skills helped me write about various topics and themes, such as a personal interest paper, a rhetorical presis, and a research paper on a tricky topic.

During phase 1 of the class, I focused on understanding language beyond just formal grammar and structure. I worked a lot on examining and understanding different aspects of language. I studied multiple forms of media, such as articles and videos, and examined the different types of ways languages are portrayed. Ironically, these forms of language were not typical English. Compared to a formal English standard, one could say they break many rules of English grammar, thus being called “informal” English. 

When I watched the My Fair Lady scene, it reminded me of the different accents and dialects I was surrounded by. It also showed that the way someone speaks can shape people’s perspective of intelligence, often being a discriminatory factor, such as the example of June Jordan’s essay about “Black English” and Amy Tan’s essay about the discrimination her mother faced as an immigrant. After gaining a fundamental understanding of language attitudes, I reflected on how language acted in my own life and experiences. My reflection revealed how language is not only a form of communication, but it is deeply tied to identity. For me personally, as I grew up in New York City, I encountered varied forms of the English language influenced by culture and media. By storytelling my own experiences with academic analysis, I effectively illustrated how my environment shaped my language use. This approach helped me recognize biases and societal expectations that are deeply rooted within linguistic standards, which taught me the dynamic between language and culture. It gave me the idea that English was more than just the language that I was taught in school, and it helped me challenge the idea of a “proper” English and embrace the different ways people use language to express themselves.

During the middle of the semester, I understood and learned the fundamentals of rhetorical analysis. I delved into it during high school, but during phase 2 of this class, I improved my understanding of rhetoric. As I did my analysis on “The Effects of Social Media on How We Speak and Write”,  I went through how much social media silently influences us. Obviously, influence is a big factor in everyone’s life, but the way I saw how social media can instantly change how I speak and text honestly surprised me. For example, I realized how something as simple as a character limit can change the way people write and speak, encouraging people to be more concise and straightforward. Funny enough, that wasn’t even the main reason for putting a character limit, but it still had that effect. Reading through that article gave me a formal understanding of what exactly social media influences us, such as shortening words and using new phrases as grammatical punctuation.

The research phase provided me with an opportunity to enhance my understanding of a new topic and to understand the complex viewpoints around it. This phase taught me how to effectively research any topic through learning how to locate, evaluate, and integrate appropriate research to formulate an opinion. One of the first obstacles I had during this phase was the many different viewpoints regarding gun control. At first, I was overwhelmed with so much different information. Most of them were very convincing and also opposed each other. This challenged me to look for many sources and evaluate what was correct or not (in my opinion). In the end, I had to merge the viewpoints to create a balanced approach on gun control, which I felt was the best approach.

This journey gave me a fundamental understanding of how to be a good writer in many different fields. It wasn’t just about writing papers, but about being able to write about your own experiences and deeply analyze topics. One of my strengths was understanding rhetoric and how it has an impact on writing as was whole, and my weakness was researching and formulating an opinion out of it. Looking forward, I hope to improve as a writer and explore other fields in the STEM field and see what type of writing skills I would need to develop, and hopefully make an impact.