As someone who has always struggled with reading, and writing, I have learned a lot about myself when it comes to this area of subject. In our first paper, the Self-Study, it made me analyze and think about my history with literacy. I wrote how I have always struggled with my reading fluency and comprehension. I talked about how these obstacles were visible at a young age, but it was ignored which caused me to still have a difficult time reading literature to this day. I explained that my dad was a huge part of helping me learn to be creative when writing. When I was in elementary school, my dad made me write fictional stories with him during the summer. In high school, my English teacher taught me to be more disciplined in my writing. I learned how to structure my writing and how to make my argument clear and understandable to the readers. This semester, I have gained even more knowledge; learning how to find sources, and how to draft my thoughts descriptively and straightforwardly.
Something that I have learned about reading and writing this semester is that when stating one’s argument, it needs evidence to back up that claim. It is important to find credible sources in order to make the statement strong and reliable. One way to do so is to search the author from the source into Google Scholar. In addition to that is to state a popular or academic source whether it provides general information, using a source as evidence or examples to analyze, a source to engage its argument, or a source’s way of analyzing an issue to apply to a personal issue. I believe that establishing these different points when searching for sources are crucial to make a credible argumentative paper. I learned to organize my sources in these categories in the Source Matrix assignment. This extra step really stuck to me because it helped me break down what my main points were and where I should place each source and argument in my paper. It made me realize that when finding Sources, I should be looking for multiple authors from different perspectives, still making the same argument. The final paper should represent a combination of Background, Exhibit, Argument, and Method. I also learned how to apply rhetorical analysis into my academic writing. Before this course, I knew of ethos, pathos, and logos, but I was not aware of how they may be used in discourse communities. Throughout this course, our weekly blog assignments have made me analyze the discourse community of women’s basketball. The research I have done this semester on that community helped me better understand marketing strategies through rhetorical appeals. This is beneficial to me because I am a marketing major. I can use this information and skill to use outside of the classroom.
I learned this semester that as a reader and writer, I struggle to understand concepts without visualization. The in-class activity, “The Boat” where we read the same story in two different ways. The first version we read was just the story and nothing else, and the other version had audio and illustrations to help the reader visualize the tale. In class, we did a raise of hands of who preferred each version better. I was surprised to hear that some people actually preferred the first version because they weren’t limited to their imagination. However, I struggled while reading the first version and had to re-read it a few times, but when I read the more visual version, I was able to comprehend the story easier. Knowing that the comprehension of sentences was my struggle and that I was more of a visual learner, I tried my best to incorporate storytelling into my papers.
My biggest strength as a reader and writer after this class is my ability to tell personal stories in order to make my arguments clear, understandable, and relatable. In addition, I realized that adding photos and hyperlinks to my writing helps enhance the visuals for the audience. When I read,I really appreciate those sorts of additions because it aids my grasp on the topics being discussed. This skill helped me make my Communications speeches interesting and familiar to the audiences. I also used the skill of finding reliable sources that we learned in this class, for my Comms speeches as well. I was able to adapt the Source Matrix to help me find and place my sources in the appropriate place when making my speeches. These skills could also benefit me in general in a similar way as it does for my classes such as Comms. Specifically in this class, Source Matrix helped me build my research papers structure. Currently, I have not used this knowledge yet in a general use. However, as someone who is planning to go into the business world in the future, it may be beneficial to incorporate some of these learnings.
Something that I want to work on in the future is being confident in my writing. I still lack effort when it comes to full paper writing. I tend to start off strong, then lose my main points I initially try to make; causing my writing to be messy, unorganized, and hard to understand. It makes it really difficult for me to revise as well due to how much I end up reconstructing. I will try to improve this current issue by breaking it down into paragraphs when drafting. I plan to assign different days for me to work on one or two paragraphs at a time instead of trying to write the whole paper in one sitting. When reading, I still struggle to read longer texts and prefer visuals like seen with “The Boat” assignment. I am used to reading shorter articles; I often read the news however, when it comes to reading larger texts like books, it takes me a long time to comprehend. I intend on getting into the habit of fusing reading books into my daily routine. If I read more in general, I will hopefully develop more advanced and fluent practices and skill sets for future academic readings.