My Rocky Voyage in FIQWS

Dear English Department,

All of my assignments in my FIQWS class were variations of writing styles. My first assignments was an introductory letter which we had to write in a subjective voice expressing myself. I felt very comfortable using this style of writing since I normally used subjective voice in many assignments in high school. When you are writing in subjective voice you give your opinions expressing what we believe. The introductory letter introduced me to a writing format I wasn’t aware of. The format I used in my last class was the Chicago Manual style which I thought was the same as MLA but it wasn’t. MLA format was a format I struggled with but eventually mastered it. Subjective in MLA format eventually made it easier for me to use it in future assignments since although I was comfortable with this style I was challenged with this new skill.

FIQWS is a class I did not expect to be as rigorous. I was really surprised by this class and how it has benefited towards my writing since I was at a high school level in my writing. It was a course which we were introduced to new skills I wasn’t comfortable with. The skills I have developed in this course have allowed me to write in many styles for the assignments we’ve done. I have developed collaborative and social aspects improving my writing throughout the course. The rhetorical terms and strategies I have inputted in my assignments have had a positive impact on my assignments. The skills I learned aren’t yet high yet the struggle has diminished but I would like to improve more. I have made significant progress with the skills from the first day we arrived and now that we are reaching to the last day.

Additionally, the second assignment was a literacy narrative where I combined both subjective and objective writing styles using rhetorical terms and strategies in my writing. In this literacy narrative I used objective voice to explain how I’ve been involved in literacy, expressing how it impacted me to become who I am today. When using subjective voice I was introducing the pieces of evidence, this was the first time I used the strategy signal phrases. It was easy to understand since we had a lesson in the class on how to properly use signal phrases. I used signals phrases when introducing the book and explaining it. To add on I was able to examine my literacy history by giving examples. I was able to synthesize in this essay since the examples of literacy in my life connected back to my thesis on how these events impacted me. In this essay I had to be descriptive with the people involved. For example, in this literacy assignment I discuss the struggles I had speaking at a young age. The people I talked about was the therapists, translator, my mother, and my sister. In this assignment I used the rhetorical situation,pathos. Pathos is the use of emotional reasoning which captivated many and hooks the reader. I used the pathos since the examples I gave were sentimental parts of my life. With the use of pathos it connects with the audience evoking emotion to the reader. This literacy narrative took a leap from what I did in my introductory introducing me to techniques like signal phrasing and the proper use of rhetorical situations.

Moreover, the expository assignment was an assignment with many components we previously and recently learned. In the expository assignment  I used the writing styles such as objective and subjective additionally informative which are all in each part of my paper. In the parts of my essay I used a different type of rhetorical situations. In my proposal I used ethos and pathos since it was a topic that you shouldn’t be biased with. The expository paper introduced me to locate sources which we found in cuny library. At first it was confusing until I normally started using cuny library. It was not just finding sources and pasting them in my annotated bibliography in the database but I had to make sure they were significant to prove my claim and I had to prove whether or not they were credible and were accurate. The four strategies I used in this paper was summary, critical analysis, interpretation, and synthesis. In my sources, I summarized them explaining the important aspects of the topic. I analyzed the pieces of evidence I chose which then allows me to connect to the way I interpret the piece of evidence. Lastly, all the sub-claims I have synthesized with the thesis allow the flow of the paper to make sense. This expository essay allow the strategies I previously learned to advance.To prove that they were accurate I searched for articles with experiments, data, observation and that they were not biased. I always checked my sources to make sure they had limitations discussed because no experiment is perfect making it credible to the audience. In this essay, we as well had to do a bibliography through the process where we had to properly cite our sources and give our viewpoint of the article. Peer Reviewing was  strategy which we implemented in depth in this paper.

Also, in the previous peer reviews I got a lot of help from my partners which influenced me to peer review a better way that benefited my peers. For example, my sources became properly cited due to the help of my peers which were part of  the social aspect of my writing and the drafting. In my proposal for my expository paper my partner was Brittany. Estrella. As I read the review I received from her I noticed many errors I never noticed. She stated in the review that, “You should proofread for any of the grammar and spelling mistakes. For your thesis question, I suggest that it should be made stronger… Many of your assumptions can be explained a little more because they seem unclear in the point that is trying to be stated…you included a lot of subquestions, however, a few of the questions don’t seem so important towards the proposed idea. You can either take the questions out or word them differently so they can seem more relevant to the topic that you are approaching. I think you can make the actual problem more clear and propose a solution to how the topic can be solved and approached by the reader.” This section of the review was very significant for me because she discussed many things I didn’t notice. Brittany stated how I should strengthen my questions and thesis. By the help of her review it allowed me to notice a lot of other errors giving me a  good grade I didn’t expect to get in this paper. The benefit of others reviewing my papers like Brittany and many other peers that have reviewed them throughout the course allow me to improve my own skills as a writer. The more others review my papers the more accepting i’ll become with the errors in my paper.  With others reviewing my paper the errors I don’t see will become visible in my eyes and i’ll be a better editor in my own work. Peer review was an important element throughout the course. It allowed us to receive constructive criticism benefiting making us more open minded people seeing the views of others of our writing.

The argumentative essay which I had fun writing since the topic appealed to me. I used two rhetorical situations and used quote integration. The two rhetorical situations I used were pathos and logos. This is an argumentative essay and you agree with one side but at the same time I couldn’t be bias and had show the other side of the argument. The use of argumentation allowed me to state my side at the same time stating the opposing side. In an argumentative essay you had to make sure there wasn’t any logical fallacies because logical fallacies bring down the credibility of the your essay. What I struggled with was quote integration and fallacies. I haven’t yet mastered quote integration. Quote integration is important because it connects your writing with the readers. Without quote integration the essay sentences might not make sense. I want to be able to master this skill because it can be useful in the future. I would like to improve my understanding in logical fallacies because a topic like from my argumentative has two sides and with logical fallacies in my essay the reader will believe wrongful information. These two skills will allow the reader know what I am stating is accurate. These skills will not just help me write better argumentative essays but help my literacy narrative and expository.

In conclusion, I have made significant progress with the skills from the first day we arrived and now that we are reaching to the last day. The introductory introduced me to MLA format giving me an advantage to understand how my future assignments in course will be like. My literacy narrative I combined two styles objective and subjective writing as well using for the first time signal phrases letting me involve in my writing. In my expository I connected  many techniques and had to cite and threw the process mastered the usage of citation. Lastly in my argumentative essay I used the quote integration and the use of logical fallacies. I never thought how impactful being in this class was. This class has improved my writing and taught me skills that will be useful throughout my college career.

Sincerely,

Joeli Valerio