Genesis Quinones
Professor Corrine Shearer
Fairytales and Re-writings 10105
20 December 2023
My Journey Through FIQWS
During this course, I learned a lot about myself and my ability as a writer. Before this class, I struggled with long writing assignments. I always found it too hard to add to my writing or sometimes even start. Occasionally, it would take me days to get my ideas cohesive enough to be written on paper. Overall I was never confident in my ability as a writer, no matter how much practice I had. However, my time management and overall quality of my writing have improved a lot from that period in time, and it’s all thanks to this writing course. Before I couldn’t write what I’m writing now in the period given. Now I can write full-blown essays in the shortest amount of time. It has been a pride I carry now as the semester comes to an end.
During this semester, we had a variety of learning outcomes that came with the course, and I feel that I have accomplished several of them. One of the first learning outcomes that I feel that I have mastered was “Developing strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing” (n.p.). With this learning outcome, I felt like I became more confident right off the bat being that this was incorporated from the very beginning of the semester to the very end. For every Phase assignment we had to draft first, and then we collaborated with our assigned peer review partner. Based on the feedback we got from our partner we had to revise our first draft and then we did it a couple more times until it was time to finally turn in the final draft. We also did group work collaboratively occasionally throughout the semester, sometimes we would read an article and then we would do the required work attached to the article. Through that, I learned to really focus on the important parts of the articles and sometimes disregard all that fluff that sometimes encompasses the main point of the article or story we are reading.
Another learning outcome that I feel that I mastered was “Examine how attitudes towards linguistic standards empower and oppress language users” (n.p.). This was a learning outcome that I believe we hit early on in the semester. We looked at “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan and June Jordan’s “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You And the Future Life of Willie Jordan”. Both works speak about the perception of the English language and how if you speak in another way other than what is perceived to be normal you will be rejected or ridiculed. Amy Tan’s mother wasn’t taken seriously by her broken English, but when Amy stepped up with her seamless English she was taken seriously and helped. In June Jordan’s Essays, there was the topic of “Black English” and demonstrated how it was considered to be funny and un-serious. I feel that I have a good understanding of this specific learning outcome.
During this semester, I learned that preparing to write a research paper isn’t the most complicated assignment in the world. I learned that it doesn’t have to be so hard to get things to write about. In high school, my senior year for my research class at the end of the year, our final assignment was to create a research paper and a presentation based on said research paper. I was a complete mess with this essay. It took me forever to find what to write about and how to write it. I relied on the teacher a lot to explain things to me. The principal problem for me was that the sources were confusing me and therefore it was hard to start writing. I felt embarrassed to see all my classmates advancing in their essays and me not even halfway done. The adrenaline was what pushed me to finally not worry too much about what I was writing and just get it down. However, I did get a 92 on the paper and 97 on the presentation so some good came out of my painful struggle. In general, the aspect that troubled me the most was finding accurate, credible, and reliable sources. Our Phase Assignment 3 research critical analysis, really helped me improve on the learning outcome, “Locate[d] research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine, and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias” (n.p.). I feel that with this assignment I was able to find resources from academic journals and articles from the CCNY library easily. Before, I didn’t look to use library sources for any assignment, this assignment required me to use them. I even had to ask for help from a librarian to get my sources for my research paper. So I’ve had experience with the library in multiple ways, and now I am prepared and ready to write papers in the future in this school.
The third learning outcome that I feel that I did well with was “Compose[ing] texts that integrate a stance with appropriate sources, using strategies such as summary, analysis, synthesis, and argumentation” (n.p.). For both Phase 2 and 3, we had to deal with sources that took a specific stance on the topic we were writing about. For example, in phase 2 for both the rhetorical analysis and exploratory essay, I held a firm stance on the fact that Briar Rose Alias Sleeping Beauty, was indeed sexually assaulted during her time in her sleep-like state. I used an article by Stephanie Merritt and her discussion of the lack of consent in the fairytale. In phase 3 I used multiple appropriate articles that spoke about the problems I found generally throughout the entirety of “Briar Rose” and “Little Snow White” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. I had to analyze all these sources and try my best to apply them and use them for my thesis and overall argument. Another Learning outcome I felt that I had down was “Practice[ing] systematic application of citation conventions” (n.p.). In both phases 2 and 3, we used sources, so we had to cite where we got the information because If not that would be considered plagiarism.
Overall this course helped me tremendously with my struggle with writing and I feel I would’ve been at an overall disadvantage had I not taken the course. It was a great journey from phase to phase and I’m grateful that I got the chance to take this class. It was a great pleasure and I hope that I can take a similar course in the future.
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