As 2022 comes to a close and the cold December air makes me want to sleep in longer, I can’t help but rejoice at the fact that what has undoubtedly been the worst year I’ve ever faced is finally ending. In this year alone I nearly died after being hit by a car, was misdiagnosed with an extremely rare type of blood cancer and collapsed from staying up for a week straight trying to balance out chores and school assignments. Despite the bad, this year has also helped me progress, in a variety of ways – I started going to the gym, prioritizing my mental health, and began talking to more people. One of the most interesting areas where I’ve made progress in is as a student in English. 2022 blessed me with an amazing English professor even though I picked my classes last minute – and I feel the result of that blessing becomes apparent when reviewing my assignments over the past semester and comparing them to the course learning objectives.

The first objective states, “Students will examine how attitudes towards linguistic standards empower and oppress language users.” In class we discussed the idea of using an academic voice when writing papers to argue in the academic scene. In a sense, the language standard of using an academic voice both empowers students who can successfully use it to craft arguments, and also oppresses those who do not understand it as their argument is automatically viewed as being weaker from a linguistic standpoint. I believe that this concept is displayed in my second essay where I write:

“This is an excerpt from the article which states facts from the Quran. From the excerpt, we can derive that the Quran describes Islam to be a religion of reason and frequently mentions those who are out to seek information by use of different Arabic terms. Because the Quran frequently mentions and praises those who “exercise their intellect” and use their “powers of reasoning,” it is evident that Islam is a religion that heavily promotes and encourages its followers to use their intellect and logical reasoning to reach conclusions. The article also brings up another quote from the Quran: “For the worst of beasts in the sight of Allah are the deaf and the dumb, –those who understand not.” This displays that the Quran not only praises those who use logic and reasoning to conclude, but it also condemns arrogance and ignorance, noting them to be the worst in the sight of God (Allah) (Sajjad 2).”

The block quote displays my usage of quotes from a scholarly article, analyzing those quotes using a logical method, and also connecting my analysis back to the thesis I provided. This is viewed as a standard writing practice using the academic voice, which serves to empower my argument in essay two.

The second objective states, “students will explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations.” This objective has been met when looking at the content provided during class lectures. In one of the classes, we were tasked with taking the pages from a scholarly article and arranging them in the order which we though to be correct given that the page numbers were removed. In doing this, we were exposed to a scientific genre through an academic medium. In another lecture, we were asked to rewrite the awful syntax of a note written on a TV show. This is more of a social genre presented through a casual medium. Since we’ve looked at more than one genre using drastically different mediums, it is evident that we have looked at different genres in different rhetorical situations.

The third objective states, “students will develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing.” This is evident when looking at how the essay writing process was integrated into the class. It began with reading various articles and looking for information, then creating a first draft, then moving onto peer review which was followed by creating revision plans and editing the first draft to create a final product. I believe that the most unique part of this process accomplished in this class was learning how to properly revise a first draft. Never before have I had to write out a revision plan – and though it was fairly tedious and annoying, I believe it did help mentally set what I needed to do to fix up my essays.

The fourth objective states, “students will recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations.” I take this to mean that we were to successfully integrate the ideas of ethos pathos and logos into out writing. I feel that these ideas are successfully displayed in essay two, with ethos being the need to find reputable scholarly sources on CCNY libraries, pathos being the need to add a “so what” statement, and logos being the actual information provided from the scholarly sources. In my conclusion for essay two I write,

“In summary, Islam can be said to be a religion that promotes science, logic-based reasoning, inner peace, justice, and peace within communities – all of which are ideals sought after in modern-day society. While it’s unrealistic for the entire world to convert to Islam if it’s true ideals and intentions were shown in the media instead of the brutal extremist view that the media provides, likely, the instances of hate crimes against Muslims and Muslim communities would dramatically decrease, leading to more peaceful Societies (Sajjad 6).”

This successfully displays my implementation of both pathos and logos, while referring to a previously accomplished implementation of ethos. I bring up the ideal of making the world a more peaceful place which appeals to emotion, acknowledge that it’s unreasonable that the entire world all convert to Islam which uses logic, and refer to points I made in the body paragraphs using credible sources earlier in the essay.

The fifth objective states, “students will understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences.” This can be seen in essay three with the use of images combined with writing to better appeal to audience.

The sixth objective states, “students will locate 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.” This was accomplished through needing to write annotated bibliographies for the sources retrieved from academic databases such as CCNY libraries. The annotated bibliographies laid out the information extracted from the article and whether it was credible or not.

The seventh objective states, “students will compose texts that integrate a stance with appropriate sources, using strategies such as summary, analysis, synthesis, and argumentation.”  This is another idea which is evident in essay two with the need to argue stances using scholarly sources via presenting information via summary or augmentation then using analysis or synthesis to relate them back to the arguments. In essay two I used summary to illustrate the ideas from a YouTube video and related those ideas by analysis to my thesis statement.                         

And finally, the eighth objective states, “students will practice systematic application of citation conventions.” This is evident through the need to create a works cited page along with using citation conventions in every essay, including this one! When I received feedback on essay two, I was a little surprised to see that the small errors in citation that I made were errors at all; however, it is important to have perfect citation conventions and mechanics in writing in the modern day – especially when there are programs such as Turnitin which may falsely flag work as plagiarism.

Overall, I believe that the progress I’ve made as a writer in this semester alone if truly amazing. I went from using templates and working on essays with the same thought process since middle school to thinking critically about the essay writing process and how to integrate my arguments with evidence and what the best mediums for doing so were. Even as I write this reflection essay, I’m learning how to use Microsoft Word and design papers in a way I’ve never thought of before! I believe that the greatest takeaway that I’ve learned from this course is that the best way to learn how to write is, quite frankly, to write a lot. I feel that with each new assignment and word document I have to open, I learn a bit more about how to construct perfect essays and how to start putting my voice out in the real world. 

Works Cited

Sajjad, Muhammed. N. (2022). Essay one, personal narrative.

Sajjad, Muhammed. N. (2022). Redefining Islam at Another Glance

Sajjad, Muhammed. N. (2022). Islam: The Model Society

Sajjad, Muhammed. N. (2022). Writing Assignment Two: Annotated Bibliography