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Shifat Tanim
ENG 110
Professor Nicola Mcdonald

THEORY OF WRITING

Welcome to my portfolio, I will be discussing my progress throughout the semester of this course starting from the last week of August till today. In this course we were assigned to four different type of assessments each being unique in its own way. This was the first time I was exposed to these different types of work and it surely has been a new experience. The transition from High School to has been difficult since there has been a change in almost everything starting from the pressure to responsibilities and so on. There were definite moments of stress and anxiety throughout my first ever semester in college and I believe it is quite common throughout students. I am currently working on my fourth major assignment for this course and overall I would say there has been many ups and downs. Each module had different objectives that we had to follow. There were struggles throughout these assignments, but they all helped me develop what my theory of writing is. I would not call myself the best writer nor up there with the best, and I know it is not a mentality that I should possess. There are multiple reasons for me not being satisfied with my level of writing and I believe that is very common in many students. I get easily distracted and procrastination are the two most common reasons and am mostly affected by it. I have been procrastinating my whole life no matter what the task was and part of the reason why I continue to procrastinate is because I eventually get the work done within the due time. Even though I may get the work done there are still many negative effects. Some examples include not being able to revise my writing before submitting, not being able to process all the information from sources, and so on.

Another bad habit I have is being distracted easily despite knowing that I have important things to focus on. It is quite common when someone sends me a text message, or I am watching random videos or just scrolling through social media. I usually do the examples I stated with the intention that I will not waste time and I will get to work as soon as possible but then a couple of hours pass by despite knowing the consequence. I have some other bad habits which include skimming through every reading because of my lack of patience, part of the reason is because I never was a fan of reading books from an early age because I was never able to find the patience to read long lengths of texts. It applies to everything because I do not read lengthy emails either unless they are super important. It is a habit that has been a part of me for quite some time and I do not think it will change even if I try to. This is a major disadvantage when it comes to finding sources because they require the student to read lengthy texts.

THEORY OF WRITING COMING INTO THIS CLASS

I believe I have had major changes in terms of my writing after I have come into this class. There have been many improvements which I realize now looking back at how I used to write throughout my High School days. I was always an average student, and I never failed an English Class in my entire life. I was never a fan of writing, but I did have to write regardless because I always wanted to do well. I believe online learning has had a major impact on me when it came to motivation and the urge to do work, just when I was not a huge fan of writing and then came online learning which led to less encouragement in comparison to what we would have received in person. My theory of writing has always been the same, I always like to write in simple terms and what my mind says after processing all the information, also the fact that I have always started late and did most of my work last minute, so I might not have much time to process all the information but after analyzing everything I tend to write whatever comes to the top of my head. \j

HOW HAS IT EVOLVED WITH EACH PIECE OF WRITING YOU COMPOSED?

Source Based Essay:

Coming into this class, the first biggest project that we did was the source based essay. The biggest advantage of doing these projects is that it is a step-by-step process. At first, we were told to figure out three different topics from which we would choose one and proceed with it. I was confused with how this essay should be done and I was attentive during the lectures, but I did have difficulties figuring out everything. I selected three different topics without knowing what the essay would look like. My thought process was to find a topic that would have a lot of content in them and a topic that I would be knowledgeable about. It did not take me much time to figure out a topic which all three were COVID-19 related. One thing that was different considering other essays I did in the past was that we were required to gather sources from the CUNY database instead of Google which was where I originally searched from. However, I still gathered my sources from Google and then I checked whether they were available in the CUNY database by searching the exact title of the source word for word. While searching for sources I realized that I have figured out a topic with many sources available, since the world has been revolving around COVID-19 throughout the past 2 years It was easier for me to find out sources since everything was quite recent and a hot topic worldwide. Other students were changing their topics due to their lack of sources available on the database which was something that I did not have much issue with it. We were required to find our 4 sources that were peer reviewed which did not seem that difficult. However, the most challenging part for me in this essay was trying to understand the meaning of rhetorical situation. Despite the professor trying her best to make us understand what rhetorical situation was, I was having difficulties on how to write the essay and what it should look like because I had doubts on my mind that I could be writing in a wrong way than what it should look like. Eventually I realized my doubts came true and I was writing an essay which was just informative and had nothing to do with rhetorical situations. I realized it on the day my final draft was due, and I started panicking, because I never looked at the sample essay the professor posted until the last day of the final draft, that is when I realized I need to make major changes to my essay to pass. It took me a long time to figure out what rhetorical situation is the purpose of the author, intended audiences and all the circumstances that help writing to be formed. My topic was COVID-19 and its effects on the education system, and I was rushing through the changes I made, and I believe the only reason I was able to make the changes by the due date was because I was lucky enough to choose a topic that did not require any changes and was easy to locate the rhetorical situations from the sources I had chosen. The sample essay provided by the professor saved me from failing my first big project of the class. It was a new experience for me and a new type of essay which all students had to write and was something to improve and learn from in the future essays. My writing improved after seeing the sample essay which I used as a guideline and consider my main reason to get a well enough good to get a good grade on the first Module.

Inquiry Based Essay:

The biggest writing, we had to do in this class was an Inquiry Based Essay, this was the essay where we could research about any type of issue or explore anything. The essay was 8 pages long and 2800 words which is a word limit that I have never achieved or tried to achieve through my life. The word limit was something that stressed me the most, but I still tried my best even though my essay was nowhere near than what it should have looked like. Seeing the word limit I instantly knew I had to figure out a topic that I was heavily interested in myself and a topic that I am knowledgeable about. My main intention for this type of thought process was because it would be easier for me to analyze the various sources since I have experience and knowledge about them. It did not take me much time to figure out a topic that interested me and probably the biggest advantage for me was that my topic went through major changes throughout the past 2 years which caused many controversies and problems. My favorite hobby which was Football(soccer), and COVID-19 has also affected its economy and the sport in general in major ways which are negative. So, in the end my topic was COVID-19 and its effects on European Football. I lacked motivation while doing this project and once again I waited until the last minute to complete this essay. I did not get the way of writing this inquiry based essay and missed out on a lot of things due to me slacking. My essay had a good start and was looking good until the 2nd paragraph, but then I got the whole concept wrong and messed up. One of the biggest things I was getting wrong was the fact that I did not analyze the sources I have selected, rather stated my opinions, and summarized all the sources and wrote all my paragraphs. I was talking about many statistics which I researched from my sources, but I did not back them up by citing quotes which was an awful mistake and had points taken off for. I could have done much better in this essay, but I was lacking many things which I know realize. I do not have any regrets, but I have surely learnt a lot from this inquiry based essay and on how it should be executed the next time

Composition In Two Genres:

This was the third module for the semester and to me this was by far the easiest module to complete and was fun. The module was the smallest considering the other ones and was quite simple to understand and it had many similarities with the first module which was the source based essay. Moving from a research essay to a whole different formatted assignment did seem confusing at first but then you realize it is like module 1 which was writing an essay about the purpose of the author. My research essay was about COVID-19 and its aftermath on European Football, which is the biggest sport in the world. My inquiry-based essay was filled with information and statistics, however this module required me to do target a more specific, so I decided to target a specific European club which was going through crisis. However, this module did not want information about the specific topic that I selected but wanted a more purposeful message through different genres for which mine included a power point presentation and a cartoon which had a message behind it. When I was given this module to complete and while reading the instructions, I intuitively knew what I would be targeting and mapped out my plans for this module. My cartoon was a bit difficult to design and I did not have much experience in the past with drawing and designing an image, but it was worth it because I was able to produce a vivid image with much detail and many Easter eggs which could be intriguing to the viewer who is a football fan them self. I then made a presentation which had multiple suggestions and a layout to how the situation of the topic I chose could be solved. I decided to put less wording into the presentation because that might be overwhelming and might bore the viewer. I included diverse types of pictures related to the topics I was talking about in the presentation to make the slideshow have a neat look at it. Overall, this was the first time I prepared genres like these, and I found it interesting and kind of fun since it was based on a topic of my interest. I was able to make many changes to my picture and presentation after peer reviews and student conferences, from which I received diverse suggestions that I applied to my project with the intention of improving my work

THE MOST SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON YOUR THEORY OF WRITING:

The most significant impact on my theory of writing has to be the source based essay because I was introduced to something I had never heard of before which was the rhetorical situation. In the past when I wrote an essay I just searched for sources and would decide if I personally like them or not, and that is all I did in deciding the credibility of a source. Now before using a source search for the rhetorical situation which is to figure out the purpose of the author for authoring the source, deducing the audience he/she is trying to reach and why is he/she trying to reach that audience. Now I research about the author as well to find out his/her credibility which was something I never previously thought of doing. All these new traits that I have learned from this course are helping me grow and be better every day as a writer.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MY THEORY OF WRITING AND HOW I CREATE(D) KNOWLEDGE:

For me personally finding topics that interest me have always been the key points to which I can produce a good writing for a project, and I believe this applies to many other students as well because I do not someone would like to invest their time into a topic that bothers them or bores them. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses after a Module has been important for me and should be for everyone because that is what will allow an individual to improvise overcome and adapt. I have learnt to visualize what my essay would look like by planning ahead. There is a lot to learn from reflecting your own work, because at the end of the day no one is ever perfect and there is always something you can improve and be better on.

APPLYING MY THEORY OF WRITING SITUATIONS BOTH INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF THE CLASSROOM:

Applying my theory of writing inside of class would be similar and easy because now I have more knowledge and experience which can help me in my other college courses that requires students to write essays and perhaps next year in my Writing for Engineers class. I can also apply my theory of writing perspective outside the classroom when it comes to critical thinking and within life in general which for example can include always plan ahead, take everything step by step, always search for credibility. The experience and the urge to grow and get better at things can apply in every aspect of life and it is limitless.