As my Intermediate Composition professor always said, college is about learning to think, act, read, write, etc. like a ______ (fill in the blank with your major). In Honors Intermediate Comp., I feel like I made some good progress towards that goal.
I began the semester writing an essay about my personal experiences with literacy which, for me, centered around writing poetry. This assignment really let me dig deep inside my own head to find out what drives me and where my personal literacies come from. On my professor's advice, I submitted this story to the UC English department's annual writing contest. At the end of the year when the winners were announced, I was notified that I had won first place in my category!!! It was such a surprise to receive this tremendous honor and it re-ignited in me a drive to express myself through writing
The second essay was a comparative genre analysis, using three sources from three different genres to analyze how each discussed a certain topic. For this, as someone intending to go into a medical-based profession, I chose to pick sources talking about the topic of euthanasia ("assisted suicide"). I developed some strong analytical skills from this assignment, as I had to both understand my sources well and always understand how each one discussed the topic.
For the final essay, I was assigned to conduct my own research of a discourse community, which is essentially a community of like-minded individuals with the same goals and ways of interacting with one another. Direct-admit Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) students seemed like the perfect community to study. I conducted interviews, sent out and collected surveys, observed a group of BSN students, and assembled peer-reviewed articles and professional research studies that aided in my own research. I've never been really interested in research, but this assignment opened my eyes to what research truly is and I genuinely had fun with it.
Obviously, the skills I've learned in this class will help me to grow not only as a writer, but as a writer literate in the ways of nursing. These skills will be relevant for the rest of my college career and beyond. I hope to retain much of what I've learned in this class and I know I will have countless opportunities in the future to practice my writing skills.
I began the semester writing an essay about my personal experiences with literacy which, for me, centered around writing poetry. This assignment really let me dig deep inside my own head to find out what drives me and where my personal literacies come from. On my professor's advice, I submitted this story to the UC English department's annual writing contest. At the end of the year when the winners were announced, I was notified that I had won first place in my category!!! It was such a surprise to receive this tremendous honor and it re-ignited in me a drive to express myself through writing
The second essay was a comparative genre analysis, using three sources from three different genres to analyze how each discussed a certain topic. For this, as someone intending to go into a medical-based profession, I chose to pick sources talking about the topic of euthanasia ("assisted suicide"). I developed some strong analytical skills from this assignment, as I had to both understand my sources well and always understand how each one discussed the topic.
For the final essay, I was assigned to conduct my own research of a discourse community, which is essentially a community of like-minded individuals with the same goals and ways of interacting with one another. Direct-admit Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) students seemed like the perfect community to study. I conducted interviews, sent out and collected surveys, observed a group of BSN students, and assembled peer-reviewed articles and professional research studies that aided in my own research. I've never been really interested in research, but this assignment opened my eyes to what research truly is and I genuinely had fun with it.
Obviously, the skills I've learned in this class will help me to grow not only as a writer, but as a writer literate in the ways of nursing. These skills will be relevant for the rest of my college career and beyond. I hope to retain much of what I've learned in this class and I know I will have countless opportunities in the future to practice my writing skills.
Personal Literacy Analysis
|
Comparative
Genre Analysis |
Ethnography of a Discourse Community
|