Yzabella Sielaff

English 110

Professor Wernick

Post-Essay Reflection

I learned a lot about myself and my own writing process especially during this semester of English 110. Honestly, this class has been very beneficial in improving and challenging my writing skills and I feel as though I am at least a bit more confident in knowing that I can complete complex research analysis. The way that writing is explained in this course is extremely motivating and helpful because they describe the assignments in different ways that appeal to people with different learning processes. They also provide a lot of structured pre-assignments to help develop outlines for the larger works. For example, as a more science and art influenced student, describing the Inquiry-Based Research Essay as a living organism that grows and changes as the project goes on and providing many examples of the different techniques you can use as well as providing guidance for what an I-BRE is and what it is not was a huge inspiration to me when writing my own.

In my Inquiry-Based Research Essay, I decided to focus on the issues of science communication in the United States and draw conclusions on possible solutions for these issues. The audience I chose was very general, towards both scholars and the general public, however I wanted to focus on anyone who was drawn into the subject of science and people considering entering the scientific field for their profession. In order to do this, I had to make sure that my language was a combination of higher vocabulary and deep analysis that provided enough information and explanation for most audiences to understand, without getting too bored or identifying my paper as a blog. I also wanted to ensure that when someone reads my paper, they could go through the journey of my research with me and be able to completely understand the topic and form their own opinions as well. Another tactic I used was to follow similar guidelines to writing and research as what was described within my paper as an interesting reflective technique that adds an extra layer of depth.

Throughout class we practiced many aspects of writing that were all very beneficial to me. Unfortunately, due to personal circumstances, I only managed to participate in a few of them second hand, but even through this participation I learned so much about how to improve my writing process and create a completed piece. The resources provided by City College for research are immaculate. There are so many scholarly articles that you can access and are really great to learn from and analyze. It was also really nice to be able to use my own experience and observations as evidence, which is something high schools don’t offer as often. I regret not participating in a lot of the peer review sessions, but from what I saw, they were quite helpful for my classmates and I highly recommend that you use them to your advantage. They also clearly outline a synthesis and drafting process that I found very informative when beginning my paper. When I was younger, I had a really hard time writing non-fiction passages to the standards of our U.S. Education system, but this class helped clear up a lot of confusion I had when it came to writing and the process of writing research papers. We learned a lot about rhetorical devices but I found that as an intuitive writer, trying to implement rhetorical devices consciously while writing didn’t work for me, but reading through a finished work and then identifying the rhetorical devices I used unconsciously was a huge time saver. Another method that I learned works for me is to outline everything in my paper completely, but allow myself space to change it if necessary. Throughout my I-BRE, I changed my sources often and stuck very loosely to my outline so that this paper could really become a living thought process, and I suggest you do that too if you have similar struggles as me. Final advice: don’t be like me, do ALL of your assignments when asked. I promise they will be very useful to you throughout the rest of your academic and professional career. Enjoy English 110!!