Self-Assessment

Throughout this semester, I have come to explore a lot of different forms of writing than I have learned and used in previous years of schooling. Writing scientifically has been very different compared to writing about reading books, for example.

Writing makes people think about a specific topic. It is a form of expressing thoughts and ideas on paper. It is the release of information, opinions, and brand-new ways of work. Writing can be therapeutic and is also seen as a form of art. The key to writing is creative thinking and being able to jot down any small idea that comes to mind because connecting ideas can lead to understanding more about what you as a writer want to say.

Overall, I have achieved a few goals that I have had since the beginning of the semester. One of the goals that I have achieved is practicing using library resources, online databases, and the internet to incorporate into my writing project. Another goal I reached was enhancing strategies for reading, drafting, revising, and forming a final piece. Throughout the 2 essays conducted, I had the ability to learn different ways of writing papers instead of the traditional introduction, 3 body paragraphs of supporting evidence, and a conclusion, and focused more on not the format of the writing, but how to organize and show my writing based on what the type of writing I’m doing is.

The first piece of writing we did was a Scientific Controversy essay. This essay consisted of describing a controversial topic that is science-related and using sources and evidence to provide evidence of both sides of the controversy and how it has been such a worldwide spread of controversial ideas. My topic for this piece of writing was how cell phones are addicting. I provided evidence from different scientific approved articles describing how cell phones are addicting and also included information on how to slowly stop addiction and reduce people’s screen times on their cell phones. I achieved a goal throughout writing this essay, which was enhancing strategies for reading, drafting, revising, and forming a final piece.  This is the difference between my draft and my final published piece.

As you can see, I was not 100% clear on what the solution was to my topic on cell phone addiction and how to decrease it. After feedback, I revised this paragraph and made it more noticeable that it was a solution to the topic. Below is the final published paragraph.

This is the revised paragraph for the solutions part of my essay. I added more information that actually let the readers know what the actual solutions to the controversy of cell phone addiction were.

The second piece of writing conducted in this class was a Literature Review Essay. A Literature Review is a document/essay that consists of sources relating to a topic. The point of a Literature Review essay is to hold all sources and allows the audience to read through each review of the sources to understand the topic. This was one of the most complicated pieces of writing I have ever written in my high school/college career. I achieved the goal of gathering sources that all related to one specific topic and connecting them to one another whether it was similar themes or ideas.

This Works Cited page has been created in MLA format. There are many different formats for citation, like Chicago style, and MLA format, but MLA format was requested by the professor. The name of the author, the years it was made, the link, and the title of the article are all present, available for anyone of the audience members/readers to find the exact source at a library, online database, or google.

I have engaged in the collaborative and social aspects of writing throughout this semester. There were peer review days conducted for the class in order for me and one of my classmates to switch our essays pertaining to the specific project we were working on and have the ability to give feedback based on our own opinions. Peer reviews consisted of us as classmates with one another having the ability to fill out worksheets containing questions that my classmate and I had to answer. Below is an excerpt from one of my peer reviews for my classmate, where I answered a few questions regarding his essay.

Conducting peer reviews have been quite helpful to the extent where I, as a writer but also as a peer reviewer and a classmate, know what to look for in my classmates’ essay. By doing this, I can understand the prompt more and might realize that I have missed certain information as well and can go back to my essay and alter what I need to or add anything else. This is helpful to kind of act as a professor and try to see a student’s paper from a professor’s/graders, point of view.

Overall, I feel like I’ve learned a lot about the science aspect of writing and how it differs from the standard English classes I’ve attended in past years at school. Through my writing, drafts, published final pieces, peer evaluations, and comments from my professor, I have seen significant development in my work over the semester. This class has opened up new possibilities for me in terms of writing styles, formatting, and information. I now have a few ideas on how to create essays that aren’t traditional, but experimenting with new sorts of writing that I am not used to, such as writing Literature reviews, has shown me that there are many different methods to produce essays and informative pieces of writing.