English 11000. What a class this has been. In August, I really thought that this class would be based upon just writing essays. But WOW, I could not have been more right but wrong at the same time. Generally speaking, let’s get this out of the way. I actually love to write. I am writing in my journal and self reflecting upon myself and areas in my life I need to grow in, I write sermons for my church and the Bible discussion that I lead here in CCNY. Writing as a whole, to me, is basically just conveying your point in your own ways but you can use so many varieties of techniques to do that and that is what makes it unique and also interesting to read others writing as well. But English 11000, I actually had so much fun and learned so much of how writing can be. The main aspect of what I loved about this course was that I can write with my own voice. It was a blast to do so and look at what you are reading right now, this is in my own voice. But what else did I learn?

English 11000 taught me how to write and explain my own claims and arguments with my own voice in writing. Yes I just said this previously but that was just the tip of the iceberg. You know how I mentioned journaling previously? This course taught me in a way how to convey my journaling reflective writing towards the topics that I am talking about. An example of this is my synthesis essay. The topic I chose was the Psychological effects of Language Discrimination and how it stems back from social media. I won’t lie, this topic just came straight out of my brain. Like I was just brainstorming, ‘what would be a cool but powerful topic’? WHAM, this topic came up and it was so random and this was my first thought. That is the thing about journaling, you journal your first thoughts and then in a way build upon that and translate it to writing it on paper. This Synthesis essay allowed me to use multi-media from a wide variety of places such as Youtube and articles. Then what was awesome was that I was able to transform that information into supporting my own argument and then going off about it while speaking powerfully. This definitely was something that helped me so much when researching a topic and having an argument and viewpoint upon it.

This class taught me how to really brainstorm on the ideas and topics necessary for my writing. You see how I am building upon the previous paragraphs of what I wrote? Ironic haha. Now, many of the assignments and major writing pieces that we did, including the translations, required us to brainstorm our ideas. Again, this is so similar to journaling! Brainstorming starts with an idea, but that idea can fade away. The class allowed me to learn to bring those ideas to paper and choose what would work best with what I wanted to get out. The difference between that and journaling is that I can journal whatever I want, but when it comes to a topic, I want to choose what would work best to convey my writing towards that topic and then also visualize an audience reading it. This was something I can take not just in my writing, but my ideas in life in general on what I want to build upon.

This class taught me how to convey multi-media sources to my writing and the readers. So normally, when journaling, I do not use multimedia sources. The reason I do not use multi-media sources is because when I journal, it is basically about me but I also tend to do it on physical paper. I believe multimedia sources are easier to use when you are writing an essay online because of the quick fact you can switch sources and tabs quickly. But that’s not the point. What English 11000 taught me was how to really use it in my writing and make multimedia explained powerfully. A great example of this is again my synthesis essay. I used a variety of media including charts, personal pictures, Youtube videos, and articles and what was awesome was that I was able to transfer them into my argument. But it was not just transferring them, it was more of the fact that I can be able to speak powerfully and actually make the topic more exciting with just my tone. I believe tone is important in writing because first of all, everyone writes differently and what makes the tone so impactful in writing is that it’s that person and they speak in the way they speak. Something that I always grew up when writing essays in grade school was that there was a specific format, guideline, and rubrics we had to follow. I felt that limited our writing when writing something like a synthesis because it did not allow us to write like us which is something that English 11000 taught and allowed me to do.

I learned how to look for powerful positives in my peers’ essays while being encouraging about the flaws in their writing. Peer review is something where most of the time, I have been doing in many of the writing courses I have taken even in grade school. The thing with peer review, and I can speak from my own experience, is that I would always look for the negatives of the assignment rather than focusing on the amazing aspects and strong points of the essay. I felt that in doing this, it would make us fear the flaws of our writing. But our Professor Enid just told us to write however we wanted. I feel this allowed us to really be less focused on perfecting our writing but it also brought out many strong points. This goes back to peer review because we were told to not be harsh upon reviewing the writing of our peers. This allowed me to really focus on the great aspects of their writings instead of the negatives but also see the different ways my peers write and how it is different from mine. Yes, looking for the flaws is necessary to improve their writing, but this course taught me to be more encouraging upon that.

Yeah, that is my experience from English 11000 in a Nutshell. Overall, I really enjoyed this class and the skills I have learned, I am definitely going to take outside in my own writing when I do journal. This class made me feel open about my writing and generally, I did not feel forced to write. I believe that writing should not be forced to a standard, but everyone has their own thoughts and opinions so it only makes sense that you should get them out in your own way which is what English 101 has taught me and allowed me to grow in!