Richi Barua

Professor Ewan

FIQWS

15 May 2019

My Journey Through FIQWS Writing Composition

Dear CUNY Faculty Members,

Throughout the course of FIQWS writing composition, I have actually gone through many writing experiences that I have never faced before. This class has introduced me to various aspects of academic writing, which was unknown to me. Terms that I already knew before were also explained to me further in this class. FIQWS pushed me to write papers which consisted of extensive research, arguments, and explanations. These course works helped me and pushed me to grow as a writer and acquire more knowledge. By attending FIQWS, I was able to practice my writing, which caused me to become more informed of Academic writing and pushed me to do much better in terms of writing papers.

The first assignment that was assigned for FIQWS was an introductory letter. One of the first things that I learned from this particular assignment was to recognize my audience. Recognizing your audience is important because it allows you to understand who you are talking to and how you should address them. For this assignment, I had to identify my audience especially since the letter was meant towards my professor. By keeping in mind who my audience was, I was able to talk to him in a way that seemed appropriate and reasonable. This way, I was able to explain myself in a better manner since I identified who my audience was.

The second and the first major assignment that was assigned in this class was actually a literacy narrative. The literacy narrative called for me to express my past writing experiences. A major topic that I was able to explore through this assignment was purpose. Having a purpose is important because, to me, a purpose allows one to focus and allows one to express an important message. This assignment required me to have a huge purpose, which was sharing my literacy journey. This benefitted me because that purpose kept me in my lane, which resulted in me being focused on only discussing my improvements in terms of literacy. The establishment of a purpose tremendously helped me by making me more careful and precise throughout my paper.

These first two assignments introduced me to a few of the major ideas that I learned in this course. The third assignment, though, opened my eyes and broadened my knowledge of academic writing. The third assignment called for an expository essay about puppetry. A major topic that I encountered in this paper was a thesis. A thesis is meant to be a controlling device of your paper. The rest of your paper should always tie back to your thesis. This is important since it allows a writer to stay on path, and it allows a writer to narrow down and specify his/her topic. My thesis for this paper allowed me to narrow down my topic, which was therapeutic puppetry for children. The word “children” is able to show the specification. My thesis also always made me cautious of what I was adding to my paper, which caused my paper to only talk about my thesis. This eventually benefited my research and expanded my understanding of academic writing since I was able to concentrate and I was able to focus on my writing.

The expository essay also introduced to me to some of the major ideas from MLA code. For this assignment, I was required to look into CUNY databases for evidence in order to present them. The reason why I am mentioning this is that presenting evidence requires one to use source introduction. What is source introduction you may ask? Source introduction is when you provide the name of the text, the author’s name, and a summary of the text before providing evidence from it. This idea was foreign to me, but I didn’t struggle with it. I admit that at first, I thought that it was annoying to use source introduction every time. However, eventually, I was able to write source introduction without even thinking about it. Yes, it might have been annoying, but source introduction gave me a little taste of MLA code, which I will forever be grateful for.

Besides source introduction, using signal phrases are also extremely crucial when writing a research paper. A signal phrase consists of the author’s last name and a strong verb. This is usually required before giving evidence. Signal phrases are important because it allows a reader to be aware of who is speaking. To be honest, I didn’t really understand the significance of signal phrases at first, but as time passed by, I appreciated it more because it was easier to present information this way since you do not have to repeat a title. Signal phrases were also confusing to me at first because I did not know what type of verbs I had to use.  Soon though, I was able to understand it more through practice, although I still struggle with it due to a lack of time. I really appreciate the little amount of time that I did have, because I was able to learn during them.

Now, let’s shift this conversation from my difficulties to something I enjoyed, which was presenting evidence. I presented my evidence in two different ways. The first way was the use of paraphrasing, which meant that I put the evidence in my own words. I was not really enthusiastic about this though, because I was interested in quote integration. Quote integration is the practice of incorporating a quote with your own words. This allowed me to use any quote I wanted since I had the ability to alter the sentence structures if it seemed wrong. Of course, the ideas always remained the same, but I was able to add in my own words in order to structure the sentences in the right way. This made me more enthusiastic to write since I had control for the first time.

Let’s shift this conversation again. As you have noticed, I have talked a lot about the expository essay. Let’s leave that for now and move onto the argumentative essay for a while. The argumentative essay was another essay that helped me a lot. One of the most important topics that I enhanced through this paper was rhetoric language. Using pathos, logos, and ethos, I was able to attract my audience and present my argument. I personally did use pathos more because I was able to relate to my paper and express my side of the story about the topic in an emotional way. Logos and ethos were also used in order to explore my topic of minority representation in a more logical and ethical way. By doing so, it was easy to reach out to my audience in a way that helped grab their attention and persuade them.

Counter-claim is something else that I enhanced through this paper. An important fact that I learned about counterclaim is that it is presented in order to prevent fallacious arguments. However, when you mention a counterclaim, you must explain why your side is better. I followed this instruction and picked an opposing claim supporting a lack of minority representation, which I then countered by stating that people are getting hurt through these representations. By following this format, I was able to improve and compose a counterclaim.

I actually want to come back to the expository essay now and talk about it along with the argumentative essay. Both essays have helped me tremendously, especially with analyzing and evaluating. Evaluating the credibility and reliability of a source was extremely needed, especially in the argumentative essay. Reliability to me means that the information presented is accurate and up to date. To check for my reliability, I checked the date of the source and what type of source it is (research/experiment, etc). This allowed me to recognize and identify good sources, which is important because I did not want to give false information. This helped my writing for the better because I was able to write about content that was accurate and reliable.

The next step after the evaluation was to plan what evidence I wanted to include and how I was going to analyze those evidence. Analysis to me means that I need to show my understanding of the evidence presented. In order to do this,  I composed my texts using various strategies such as critical analysis, which usually meant that I would break down texts even further and emphasize the main parts. I struggled with this a lot because sometimes, I would not know how to explain a text further. In those moments, I tried to the best of my ability and I kept on going back to the main article in order to understand it more. I definitely struggled with this since I did not have time, but that is fine since I am still growing as a writer. Yes, challenges are hard, but those challenges actually helped me by pushing me to do better analysis.

The next step in strengthening my paper was synthesizing. To me, synthesizing means that all of the ideas that are presented are connected. As I have mentioned before, connecting your ideas together is extremely important and for my paper, that was required. In order for all of my ideas to connect, my thesis was created based on all of the evidence. This made the process easier because from then on, I just had to make sure that my ideas all connect to the thesis.

After each evidence was presented, it was then followed by citations. Citations allow readers to understand where a piece of information is from and it also prevents a writer from plagiarizing. Two types of citations are end text and in-text citations. To understand each, I tried to use worksheets and books that were provided to me. The basic understanding that I, now, hold is that in-text citations give minor information about a text, which can help a person locate the corresponding end-text citation containing more information. By learning this and more, I was able to finish my citations and by doing that, I was able to complete the first drafts of each paper.

Each draft in FIQWS allowed me to engage with my classmates and revise my paper. I have actually come to appreciate my drafts very much due to peer review. With various suggestions that I received by collaborating with others, I was able to construct enhanced versions of drafts, and this development is shown in my final papers. I was also able to develop my own strategies to edit my papers. One strategy that I frequently used was proofreading my papers over and over again. This was mainly done since I noticed that reading it more than once resulted in me recognizing more of my mistakes. By rereading my papers and by seeking out to people, I was more aware of my writing, which allowed me to improve and construct final drafts.

Throughout the past five months, FIQWS has really pushed me to explore writing. I happened to explore different genres in this class. Not only have I written different papers, but I have also had the opportunity to read various texts. Reading and learning about different types of texts and genres really pushed me to understand a variety of writing pieces around me. I have truly enjoyed learning about my writing and other people’s writing. They opened my eyes since they pushed me to see what other writers do, which helped me improve myself.

FIQWS has impacted me deeply in terms of my academic knowledge. Each paper has caused me to learn new terms and develop them in order to improve my paper. Learning them has also improved my understanding of academic writing. Academic writing is extremely important and being able to learn new things about it will help me in the long term. Hopefully, I could walk through my life with what I learned in this class, and hopefully, I will get to build more knowledge and learn more as time passes by.

Sincerely,

Richi Barua