This semester, I have made an adapting progress in achieving the course learning objectives. I have grown as a writer by exploring how language affects identity and social perception. In my Rhetorical Analysis Essay on Safwat Saleem’s TED Talk, “Why I Keep Speaking Up, Even When People Mock My Accent”, I wrote about the discrimination many people are facing just because of the way they speak. While writing this essay, I was able to relate and connect the topic to my own experiences and observations which made it a serious topic for me to not forget .Writing this essay helped me recognize the role of language attitudes in hierarchizing speakers and taught me to identify rhetorical strategies such as imagery, emotional appeals, ethos, and pathos. In phase 2, I worked on a research based argument essay on The Relationship between Language and Identity. Looked into how language shapes our identities and how society perceives us, using three sources including articles and a TED Talk video to back up my topic. I developed strategies for revising, drafting, editing and learned more on how to do mla citations with a work cited page. Lastly, I got better on researching sources based on their credibility using the CUNY library.

After writing these essays, I worked on a visual argument about the importance of sleep. I created a Google Slides presentation and then converted it into an essay for a multimodal assignment. This is something I haven’t done in a while, I can easily make my message come out stronger by mixing in visual genres such as photographs, drawings, posters, fliers and more. This class has also made me realize that writing is not ordinary and it is more of a communication skill to share ideas, express yourself, and connect with an audience in meaningful ways.