Throughout this semester I have greatly progressed my skills as a writer. Learning many skills that will change and help strengthen my writing, message, and thoughts forever. But I also learned the powerful use of language in our society, where it could give everyone the ability to let people send their message and spread their purpose. I have learned many rhetorical skills to improve my writing like rhetorical language, pathos, and logos that improve my writing.

We have read and analyzed many of the author’s writing techniques that brought our writing to another level that will change how I write forever.

Coming into this semester into Engl 21001 I lacked confidence in my writing and I made it apparent to my professor. This lack of confidence has been caused by my time in high school English classes struggling to develop ideas or conclusions. But that soon quickly changed when we started on phase 1 of the semester. When we read “The Bats” by Linda Hogan a short story describing an encounter with bats and her deep connection to them. Describing them as majestic creators where most people describe them as scary. But her message was that nature is precious and advocates for nature conservation. After reading this it really caused me to think about my deep connection to nature and it gave me flashbacks to my deep connections with the cold. On top of that my professor pushed me to think about my writing style and rhetoric, including ethos, logos, and pathos. 

I took those writing strategies to my first draft of the essay. I was really nervous and spent hours making sure I was as descriptive as possible. Using descriptive language like “Every breath I take the freezing air enters my lungs and I exhale like a dragon”. Once I showed it to my classmate they were impressed by my writing which is surprising to me and I doubted their opinion. So I showed it to my professor. He admired my writing style and said there is nothing I would change and just hand it in. This was the first time in my life where I made a perfect draft. After that, there was a boost in confidence in what I have to say and I realized that the root cause of my lack of confidence was the lack of support in my writing. 

For the rest of the semester, I took that confidence into phases 2 where we had to create an op-ed. When we started this phase I was really excited because I wanted to talk about the suppression of Hong Kong against their human rights by Communist China. This was important to me because my family is from Hong Kong, when I was writing this essay I used all the rhetorical devices that I know, descriptive language, tone, echo, logo pathos, and using hooks to capture the reader. When I showed this essay to their peer review, they were inspired because it’s one of the most passionate essays that I had ever written. Which made me realize that my confidence in writing is also based upon my interest in the subject. And for the first time ever writing that essay was fun to write something that I had never felt before because I usually dread writing for class. 

Then in the last phase of the semester, I took my confidence and my skills to phase 3 where we had to create a critical analysis paper on something. What I chose was “Do the Right Thing” A movie about Black Americans being practically oppressed and talks about racial resentment between all races. I wanted to write this piece because of the height of racial tensions of George Floyd and Asian American hate crimes at the height of the covid pandemic. When I finished my first draft I realized how powerful writing could be when I showed them to my group during peer review because my group actually got a heated agreement to take charge in making a difference for the future.

 One of my favorite parts of the class is doing peer review. During peer review it allowed other students to catch some of my mistakes and develop ideas that I never thought of before to enhance my writing. But not only did it only allow other people to catch my mistakes but it helped me develop a closer eye for myself to catch my mistakes from looking at other people’s work. 

In Conclusion, I am really glad that I took this class and there were some challenges that I had to overcome, but in the end, I did resolve those problems. It has allowed me to become a stronger writer and have been more exposed to the powers of language. I have gained many skills in my language, literacy, rhetorical devices, rhetorical analysis, research, and writing abilities in tone, audience, and word choice. But most importantly I have become a confident writer for the future to come.