In this fall semester, I was able to learn how to cite evidence in MLA format to let the reader know what I am talking about. In my final draft of my synthesis essay, I learned how to cite evidence in MLA format at the end of the page. I put my evidence in the “Works Cited”section, which consists of the sources I have used to support my thesis statement, like articles and websites on the internet. I learned how to organize my sources on my works cited page so that the instructor can understand which sources I have used. I understand how to cite properly in MLA format style when it comes to English academic writing to demonstrate the evidence being used. As shown below, I cited evidence that supports my thesis statement when I was talking about African immigrants being discriminated against by people. Also, I cited the author’s name before talking about who they are, like “In Manka Nkimberg’s article “All I know is that there is a lot of discrimination: Older African immigrants’ experiences of discrimination in the United States” instead of “In the article”. If I wrote “In the article”, then the instructor wouldn’t understand who the author of the article is or what article I am talking about because I’m not being specific enough. I was able to get the hang of writing the author’s name along with the article name and explain how the quote connects to my claim whenever I am writing. When it comes to citing evidence from sources, it was challenging for me at first to write “In the article” since I was used to writing in that form but throughout the semester, I was able to get the hang of citing the author’s name first and writing the article name to let the instructor know where I am stating my evidence from.

I learned how to communicate with a specific audience in my essay. To be specific, I was able to understand how to target a specific audience and talk about it. In my Synthesis Essay for example, I was talking about African immigrants specifically about their English language and how accent discrimination makes them feel left out. I focused only on African immigrants who migrate to the U.S. where they have a hard time adjusting to “Standard English” and not talking about other audiences. It was fascinating to know the information I was reading throughout the articles about African immigrants’ language and the domination of “Standard English” which was the topic when I first wrote my Synthesis Essay. Another example where I learned how to target a specific audience is my Translations 2 presentation, where I created a poster to gain attention to convince people to “Stop Linguistic Discrimination Against African Immigrants.” When I first did my Translation 2 visual argument for Phase 2, I was thinking of several groups of people or minorities for my argument. But then I remembered that in my Synthesis Essay, I had an idea to target African immigrants since I had no idea which audience I was convincing. I was able to create a visual argument to target African immigrants to persuade people about “Stopping Linguistic Discrimination.”

I also learned how to develop and adjust English academic writing. Throughout the semester, I was able to understand how writing works in English when I first wrote my Language & Literacy Narrative (LLN). When I first started writing for my English class in college, my writing wasn’t that great and I made mistakes along the way with the quotation marks, grammar and punctuation. I was able to revise and make changes to my LLN when I received feedback from both my instructor and classmates. It was helpful for me to understand how to use commas before the quotation marks to create dialogues for example and using past tense verbs instead of present tense like instead of “I think”, it is “I thought”. The LLN was supposed to be a moment where language and literacy played a major role in my life and I have thought of many moments like when I was in middle school, I struggled with spelling and writing a lot in my English class. Even though I know the basics of English academic writing with the grammar and punctuation, it is way different than I expected whenever I am writing an essay in college rather than high school. Sometimes I think that writing is easy even though in some situations there are mistakes with my grammar and punctuation. My LLN has helped me learn how to write as in the past tense instead of the present tense with words and actions along with the subject, setting, etc. As shown below, my first draft of the LLN had mistakes with spelling and punctuation with the commas or quotation marks. But when I received feedback, I learned that I needed to improve and use words that sound like the past tense rather than the present tense.

In this writing course, I learned how to use rhetorical situations to understand an author’s argument and essay choices whether it was an article, text, journal, etc. Throughout the fall semester at CCNY, I have done rhetorical situations with my instructor where we reviewed and understood how to analyze and identify the author’s article. I learned how to find and read the author’s credentials provided in their text like the publisher or the title of the article. I was able to get the hang of analyzing or examining the text that is provided using the author’s name, context, genre, audience, etc. It is a useful skill for me as a writer to get deeper understanding and develop my critical thinking where the information can be useful from several articles to know the genre or the main purpose the author is trying to say to the audience. When I first started doing rhetorical situations, I didn’t understand how rhetorical situations work until I read (past tense) the text and examine different themes or genres. Using the author’s information in the text provided has helped me learn the main purpose and the argument against English language expectations in general. An example I can think of when I did rhetorical situations was when the article “Mother Tongue” was a personal essay where she writes about her experience with English and the challenges of speaking. I was able to look at the text and think about what the author is communicating to the audience by speaking “limited” English to her mom as her first language is Chinese.