As I wrote essays throughout the course of this class, I have learned different things about the social sciences and how to write about them. I have learned a different style of writing and it has overall changed my perception of writing as a whole. One thing in particular that I felt I learned was writing in a way that different people can understand and take information from. In this class I needed to talk to a specific audience with different demographics. When writing about subcultures in this class for the most part I was talking to outsiders of the culture like myself. This was important for me to learn because when writing to outsiders there are different aspects, and information that I needed to assume were unknown and abnormal. I think the most difficult adjustment I needed to make was the style of writing. In the past I was always expected to write in the third person perspective. For these essays I needed to focus on what I saw and understood. I wasn’t used to writing papers with my take on things and my opinion since other classes don’t allow or encourage that. For example, when writing my mini-ethnography, I had already done research about the Samoan culture, so I already knew more than the average person. I still needed to explain things that I already knew so that an outsider that hasn’t done research could understand it. I knew a lot about Samoan tattoos but I still felt the need to explain the simple things for those who wouldn’t understand them because that was the intended audience. Overall this has changed my perception of writing because I thought that there was one way of writing and I wasn’t aware of this style of writing. I think this style of writing is important because it achieves a different goal and expresses different ideas.

    As I’ve been writing papers and learning different things I think I have been working towards achieving the course learning outcomes. I think I achieved the first one because I actively tried to write in a different style throughout the semester. I have tried to use cultural linguistic differences and implement them in my writing. I also think I achieved the second one because of the process of drafting and making changes. My professor gave me comments on my draft and had a classmate peer review my paper. Along with the help I received from others, I also revised and edited my work myself. I also used many readings and the information I learned from them to help with my writing and overall took on more information. I think I partially achieved the third course learning outcome. I think I worked towards writing for different audiences and writing differently when keeping that in mind.  I also felt like I could have gone deeper into certain things which is what I could improve in the future. I definitely think I achieved the fourth course learning outcome. I have collaborated a lot throughout this course. I have done group assignments, and peer review where I worked with other classmates and shared ideas. Doing group work in class and taking advice from others on my work has definitely helped spark ideas and enhance my creativity which was important when writing something that requires a different perspective. I think I achieved the fifth course learning outcomes because of all of the different ways I tried to write my papers. An example of this is my research paper and mini ethnography. In those papers, I engaged in genre analysis to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts. I think throughout my essays I articulated a stance in them but it is something I can focus on more in future papers. In the research paper, I used the internet to find sources to use for my paper. I needed to use the internet to learn more about cultures that I am not familiar with or where I am an outsider. While doing this I felt like I strengthened my source using practices. Overall I think I have achieved most of these course learning outcomes but can continue to improve on them in the future. I also think that a lot of these skills that I gained or improved on from this class can help me in the real world.

• acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility
• enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment
• negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation
• develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes
• engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond
• formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing
• practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects
• strengthen your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources)