My first year at the City College of New York was an unforgettable experience, where all classes have been remote learning. The Composition FIQWS course was one of my favorite classes, where I developed different strategies that I can use for my future classes. Also learned the culture of Harlem and Gentrification. This class has helped me learn how to write different essay structures, such as Language and Literacy, Summary and Response Essay, and Research Paper. Each writing piece helped me improve my writing skills and develop new strategies that work for me. I enjoyed writing a draft, doing peer review, and writing self-reflection on each assignment because it helped me understand what I am working on and gaps for improvement.

The first major assignment for the class was the Language and Literacy Narrative. In which we needed to write about significant events where language and literacy shaped us. In my essay, I wrote about my early childhood, where I learned Spanish and Cantonese in Venezuela. Included the time when I moved to America and studied a new language, English. Each of these languages has played an essential role in my life and formed who I am today. In order to complete the assignment, I drafted an essay first, which helped me brainstorm ideas and events representing my personal story. Then, having a peer-reviewed by two other classmates and my professor’s feedback has helped me recognize the lack in my narrative. In return, I peered view other classmates’ essays and gave them feedback. Having peer-reviewed aids through the editing process and help me realize that I could include some dialogue or descriptive detail to capture the moment in my narrative.

The second assignment was the Summary and Response Essay. This assignment was one of my favorite projects because I picked my preferred texts from this class, “My Early Days in Harlem,” by Langston Hughes, and summarized the reading, then analyzed it using the ten rhetorical terms I learned in the class. For the creative component project, I can express myself freely by choosing my preferred genre in response to my chosen reading. In this assignment, I have developed reading strategies. For instance, before getting started with the assignment, I would need to understand the text. While reading the text, I would markdown certain information or breakdown the idea from specific paragraphs that I would need to use to fulfill the rhetorical situation and creative component. Overall, the drafting process on the assignment has helped me build an organized structure and strategies for grammar and punctuation by re-reading the essay from the end to the beginning by focusing on the words.

The next assignment was the research paper. One of the most challenging essays I have worked on in the class. Throughout this paper, I developed many skills that would aid me for future academic success. This assignment required writing a proposal, annotated bibliography, research, and works cited page. After completing the second assignment and studying Harlem’s identity, the Gentrification of Harlem was one of my favorite topics that I want to explore more because it’s something new to me. As I learned more about my topic, it was easier for me to write my proposal and do research. In doing research, I learned how to find specific sources, such as articles, journals, and e-books on the CCNY Library Databases.

Furthermore, I used three sources that corresponded to my topic in the annotated bibliography. The first thing I did was, have a citation of the type of the sources, author name, and other details. Then, summarize the sources and analyze the writer’s idea, explaining how and why I’m using these sources in my paper. Aside from this, I learned how to integrate the sources into my paper by using proper citation. With guidance from the professor’s lecture and using the website “OWL Purdue,” I was able to cite the quote in MLA format according to the type of source they are. Lastly, in this paper, I have acknowledged that “the Works Cited” page for the readers to refer back to the sources I used throughout this paper. Therefore, this assignment would be invaluable for me in grasping how to write a research paper for future academic uses.

There was also a self-reflection paper- grading, peer-review, and draft we have to complete on each specific assignment. These tasks help me improve my writing process by recognizing what I have improved on and what I could do differently. By having peer-reviewed, it helped me to recognize the characters and the type of writer my classmates are, which was one way to get to know them more during the semester. Also, having their feedback helped me acknowledge where I can improve on or learn from them for future writing by reading their draft, which was the essential part that helped me edit my essay by collecting classmates and professor feedback. Moreover, creating a portfolio was stressful for me at the beginning, where I spent around three days, figuring out how to build a website and creating pages. After getting used to it, it has helped me develop a new skill in creating a website, which would be useful for future academic courses by building that experience in the FIQWS English Composition course.

Conclusively, all of these assignments in this course have assisted me in becoming a better writer on understanding specific structural format. Through this experience, it helped me in my future writing assignment. Hence, the course works helped me develop new reading and writing strategies, and writing assessments helped me have some process.