In the class writing for the sciences this semester I was able to delve in several writing activities of different focuses and prompts, and do critical reading of scientific texts. After completing several pieces of writing I reflect upon some of the course learning outcomes and whether I was able to meet them during my time in this class. One of the first course learning outcomes is whether I was able to acknowledge others’ and my range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensitivities. I feel like I was able to experience this in the class while we performed discussions about readings of scientific article. Sometimes when I went over the readings by myself I felt confused by the text, and I felt like there was a lot of jargon and technical terms that I had personally never encountered, going to class I would see that some of my classmates had similar issues but as we would do our class discussion, I found that you had to really read critically and not take everything a writer might say at face value, because they might in fact be wrong and their argument actually doesn’t make sense. I found that this was the case for the John S White paper on corn fructose syrup.

The second course learning outcome was to enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing , and self assessment. I feel like in a big way I didn’t meet this criteria as my drafts were always underprepared and I had a hard time being able to come up with any sort of guiding main idea for my papers to revolve around. Then I felt like this put me behind in the drafting process for most of the assignments that needed to be done. However, I do feel like being given the opportunity to revise my paper did help me look at some of the aspects my writing lacks and work on them with the feedback that I would receive. But I did find it somewhat hard at first because I don’t usually re-read or critically revise my papers once they’ve been handed back to me. Self assessments I felt were an honest way for us to reflect on our papers and whether we felt satisfied with our product. For the third course learning outcome of negotiating my own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation, I felt like I did meet this when I was writing my introductory letter and my revised scientist profile paper. I felt like it was in these two papers that I was able to develop a clear stance, purpose, and genre.

I felt like I was able to complete course learning outcome four when we would have group discussions about our topics and what we wanted to write about. Despite not having a clear idea for my writing, I did like listening to my peers speak about their topics and the direction they were each heading in order to complete their paper. I was able to receive very strong advice and suggestions, about where I should move towards and what I could focus on the field I was researching.

For the course learning outcome of engaging in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond, I feel like this was done through all the collective pieces we wrote. From the first assignment that focused on our class goals, to the scientist profile and the review paper that all had a different format and the research paper which was formal exploration in a topic of our our choice.

For the criteria of creating my own stance through my writing, I would say I didn’t quite fulfill to the best of my ability, I think that was a major problem throughout, and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I was taught writing should always be unbiased and devoid of personal opinions, but through the feedback I received on my papers I was able to do so to a certain extent.

I think course learning outcome seven is one which I feel I did very much improve on, before coming to this class I was very weary and uncomfortable navigating an online database, as I found it quite intimidating and I had not used it beforehand except for one or two occasions. I feel like this is one skill that I improved on in class because we were expected to do it quite a lot.

For the last course learning outcome I felt like in some ways I did complete it but not in others, for example I have several problems when it comes to not summarizing a source, and not putting it in the context of the argument that I’m trying to make. However, I do feel like I have improved in being able to cite sources in my work.