For my first phase assignment, I took inspiration from what we learned about how there’s no “correct” English. I thought it would be a cool idea to use the language that kids my age understand best: casual texting language. This includes incredibly informal English, emojis, and images. In some ways, these 3 things used properly resonate more with us than more advanced English. Maybe because we are more dumb? In this phase, I learned about how there is no shame in writing something how I want to write it. Which goes back to the spoken-word essay “Broken English,” by Jamila Lyiscott in which she talks about how speaking an English that isn’t standard doesn’t make you any less articulate. I had to write in the same, boring, formal way throughout middle school and high school and I’m grateful to have a chance to try to do things differently for once.

The thing that impacted my writing process in the second phase is just the genre itself, a Peer Profile format, if that’s what it is. If I had a choice, I would’ve done it the way I did my narrative assignment which is all informal and catered to kids my age. But it’s nice to deviate from that and try doing something actually formal and seeing how I like it. I don’t think I really mess with it too much but at least now I know how to do it. 

I also learned to “Develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing” in the second phase. A new reading strategy I learned is just to keep in mind that I can have my own opinion about what it is I’m reading and I don’t have to go along with whatever everyone else is saying. But this is also kind of interesting to me because something I don’t like is when people over analyze things. Actually, there are a bunch of memes about English teachers over analyzing things which I think are hilarious.

There are some things that are just objective, like if a character’s mother just died and he cries, everyone would probably rightfully assume that the character is sad. I don’t like over analyzing but I will still try to have my own opinions about texts. But probably not with objective things since there’s no leeway for opinions usually. As for collaborating, it was really nice getting to know my phase partner by having an interview on our own means. It was actually a really cool concept for an assignment, having to interview each other for material which meant we were helping each other as much as we were helping ourselves. And the cherry on top was that we could ask whatever questions we wanted. That way, I was only asking questions that I genuinely cared about. And as for editing, I chose to use the suggest feature on google docs to literally “suggest” changes for my friend’s essay. That way, he was able to change what he thought would benefit him and it was clear what I wanted him to change.

A meaningful insight that I gained in the third phase is rhetorical precis. I think it’s very important that people know that sources are taken from sound places. The rhetorical precis format is a really good way to introduce sources and authors.

It’s interesting that no one’s ever made me do something like that before since it feels so necessary. I mean sure, teachers have told me to not go to wikipedia which is understandable. But other than that, they kind of just let us use whatever source we wanted without having to go any deeper. Now I will definitely be doing research into sources for everything else as well, not just school essays and whatnot. Up until this point, I’ve usually just taken anyone’s word for anything since I always think “well they have no reason to lie, right?”. But the truth is that you never really know.

One outcome that the third phases’ assignment has helped me achieve is “Locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias.” Well, kind of.I tried to use Jstor for it but then I just used ScienceDirect since it just looks nicer. I learned to dig in a bit more to see if the authors were credible by looking at their online biographies but I think I could have done more there. This was my thought process at the time: if they’re writing a scholarly article type thing they MUST be experts and they MUST be right. I didn’t do extensive digging on them like checking out their other works and seeing their past history with the topic. For all I know, they were paid to publish the paper to make people think a certain way. So I will probably do more research next time. 

Overall, I would say that I have definitely improved as a writer and even learned some things that I can use outside of the classroom, like critically analyzing sources. If I could have chosen to do something else in the class, I think I would have wanted to learn how to write fictional stories. Most of the books that I read when I was younger were fictional stories with grand plots so that’s probably why. But other than that, I’ve enjoyed this class and I’m thankful for what I’ve learned.