Reflection
As a student who always has preferred math and science over the humanities and now as a computer science major, writing has never been my strong suit. Over the course of many English and history classes in grade school, my writing has struggled, but its issues are specific and identifiable. More often than not, the argument I make is straightforward and backed up by solid evidence, but when trying to convey my argument I struggle. Sometimes, I fail to include the logical thought process leading through my points. Other times, I do not add enough detail to flesh out my argument. However, throughout the course, I was able to improve my argumentative writing by utilizing the “uneven U” paragraph structure and identifying the audience I was writing for.
In my Unit One essay titled “The Coaching Complex,” I explore my own relationship with the coaches of my Ultimate Frisbee team, Washing DC Swing Vote. In the essay, my goal was to explain to my teammates, who were my audience, that without the presence of Ben and his coaching abilities, we would not have been able to win a national title this past summer. At first, Ben was absent from the team; Practices were going poorly and the team was struggling without his leadership. In the essay, I attempted to convey the importance of Ben’s return by narrating my emotions:
“My phone buzzed: ‘New message in Swing Vote Group-Me’. A huge grin spread across my face as I read the first line of the unread message: ‘Ben Feng: Hi all. I'm ready to commit to Swing Vote 2016.’ I was ecstatic. Our efforts to reinstate Ben had paid off.”
Because I had experienced the excitement of Ben’s return first hand, I understood what my writing was trying to convey with “ecstatic”. However, the purpose of the essay was to convince readers that Ben’s return was essential; it was not just a happy retelling of the summer’s events. To prove this, I needed to add more emotion, enforcing the positivity of Ben’s return to the team. I edited the sentence to the following:
“My phone buzzed: ‘New message in Swing Vote Group-Me’. A huge grin spread across my face as I read the first line of the unread message: ‘Ben Feng: Hi all. I'm ready to commit to Swing Vote 2016.’ I was ecstatic. On the ride to the fields that night, I rejoiced with my teammates; our efforts to reinstate Ben had paid off.”
Now, the emotional impact of Ben’s announcement seems greater, and my argument is strengthened with pathos and addition of detail.
In a similar vein, my revisions to my Unit Two essay, “Kinesthetic Motor Imagery in the Quest for Athletic Perfection,” focused on the addition of detail to flesh out my argument. The essay is a science-based research article with the inclusion of a personal experience to make it more approachable to the reader. In the introduction, I reference a specific moment at tryouts for UNC’s Club ultimate Frisbee team, Darkside:
“I had manipulated my defender to get him on his heels and waited for the perfect moment to strike. I sprinted into the end zone and watched my teammate release the disc, zipping it towards my outstretched hands. In that split second before I caught it, I thought ahead to my celebration: I’d chest-bump my teammates, receive some high fives, and maybe even spike the disc… Doink! The pass bounced off my hands and I watched in horror as it fell to the turf.”
The use of this personal anecdote sets the stage for the topic of my paper. I did not employ visualization before the tryout, and my play suffered as a result. During revisions to the paper, I saw an opportunity to apply the “Full Circle” essay map to my paper. I added a closing paragraph in which I narrated my own use of KMI before the final tryout and the resulting effect on my play. I caught a nice layout goal and made the team. By bring back the personal experience in the conclusion of the article, I strengthened my argument. Use of an essay map was critical for the completion of my article and is a skill applicable in all of my writing to come.
For my final portfolio, I opted to create a website to display my work. As a computer science major and novice web designer, I wanted to challenge myself to create a clean, functional, interesting site to present my work. All the pages are based on the same layout: A title space, navbar, content, and a parallax scrolling background. The background is composed of three images, one representing each work. “The Coaching Complex” is embodied by a picture of my team’s coach from inside a huddle, representing not only the importance of a coach as a leader, but also how without players, coaches cannot be successful. For the science article on KMI, I selected a picture of myself catching a disc, a skill all ultimate players must master, and for my Conflict Chronicle on drone strikes, I used a picture of a Predator drone. The drone picture is also hidden beneath the content of every page, symbolizing the secrecy with which the government has carried out its strikes. The resulting site is a bit minimal, but functionally presents my work and has a clean, easygoing design.
Overall, English 105 was a fun, informative, and challenging class. I learned new skills to improve my writing while also exploring topics that interest me personally. In the future, I hope to hone my revision skills so that I can identify my writing’s flaws with more success without the help of my classmates and teachers, but I also learned of the value in a second, third, or fourth opinion. Although I may never again have the liberty of choosing every topic I want to write about for a course, and often science professors couldn’t care less about personal anecdotes, the tactics I learned to improve my writing always apply.