Artist Statement

Erik Yan

5-18-19

Eng 1121

Professor Hall

 

Over this semester I believe that I have improved on my writing. I think i’ve been able to write longer pieces than I ever could. In the past, writing more than 2 pages was considered a lot for me. I’ve noticed ever since like my first class of college, most of my written work was 2 pages or more. I kind of felt like it was kind of difficult to write a lot because I like to just say or present my point. My explanation for my point would be really brief with not much reasoning as to why I felt that way. I think throughout the semester I have noticed I sort of have been improving on explaining myself and my reasoning. I’ve been able to also explain my use of evidence a little better. I still need to work more on that but it is better than how I wrote in the beginning of the term. Having to explain more of why I agree to a certain thing helped to also extend my paper. I think my type of writing has remained more or less the same because the style of writing has been pretty similar throughout my pieces of work. The two pieces of work I have chosen both are written in a casual way. I find that it is more relatable when reading it which can help set up like a emotional connection. The two pieces I chose are the MTA Signal Memo and Gender Inequality in Video Games. I chose these two because I felt that my MTA Signal Memo was a “low stakes” homework assignment that made great use of a lot of evidence. I was able to gather evidence about MTA signal problems and I was able to explain why I picked the evidence I picked and what it all meant. This memo was basically kind of a mini essay in my opinion just without really an introduction and conclusion. I also chose my paper about women in video games because that was a subject of interest that coincided with the topic of my paper. I felt more invested in writing that paper because I was personally interested. This allowed me to write longer with more of an explanation of why I thought the way I did. I think something I can improve on is trying to explain what my evidence means in my own understanding of it. I basically mean explain why I picked it and how I have interpreted that evidence because no one else knows what I’m thinking but myself. I want to be able to properly write down my understanding of it so that someone else who picks up my paper and reads it, will understand what I am thinking about it.

My interest in writing has remained the same, which is only really writing when school requires it. I don’t find an interest in writing. I only do it because I need it for my classes. I find it much easier to just speak my ideas instead of writing it out. Plus since I would be having a discussion with someone on the topic, I can also get an immediate response or counter to my argument. Even though I do not write a lot outside of class, I still feel that I have had some type of improvement compared to previous written pieces. As I have said earlier about explaining my point more, In my “Gender inequality in Video Games” paper, I brought up evidence talking about the proportion of women compared to men working in a game related field. I explained how the evidence basically demonstrated that there was a disproportionate amount of males and females working in the video game field. I also recommend a solution to fix the issue of the disproportionate amount of women and and men working in the video game field. I recommended that companies should encourage more females so that more of them can join a video game related fields. Now looking back at it, I have noticed that I could have said “Video game companies can have free STEM programs which will help to encourage and maybe get more women interested in that subject”. If I said that I think it would be a little more convincing and help further support my claims. I did enjoy this semester’s writing assignments, I was basically allowed to write something that pertained to my interests.