āI am more of a reader rather than a writer.ā That’s the answer that I give everyone who asks me if I like to write.Ā I find writing a very complicated task. Even writing this seems difficult to me. I always overthink whenever I write and it takes me a millennium to write anything. Like many writers, I think that my writing is never complete and I am never satisfied with my work. More so, it’s very difficult to organize my thoughts and to deliver them in a steady flow.
English 1121 helped me organize those thoughts and deliver them in the form of writing. Over the course of this month, one of the main things that has helped me is that there is no such thing as everyone as an audience. No matter what you write or how you write, you can never address āeveryoneā. People have different interests and they read different things. For instance, my feature article was on the journey to Mars. I addressed fourth graders for my article in unit 3 whereas for unit 2, I addressed a much older audience that are interested in the mission to Mars. Fourth graders will never read my feature article and an older audience wouldnāt read my infographics. The infographics had many graphics and various fonts to excite the children. On the other hand, the feature article had more scientific and advanced information.
Another thing that I learned about is discourse communities. I didnāt notice that different communities had a different language until it was pointed out. This helped me dive deeper into the discourse communities that I am apart of and to examine the languages that I use in them. For examples, the language that I use as a BTS fan is very different that the language I use as a Muslim woman. When I was a new fan of BTS, I didnāt understand the words that other fans used. I used to watch many YouTube videos on BTS. As Iāve said before, āEvery BTS introductory YouTube video that Iāve watched used words like āmaknaeā ( youngest member) and āhyungā (oldest member).ā These words were so foreign to me and now they are random words that I use. Similarly, as a Muslim woman, I use words like āAlhamdulliahā and āSubhanAllahā
The discourse community that I wrote on in this class was the Muslim community. In a padlet post, I said āThe Muslim community is very huge and diverse but there are many words and phrases that brings all of us together.ā There were various words that I couldāve chosen but I chose the word āAlhamdulillahā. We use this word almost every single day, several times a day. While I was writing about this I, myself learned more about the word. I didnāt realize how deeply this word is embedded in our Islamic beliefs. In my essay, I have stated āSo many Muslims have been using this word their entire lives and they donāt even realize the effect that this word has on them. Frankly speaking, I havenāt fully realized it until I started this piece of writing. Now that I look back at my life, I can see how much pain and sadness I have prevented myself from by changing my perception of the situation.ā I probably wouldnāt have noticed this until this class. That being said, I am motivated to learn more about more words that we use in our everyday life.
One of my favorite things about this class was that I was able to choose the topics that I wanted to write about. I have always disliked writing because I have always had to write for school about topics that I had no interest in. But, with the opportunity to write about topics that interest me, I had a lot of fun writing about Mars. Iāve always wanted to learn more about Mars but I was too busy to research about it. I finally got the chance to do it and it made the nerdy version of me shine.
Furthermore, I was able to understand how to write for the ārealā world. So far, I have only written essays with the required introduction, body and conclusion. Whenever I used to write them, I would always say to myself āWho would read all of this because I wonātā. Surely, with the help of ENG 1121, I was able to write something that I would consider reading if I came across it. Everything that I have written in this class is something that I would enjoy reading. This is what I would consider my greatest achievement; writing something that I would read.
ENG 1121 is my first asynchronous class on OpenLab. At the beginning of class, I thought that I wouldnāt be able to catch up with all the due dates with the assignment. Now, I consider an asynchronous class much better than synchronous.Ā I was able to understand the various topics much more easily. I have a very short attention span which makes it difficult for me to stay focused in long lectures. Thus, since the lecture video of the class was mainly short, I was able to grasp the concepts much faster. Also, this class was about 4 weeks long. Since it was a short amount of time, I was more focused and determined to finish all of my work.
Moreover, the structure of the class was great.Ā It was very organized. The schedule of the due dates at the end of each unit really helped me and so did all of the articles that I read during the course of this class.Ā I have learned some really good writing skills and revising skills. The class was a joy and I probably never had such fun writing until this class.
