After completing many assignments I have learned many things. This course has been a great experience and I feel like the learning objectives have been completed.

Stiven Hernandez 

Writing for The Social Sciences 

May 13, 2022 

Remember the last time you learned something new or were interested in a certain subject or project? I sure do. When I entered this class, I thought it would be like any other English class; read about something, review it, write an essay, and forget about it for the rest of the semester. However, this class focused on learning objectives and understanding writing; realizing people write differently, enhancing reading and writing strategies, and using genre, medium, and rhetorical situations to appeal to our audience. As well as strengthening our ability to research and use resources. 

I wrote a letter of introduction about my weaknesses and strengths as a writer while striving for a conversational tone to be able to understand the range of linguistic differences and styles of writing. When comparing my letter of introduction to other students, I noticed how the tones and ways to portray ideas were different. This assignment helped me find a unique style of writing, using fewer words and going for a more direct sentence. Unlike high school, in this course, I was given the opportunity to write however I wanted, with some rules of course. Writing as if I were in a conversation was an effective way of making my writing stand out because not everyone uses the same set of words when saying something. When writing, people use something I call the “default words” like “as an example”, “however”, and “in addition”, to transition from one sentence or paragraph to another. After learning my unique style of writing I needed to enhance my drafting, revising, and editing strategies. My professor gave us some advice; start writing anything and when you are finished keep yourself away from what you wrote. When you come back to revise your draft, you will be looking at your work with different eyes, not as a writer, but as an editor. After getting my assignment graded, I would get advice from my professor to see how I can improve it. The things I had to improve in those assignments I would implement in the next assignment, making my drafting and editing better.  

Not all of our assignments had the same goal or audience. When doing the class observation assignment, I had to take detailed notes of how the place and the actions taking place in it. When taking those notes a descriptive essay could be written that satisfies the audience and the set goal. 

I developed and engaged in the social and collaborative aspects of writing by interviewing not only my classmates but people outside the school during the field working assignment. I have to socialize with people and take notes at the same time, those notes will later be turned into an essay. These assignments were a great example of how social skills and writing skills meet. When interviewing I not only made a connection between the collaborative and social aspects of writing but engaged in genre analysis and multimodal composing to effectively write across disciplinary contexts and more when shifting information from oral to written.  

Formulating and articulating a stance in our writing was part of this course. When writing my research proposal for the field working assignment, I took a stance on my research question and my opinion on the topic. Finding what I was going to fieldwork was not an easy decision, but researching was the opposite. Professor Steegmann introduced the class to the librarian and the CCNY database, making the searching process to come up with questions for my interviews. The database is a collection of revised articles and books which unbiasedly takes on a large variety of subjects.  

Before this class writing was just a means of communication, a way to transport information, just words on paper. Writing is more than words on paper, when writing you reflect emotions during a situation. When I read the book FieldWorking and the different observations being made, I felt as if I was there. Writing is more than a means of communication or a way to transport information, it’s a way to let your mind wander. When watching a movie, you have a scene, and everyone sees the same thing. However, when there is just writing, you make up your own image in your head and there are infinite amounts of scenes, and no matter what people will be able to relate because they will imagine a place where they have been or are familiar with.