Writing has never been my strong suit and adding to the fact that I am an immigrant from Uzbekistan, where the major languages are spoken Uzbek, Russian, and Tajik, while other languages make up 7.1%. To someone whose first language is not English is like a double-edged sword. 

Coming into class, I never thought I would engage with my peers other than how their day is. This is because of the writing classes I took last year, such as FIQWS. In the FIQWS class, where the class was online which meant less engagement because people would have their cameras off. Can’t blame them because I also had my screen off most of the time. We only had class discussions where we would go over the meanings behind the section we read. In the FIQWS classes, we only had to talk about rhetorical choices. We would go over the meaning of the reading in class and then write a short paragraph about the rhetorical choices. However, this class has given me an insight, such as: what does the writer mean when they use this specific term and whether could they have meant something else?

The peer reviews were one of the best aspects of the class. This is because the mistakes that went over my head would be caught by others and the same way around.

Although, my feeling toward writing has not changed; I understand that just picking up a pen and writing can get a lot of ideas rolling toward a bigger agenda. For example, what I had missed, what I needed to improve, and what I did well on. The most pleasing detail about this class is that everyone is collaborative. 

 The influence behind this realization was two specific readings in the classroom: “The Veldt” and Ted Chiang’s “Story Of Your Life”. These pieces were my favorite to read in the class because of the languages used by the authors. This was discussed in class with other peers, where the class talked about how it made us feel and what the author was trying to convey by using different terminologies.

With this said, the knowledge gathered from this class transforms into my other classes quite well, such as my history class. there are mistakes nonetheless but are quite fewer than they would have been if I had not thought about the way of writing in this class. Now, I take extra measures to rethink my writing. For example, I go back revise and maybe substitute some other words that might have a stronger meaning so the reader or the audience will comprehend my point of view.

NationMaster. (2014). Uzbekistan Language Facts & Stats. NationMaster.Com. Retrieved May 16, 2022, from https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/profiles/Uzbekistan/Language