Throughout the course, in writing for the social sciences, we have completed three papers; The Personal Artifact Essay, The observational Essay, and the Research Subculture Position Paper. Writing these papers helped me improve my writing skills. We learned about a total of eight learning outcomes; 1. acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility 2. enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment 3. negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of the genre, medium, and rhetorical situation 4.  develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes 5. engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond 6. formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing 7. practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects 8. strengthen your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources). With each paper I wrote,  I realized where I improved and I realized where I lacked skill. 

There were multiple course learning outcomes that were used throughout all of my papers. For example, enhanced strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment were completed for each paper. This helped my writing because writing my first draft always helped me get my ideas in order, and being able to go over my papers gave me the opportunity to go back and fix my mistakes. Another course learning outcome that I used in all the papers was; developing and engaging in collaborative and social aspects of the writing process, negotiating my own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of the genre, medium, and rhetorical situations. This helped me because we would have our peers give us feedback on our papers. Having an outsider read your paper and give you feedback, helps you understand where it is that you are lacking skills. For example, if you are having a hard time hooking the reader, ask for a second opinion. It could possibly help you. Another course learning outcome that was used in my papers was negotiating my own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of the genre, medium, and rhetorical situations. This was used in my Personal artifact essay, it was one of the outcomes I struggled with because we really had to think about our audience, but having a peer editor helped because the feedback I was receiving was from an outsider. I used that to my advantage and it helped me write a better final draft.

For my observation essay, I had to think more about how to acknowledge the range of linguistic differences. I also struggled with this course learning outcome, because in order to satisfy this outcome we had to express how we felt during our whole experience. It was harder than I thought to put how it made me feel into words. Since we have to describe everything that’s going on, this is so the reader can get a better understanding of where we are and what we are doing. Since as the writer I am considered an insider, I have to be more descriptive when using insider phrases because while I knew what they meant my audience didn’t. Although this was a challenge, this helped me become more descriptive with my writing. Which in the end helped my reader understand my paper more.

With the researched subculture position essay we changed the course learning outcomes we were using. We had to use various library resources, online databases, and the internet to locate sources appropriate to my writing project. Since this paper required to research, seeing that this was my first research paper I did struggle to find a scholarly article that was good enough. Before we even looked at an article we had to pick a subculture that we were a part of. Then, we would pick our article based on our subculture. Once I knew what subculture I wanted to write about it wasn’t that hard to find an article shortly after. Being able to relate to the subculture makes it easier for me to state my position in the paper. Writing this paper helped satisfy another course learning outcome which was to strengthen your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources). Watching the videos about quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing really helped me have a better understanding of how to assemble the paper, so I could sound more academically cohesive. The quote sandwich toughs me how to paraphrase correctly, it prevented me from accidentally plagiarising. Using the quote sandwich also helped with providing context before the quote and a summarized version of the quote after. 

  To what extent have I achieved the course learning objectives? In what ways have my perceptions on what writing is and has evolved this semester? 

Overall, there were all of the course learning outcomes we learned about, which helped me become a better writer and analyzer. My writing has surely improved since the beginning of this class.