For this last assignment in our FIQWS course, our peers and I had to write a final overall self-reflection essay in order to view our writings from the beginning of this semester to the present. This FIQWS class assisted with providing helpful tips on improving our essays by discussing the importance of purpose, audience, exigence, stance, and genre. The purpose, audience, exigence, and genre helps provide a better understanding of the learning outcomes in this course. In this essay, I will review the overall works of my assignments and how well I incorporated the outcomes in my assignments.

For the first assignment, it was a food-based narrative essay. A narrative essay is an essay with a single theme, or a central point, around in which the entire narrative revolves. For my food-based narrative essay, I decided to write about the first time I tried oysters and how readers should not be afraid to try new things once in a while. I knew this assignment was going to be difficult considering how writing essays was not my expertise. One of the learning outcomes I used in this essay was the development of reading, writing, collaborating, revising and editing. By revising this essay, I was able to limit the number of grammatical errors presented in the essay. In addition, I also asked my peers to revise and suggest different ways of how I can improve which really helped with the transitioning of the essay. Along with the narrative essay, we were also assigned to write a self-reflection essay in order to understand what improvements we can make. The self-reflection essay helped me analyze the missing components. For example, there was a lack of details such as imagery and use of characterization. Because of this, I believe the theme of my essay was not convincing enough to the readers.

For the second assignment, we were assigned to write an exploratory essay on any of the sources in Hopkin’s class. I decided to write about Carney’s source since Carney’s essay was easier to comprehend. Since I struggled with the structure of how the essay should be, I decided to create an outline in order to organize my ideas, evidence, and claims. By creating the outline, I was able to structure my essay in a way where there’s sufficient evidence along with my claims made on Carney’s essay. My biggest struggle with this essay was figuring out the primary and secondary sources. For example, one of the sources consisted of the author visiting Africa for 10-15 months in order to understand the maize growth during the 1990s or so. Eventually, after analyzing the source, I was able to come to the conclusion that it was a primary source. I realized that by spending more time analyzing the texts, I was able to differentiate between primary and secondary sources. While reading my self-reflection, I lacked in writing a clear thesis. My position in this essay was not clear due to the fact Carney’s sources were not reliable, however, she was able to incorporate the source’s evidence to connect with her claim. Therefore, I decided to rewrite my conclusion in order to fit with the evidence and claims. One of the course learning outcomes I have established in this assignment was composing texts that support my stance by using sources such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation. For instance, in order to support my stance, I further explained each evidence thoroughly to demonstrate the connection from Carney’s stance to mine.

As for the last essay assignment, it was a historiography essay. This essay was based on the economy of coffee in Mexico. This article was easier than the rest since the evidence connected with my claim. Although finding evidence was relatively easy, the flow of my essay was what I struggled with the most. For instance, I was not sure how to connect the pieces together in order for the essay to make sense. One of the course learning outcomes was to be able to locate research sources such as academic journal articles, magazines, and newspapers in databases. For example, I decided to find articles related to coffee and economics by using the advanced search. My favorite research for this essay was finding media source because it helps readers visualize the tough lifestyle that many coffee farmers had to go through. While reading my self-reflection, I was also lacking a scholar mindset since there were parts of the essay which I should have explained thoroughly and added more details.

In conclusion, my overall experience in this FIQWS class helped me understand that writing takes time and process. The discussion of purpose, exigence, genre, and audience helped with the continuation of my essays. Due to the fact, I usually struggle with writing essays because I would feel stuck on how I should start and how I should continue my essays. However, when I was thinking about my purpose, my audience, and exigence for my assignments I was able to create an outline for each point and use course learning outcomes within my outlines to better understand my assignments.