As I am finishing my first year of college, I have learned many things and also improved many skills. I really thank the course ENGL 21003 for helping me not only in my academic skills but also the social skills.  Through this course students are taught to think critically scientifically, science writing, and how to use sources , which directly help students to embody how scientists think, communicate and work on a daily basis. This self-assessment reflects on my progress towards ENGL 21003, showing my strengths and challenges in this course and skills that I have yet to improve as a student in the science division.

Academically I have also developed skills in writing and reading in the field of the sciences. 

The first skill that I have developed was in the assignment of The New York Times and scholarly articles, where students had to report on the way these types of articles are written and make further connections on whether they are directed for a general audience or a scholarly audience. The ways authors write their papers range from if it follows the IMRAD format? Does it use basic vocabulary? Or does it apply visuals?. The skill developed was “enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assesment” where in order to complete this assignment one requirement was to revise the New York Times type of writing and describe the use of words, metaphors or the way authors write for a general audience.  An example of this is when reading the scholarly articles which are long and confusing to read by a general audience but only by revising how is written can tell many things to the reader. 

Another skill I have improved was in the general audience assignment which was about translating a scholarly article to a more general audience focus.These types of papers  can share major findings for a more public audience in an easy way to understand through the explaining of scientific terms and proceedings.The skill that I improved through this assignment is “negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation” through this assignment by the way I was able to apply rhetorical choices while also translating a scientific article for a general audience. 

Another skill I have improved was in the lab report assignment where students were separated in groups and required to complete a lab report following the IMRAD format; introduction, method, results, and discussion. Students to complete this assignment had to create a research question regarding any problem that is happening on campus.This assignment helped me to improve the skill of “develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes” by how the writing and paraphrasing was a group assignment and communication was needed to complete the assignment and using visual representations in a form of a poster which helped to learn how to synthesize my own writings. 

The last assignment that improved skills is the literary review assignment where students had to research original research articles with the same variables and synthesize each one of them. One skill improved by this assignment was “practice using various library resources, online databases, and the internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects” . By the way, I had to search for three articles containing the same variables and synthesize them. Another skill improved by this assignment was “strengthen your source use practices( including evaluating,integrating,quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources)”. This skill was improved by the way I had to not summarize but synthesize the three articles comparing and contrasting for each section of the articles this could be the methodology, results or even the discussion section. The synthesis was done by supplemental document of the literature chart, where all the important information of the three articles is included. This document helped me to write the literature review, since all the information needed was in the chart. 

In conclusion, this course has helped me become a better writer for the sciences and has given me a foundation on how scientists write, think, and collaborate. The skills learnt from the assignments are skills that will help me for future writings while my journey in college continues in the field of the sciences.