Jayson Sarmiento-Ramon

Enid Brain

English 11000

4 December 2025

Final Reflection Essay

Throughout this semester, I learned several key ideas that helped guide how I approached writing. By using the feedback I received, along with what I believe I improved on, I improved the quality of my work. I ultimately broadened my understanding of what writing can look like and the process of writing, which took a lot of unlearning due to what I believed writing was from what my high school taught me. Learning how to integrate multimedia, the importance of audience, how to do effective research, and identifying the exigence of a piece of writing were my main takeaways from this semester. 

One skill I learned that was extremely meaningful to me was how to integrate multimedia elements into my writing. In my language and literacy narrative, particularly before I received feedback on the instructor feedback draft, I had not incorporated multimedia sources whatsoever. However, to be fair to myself, I did not know that I needed to include multimedia sources. Before college, I had never integrated multimedia sources into my writing. All my English and History essays were standard pure blocks of writing. I had forgotten that writing involved more than just, well, writing, and that it also looked like other things, such as images and videos. I thus had to unlearn what was instilled in me throughout high school. By doing so, I was liberated and more free to express my ideas in forms I did not know were possible. For example, in my language and literacy narrative, I included an image of what a standard high school English class looked like, which I thought would help the reader create imagery in their head about what they were reading, which was my story as a sophomore high schooler at Regis High School. The image did what words could not to describe what the classroom looked like, which helped add to the sense of rigor and engagement that my English class demanded. 

 I also learned about the importance of the audience I am writing for. In my synthesis essay, my audience was the lawmakers of our country. In my first draft of the synthesis essay, I did not have a clear audience. I was writing about how language discrimination is experienced by Latin Americans in New York City’s service industry. However, as you noted, I did not have a clear voice or strong argument throughout. In addition, I was not dialoguing with sources well. I realized that the root of these problems was my lack of an audience. Without an audience, I could not have a clear voice or strong argument because I was stating facts, but not addressing anybody. These facts had no meaning attached to them if I were not writing for an audience who could know what to do with these facts. Additionally, without an audience, I could not dialogue with sources well because my sources, although they included facts, did not play into each other, because I did not have an identified audience that could make use of my sources in conjunction with each other. For example, in my first full draft of the synthesis essay, my sources with the racist man in Fresh Kitchen and the lady who was kicked out of Goodwill seemed disconnected. In my final draft, I made sure to connect these sources better by making sure that it was clear who my audience was in my conclusion, which I had not done in my first full draft, allowing the reader to understand why I had chosen these two somewhat different sources. The only thing they had in common was the overarching theme of my essay of how language discrimination is experienced by Latin Americans in New York City’s service industry, but the exact situations were very different. 

I also learned how to do research using resources such as online databases. In the language and literacy narrative, doing research was not required because I was writing about myself and did not need to pull information from other places. However, for the synthesis essay, I needed to use at least one scholarly source. Through the class we had with the other wonderful teacher in the library section, I learned how to do proper research. I was taught how to filter to find what I needed and where to look for information in sources. Learning how to do so made it easy for me to find the scholarly source I needed for my synthesis essay.

Exigence was another key learning concept that I learned how to identify throughout the course. In the first phase of this class, the class spent a lot of time reading short stories such as those by Langston Hughes or Amy Tan.  The most memorable one that comes to mind for me in terms of identifying the exigence was the reading we had by Amy Tan. Her story was very relatable to me because I saw myself in her. By researching her background, I was able to identify that she was Chinese American, born to Chinese immigrants. Knowing so made it easy to understand her writing and why she wrote in broken English. Even though I knew she was very well educated, because I had researched her to help me identify the exigence of the article, I realized that she wrote the way she did as a tribute to her mother, not because she was uneducated. Her writing being acclaimed and recognized by the New York Times cemented her as a figure of activism against language discrimination experienced by immigrants in the United States, and partially inspired me to choose the topic I chose to focus on for my synthesis essay.

Altogether, the skills I learned this semester have transformed the way I write, but also my thoughts about what the writing process is and entails. Each learning moment pushed me to write with more purpose and in-the-moment thinking. Looking at my writing self before beginning this semester, I would say that my biggest takeaway is ultimately writing without restrictions to what is deemed as “good” writing. Ultimately, my writing is good because it is authentic to me, and no one can take that away. The developments I have made in this class will continue to shape my future writing next semester, but in other classes as well, which require writing. Thank you and all my peers for helping me become a better writer.