February 2021

My intention for this paper is to inform my reader of this fantastic organization that I have chosen as my discourse community. After reading more about the community, I hope the purpose and effects will have on my reader is to have a peak interest in joining. I struggled spiritually early last semester, especially not being surrounded by Christians, but the finding of RUF and attending whenever I could have been beneficial spiritually; that’s my intentions for others. The process was just figuring out how the community could be a discourse community. The most difficult of the planning was getting in touch with my friend, an intern for the community, talking him through my project, and asking him for an interview. The various decisions I had to make were planning a timeline on how I would conduct my research and figure out the different aspects of describing how the community can be a discourse community. The feedback of fellow peers was constructive, made me understand what part I needed to focus on more. Their feedback on how I could make my paper stronger in providing another argument of how my community is a discourse community was very enlightening and beneficial, making me change a few things to my paper.

1. Deciding what information was best for my draft was probably the most difficult process of the whole thing. There were several angles I could have concentrated on, but at the end, I wrote on the angle that I thought would best describe my community as a discourse community.
2. Sometimes leaving out certain information is more effective in a paper versus having all the information laid out. It can be very overwhelming and lengthy, and that is why I chose to leave out certain information, but at the same time providing enough for the reader to be interested in.
3. At first, I went back and forth choosing my community, I went to FORUM to look at different organizations, and figure what good organization can be used as a discourse community. Ultimately my chosen community felt like it was the best one without me having to join a new organization.
4. I do not think I brought any biases or assumptions in this research. I stuck with the facts given to me through my chosen community website for information.
5. I went on my chosen community website and got information there, as well as using my personal observation of this community to describe it as a discourse community.
6. I am still researching how I will conduct my interview, as well as different communication methods my community uses.

These two were excellent papers to read. They were two different papers, but with one common theme: being part of their respective communities. What was strong in the, You Better Think Before You Spit, the writer breaks up his paper into different points and categories, unlike the Puerto Rican Student Association. The first paper had bold points that gave us, the reader, an idea of a specific section of the paper he was writing about. The second one only had paragraph breaks, which is good but can be very long and tedious when the reader has to read several pages, losing their interest. However, a strong aspect of the Puerto Rican Student Association is the pictures he gave us in his paper, giving the reader visual aids on what he was writing about. But overall, both were excellent papers, both structure the way they thought would work for them, and both were successful. Both were excellent papers, using various sources, including Ann Johns and Kerry Dirk, two authors that we have read and done our reading journal on in this class.

I honestly do not know how to describe myself as a writer. I used to struggle as a writer in my early years as a high school student. My biggest challenge was grammatical errors. Having used to know the Chinese dialect and their ways of forming sentences was vastly different from English. But throughout high school, I had a rigorous teacher who helped teach me the English ways of developing sentences and the various grammar rules. As I grew as a writer and learned how to write properly, I started to enjoy writing. One of my proudest moments as a writer was when I wrote a paper in a freshman class, I forget what I wrote about, and it was a paper my high school teacher loved. She presented to the whole class and told the class how good my writing was. I was embarrassed but it boosted my confidence and was evidence of how far I have gone as a writer.

One thing I would like to grow as a writer is the ability to write better argumentative papers. I enjoy writing argumentative papers, but I always feel like my papers are not persuasive enough. I would also like to figure out what type of writer I am, what kind of style or genre works best for me. One part of my writing style that I would like my instructor to know is that I like to be personal, given a chance, when I write.