At the beginning of this semester, I had thought that science writing only meant writing for objective science research papers. However, throughout this course, I have learned to realize that science writing comes in many shapes and forms and is used in everyday life as well. Science writing can be found in many forms, such as news articles, poster boards, literature reviews, or even papers that are catered for a specific audience. Science writing is not only just to inform the readers about new scientific discoveries, but also to evoke wonder or cause people to be stirred to action. Science writing does not have to just be a paper in IMRAD format; this semester, I learned how diverse science writing can be.

There were many types of essays as well as group projects that I had done throughout the class as well that helped me learn how to write better and more effectively. For example, I had to write a piece that summarized and analyzed a New York Times Science article for the author’s purpose, bias, presentation, and audience as well as write an analysis of the scholarly article that it was based on (which consisted of determining the use of the IMRAD format, the information used, the voice, tense, and hedging verbs). This assignment let me “practice using…online databases and the Internet to locate sources,” as I had to find the scholarly article using Academic Search Complete and also browse through New York Times to find the article. I also practiced my “source use practices,” as I had to analyze the articles, cite information from the articles, evaluate the writer’s choices, and summarize the articles for both pieces.

Another piece that I had written was the general audience paper. For this piece, I had to “acknowledge the linguistic differences” of different types of works, such as the difference between scientific writing and journalistic writing. I had to use my own writing as a way to translate between the two and engaged in the “collaborative efforts” in order to go over my work with others. I had been involved in the “social aspects of the writing process” as we had to “read, draft, revise, edit and self-assess” our own pieces as well as the pieces of others. I also had to learn how to “formulate and articulate a stance through my writing,” in which I had to choose from the wonder, application, or call to action appeal in order to best fit the audience that was reading my piece, as well as to fit the information/purpose that I had in mind.

For the group project, we had all come together and had to “negotiate my own writing goals…regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation,” in order to write a scientific paper for our report. We also had to “enhance our strategy for self-assessment” by editing and revising each other’s work throughout the process, and we also had to “draw on” our “linguistic differences,” when we came together to write the piece. We followed the “conventions of the genre” of scientific writing by following IMRAD format throughout our paper as well as our presentation. Our hypothesis was the stance that we took in our report, as it was an educated opinion on what we expected based on the use of the internet and online databases that we analyzed. We practiced summarizing and consolidating our work for the presentation, which also practiced our use of other media to express our work, as well as practicing our presentation skills in front of the class.

As a writer, I have developed many different skills that are delineated by the course learning objectives. On top of this, I have also learned how to better draft my essays, as I had learned how to both create an annotated bibliography as well as a more simplistic draft for the literature review that had more substance than what I would’ve done last semester. In my pre-course assessment, I had said that I usually never did too much work prior to writing an essay- in fact, I usually just wrote them in one go. However, by the end of the year, I understood the importance of planning and thinking out your essay beforehand, so that you can have improve on your idea over time in place of rushing the writing process. I do not think I improved too much in terms of grammar and/or citing techniques as I had practice in them before from high school and other classes in which I had to write research papers and/or AP English essays.