At the beginning of the course I felt a little lost as the class was very different from the more traditional English classes I took in high school. I was more used to writing five paragraph essays about a text, handing them in, and moving on. Here I was suddenly being asked to think about rhetorical situations, to translate my own work into new genres, and to build a digital portfolio that told a story about my growth. Looking back now, I see my reading and writing from the semester as a set of experiments that changed how I think about language, power, and audience. Over time I learned to see my own language background as a resource, to think more clearly in terms of rhetorical situations, and to work with sources and genres in more deliberate ways.

One of the biggest changes started with the Language and Literacy Narrative. In that essay I wrote about video calls with my grandmother in Pakistan. I don’t fully understand Pashto so I focused on small details that still carried emotion for me, like the way she smiled and laughed a laugh that grew to take over the whole call. I had always considered my “in between” position with language as a weak spot. While drafting and constantly revising, I kept coming back to that one scene and asking myself what I could and could not understand. Our work focusing on expanding how we view literature and communication made me realize that my position actually lets me pay extra attention to tone, rhythm and pauses. And in a sense, me and my grandmother had created a little dance or language of our own to communicate. Being the first major assignment, it was also my first step toward thinking about language as something shaped by context and power.

The concept of rhetorical situation became a central tool after that. Early in the semester we filled out worksheets for writers like Amy Tan and June Jordan. On those worksheets I had to spell out things like who the intended audience was, what problem the writer was responding to, and what stance they were taking. It didn’t take long to notice that the same questions were useful for my own writing. When I revised the Language and Literacy Narrative, I imagined classmates who did not share my background but might connect to feeling a gap between generations. That pushed me to slow down and explain certain references that I had rushed through before. When I moved on to the synthesis essay, I pictured two groups in my head. One group was students who think of accents as something that is only “in your head.” The other group was employers who might see themselves as neutral. Thinking about those audiences helped me choose examples, such as workplace studies, that would feel real and not just theoretical. It also helped me choose a tone that was somewhat firm but not attacking.

Another major part of my learning was how I handled sources in the synthesis essay. In my first draft I basically went source by source. I would summarize one article, then move to the next, almost like a list. After getting feedback and re-reading my own work I realized that the essay did not sound like one argument but instead several reports pasted together. In later drafts I focused more on putting sources into conversation. For example, I would take a study that measured how “competent” different accents were rated and place it next to another that focused on feelings of belonging. Then I would explain what it meant when an accent scored high in one study and low in the other. I also shortened some of my quotes and added more of my own explanation around them. Instead of dropping in a quote and leaving it, I practiced setting it up with a signal phrase and then unpacking it. 

Translation 1 and Translation 2 pushed my thinking in a different way. They challenged my general belief that English assignments only live on paper as words. For Translation 1 I had to reimagine part of my Language and Literacy Narrative in a new form, forcing me to think about what the core message I was trying to convey really was. For Translation 2 I turned a key finding from my synthesis essay into a visual slide with two identical resumes, one paired with a Chinese flag and one with a Mexican flag, along with the line “Accent bias is real and is not uniform.” Working on that slide forced me to make concrete design choices. I had to ask what a viewer would see first, how big the line of text should be, and how to make the flags clear without distracting from the main point. The assignment also made me think about how visual and audio elements count as literature and argument. That experience helped show me that genre and medium are part of the rhetorical situation and that moving an idea from one form to another can enrich it.

Across the semester I developed a stronger sense of how language connects to power. Before this class I never gave much thought to the significance of accents. I mostly thought of them as a personal trait that you might be embarrassed about or that people might tease you for. Reading and writing about accent bias changed that. Through the studies I used in my synthesis essay and through other sources like the Safwat Saleem talk, I saw how quickly accents get tied to assumptions about competence, trust and belonging. I began to see an accent as an auditory gateway that people use to apply stereotypes and biases, often without noticing. At the same time, thinking about my own family’s accents and about how my mother and grandmother sound made the topic feel very close to home. This awareness has changed how I listen to others. When I hear someone speak now, I find it interesting to think not only about what they’re saying but how my life frames the ideas and words I hear. 

Building the digital portfolio has been another kind of reflection. It has helped me see how the different assignments speak to each other and how they track my growth. The Language and Literacy Narrative shows the beginning of me taking my own experiences with language seriously as material for writing. The rhetorical situation worksheets show the early stages of me practicing questions that I now use more subconsciously. The synthesis essay shows me handling research and structure at a higher level, and it also brings in the themes of power and bias that were already present in my narrative. The translations and visual work show that I am willing to experiment with form and to think about readers and viewers in new spaces, not just on a printed page. Taken together, these pieces show a more complete writer.

Looking ahead, I want to keep noticing how language choices shape who feels welcome in a space and who does not. I also want to keep using reflection, like the cover letters and this final essay, to track what is working in my writing and what I still want to improve. That habit of reflection and that awareness of language and power are the most important things I am taking from this semester.