Hello, my name is Yenny Huang! I am currently a student attending The City College of New York. This is my portfolio displaying my experience in CCNY’s Freshmen Writing Inquiry Seminar class. I will start by discussing my overall experience in this class.

As the semester of my FIQWS class comes to an end, I find myself reminiscing about the assignments and work that I have done in the class. I have learned a lot about writing and developing new techniques for myself to utilize while writing. I have found writing issues that I would have never been able to acknowledge before if I have not taken this class. Even though I have had different expectations for the class, I was able to explore new essay genres. At the beginning of the semester, I had thought that this class mostly consisted of focusing on the aspect of food, but rather as the semester continued, it was the aspect of food in its element of history and society. The course had a completely different turn, that I did not expect, however, it was a great experience exploring the history and society of food.

The first assignment was to write a food-based narrative, in which I enjoyed writing because my strengths in writing consisted of organizing details and structuring the essay. When I write essays according to my experiences, I find that I can articulate my thoughts better. I have also begun to understand the process of having a physical piece of work to edit is way more beneficial than editing on a digital device. I can see and understand the revisions needed and the details that I have missed. This has helped me in my writing process as I can utilize a new strategy in improving my writing. This assignment allowed me to accomplish the course learning outcomes of developing a strategy for drafting, revising, editing, and collaborating in the writing process was something that was done in every assignment. For every assignment, we were able to meet with our peer groups and have a peer review session, in which we trade papers within our groups and everyone gives feedback. This was an essential part of the course because I was able to get criticism and see issues that I am not able to see. With my peers as an audience, I understood what purpose and who I am targeting to when writing a paper. This process helped me draft and edit my paper efficiently.

The second assignment was an exploratory essay, in which I had to evaluate the sources of a given document. I found this task very hard because I have never written an exploratory essay that questioned the usage of sources. It was extremely hard for me to not be biased in any way, however, I still wrote an essay in supposition. This was when I understood that I had an issue with the expression of clarity. My instructor and my peers have mentioned that some parts of my essay were unclear and I did take the time and effort to try and fix the issue, but I found it very hard because I still had a bias. I did not know how to clearly explain the issue of the source without including my own opinion. When my instructor offered an opportunity to revise the essay, I focused on fixing my issue of clarity as I learned to understand what I had and want to say. Although the essay may still not be the best work that I can put in, I have improved on trying to write with clarity and expressing myself while considering both sides of the perspectives. Within this essay, I have noticed that I have improved on redundancy in sentences. For this specific assignment, I have accomplished the course learning outcomes of composing texts that integrate my stance with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation. This assignment focused on having a position that I was able to utilize critical analysis questions such as “what am I not seeing in this source?” and “what if I was able to ask the author a question about the sources she used?”. Using interpretation I was able to synthesize an argument. Having to utilize annotations of the text, I was able to develop an outline first that had all my sources and arguments for each. I have realized that this assignment was to build up the evaluations of sources preparing me for the next assignment.

The third assignment was to write a historiography essay, which I looked at the history of the chili pepper history in public health. I found this essay also extremely hard to write because it was not the type of research paper that I was used to writing. The essay really emphasized the usage of sources and finding sources. For this essay, I utilized an annotated bibliography, which was a big part of my essay. The annotated bibliography provided a brief description of every source that I found was relevant to my topic. This really helped with me the organization and structure of the essay because I was able to see what information needed to go where. I have also used the reading material from my previous assignment, exploratory essay, to structure my essay. The authors had used a chronological approach which was similar to how I used it in my narrative essay. When writing the essay, I utilized their writing techniques as inspiration. I have grown to apply it to appropriate essay prompts. I was able to accomplish the course learning outcomes of locate research sources and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, bias, and practice systematic application of citation conventions. Using the annotated bibliography, I was able to practice the MLA citations and evaluate different types of sources. My sources ranged from academic journals, non-academic journals, books, and media sources. I used freewriting to start drafting my essay and I found this a very helpful technique because I wrote without any constraint. It gave me a basis on where and how to start my paper. Towards the beginning of the semester, I had also mentioned that I had issues with writing an introduction. By using freewriting, it has helped me write my introduction clearly. I have mentioned during the beginning of the semester that I had trouble with writing an introduction, but as the semester went by, I found myself writing introductions easier and better than before.

The self-reflection that I had to write after every assignment has made me understand the writing process of that essay. I have found issues, struggles, and improvements along the way. I learned that I had to fix clarity issues, incorporating evidence, and trouble expressing ideas. I have seen improvements in word choices, redundancy, structure, and organization. I hope to continue improving further on my writing processes in my future classes. This overall experience taking the FIQWS class will continue benefiting me. For all assignments, I was able to explore and analyze a variety of genres ranging from the narrative, exploratory, and historiography genre. I have read several works about these genres that have helped me improve on my writing.

The last assignment of this class was a presentation that I did on my experience during a field trip. This field trip was meant to tie the themes of food, history, and society together. The trip was originally planned to be used as a source that contributed to the historiography essay. I can see that this field trip was to enhance the experience of this class in terms of researching and describing the origins of food and its exchanges. For this field trip presentation, I had originally outlined the main components and formulated them into a presentation. I find that having a presentation can help me articulate and express my thoughts better than just writing. I can hear myself and understand what adjustments I need to make when I speak and in writing. I was able to accomplish the course learning outcomes of using and understanding digital technologies to address a range of audiences. I was able to showcase my experience in pictures of the field trip and convey my thoughts efficiently to my audience.

My overall experience in this food, history, and society FIQWS class has really provided me the first-semester college experience of writing. I have seen improvements and struggles that I still hope to continue fixing. I hope to take what I have learned this semester and continue improving my skills.