WRC II Reflection

Going through the Writing Composition II (WRC II) course this semester was a lot different than I thought it would be. Coming into my first semester at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) I knew I had always been a strong writer so I believed I would be able to breeze through the course, but I was very much mistaken. I learned quickly that writing in high school and writing in college are two completely different animals. The WRC II course mainly focused on writing persuasive arguments, something I had done in high school only a handful of times. My peers and I wrote several different persuasive pieces throughout the semester, but the pieces that had the biggest impact included the classical argument, annotated bibliography, and the

One challenge that I faced was data interpretation and the creation of visuals. The interpretation of data and creation of visuals was crucial in WRC II because it of its quantitative course element. It was noted there was no “interpretation, summation, or numeracy” of a data set in the annotated bibliography (“Annotated Bibliography” 8). Never before was I required to interpret raw data, make that data into a visual, and then ultimately use that visual to strengthen my argument. The creation of the visuals throughout the WRC II course was the most challenging thing to do. I was, however, able to overcome this challenge in my writing, and create effective visuals to back my argument. The best visual undoubtedly came from the Q Researched argument, where it was error free and ultimately achieved independent redundancy (“Bilingual Education: A Burden on the United States Economy” 6). While the creation of the visuals was tiresome, I can now see the importance and weight they can have when making an argument because it is hard to argue against statements that are backed by credible

The claim can sometimes be the trickiest part of the argument because it must be controversial yet still be able to be supported by evidence. The claim can make all the difference when considering whether something truly is an argument or not. The ability to create viable claims is something I will not soon forget because it is something I had to think critically about in order to word it properly. For instance, in the introduction to the classic argument essay I pretty much had no claim. The idea was there but, Professor Hall noted, “what is the controversy?” which really did make me go back to examine my claim (“The True Culprits of Climate Change: Coal and Oil” 1). There was no claim I had simply stated that the coal and oil industries should take the blame for climate change because “coal and oil produce the most carbon dioxide emissions” which is not a proper claim (“The True Culprits of Climate Change: Coal and Oil” 1). The claim for the introduction to the classic argument essay was not a claim because no one was going to argue that coal and oil produce the most carbon dioxide emissions, there is already data to prove that so there was no controversy. I realized I had to stop stating facts in my introduction and start critically thinking as to why that was ethically