Although I felt comfortable completing written grammatic exercises, writing in Spanish was not my strong suit when I resumed taking Spanish classes at BYU. The Third-Year Spanish Composition Course (SPAN322) taught by Prof. Brigitte Morales and the Spanish Writing Lab editors (especially Prof. Oriana Reyes) helped me improve my writing abilities immensely. I began to think critically and analyze structurally in Spanish.
The artifacts selected for the critical thinking and expression portion demonstrate my abilities in this area. For my persuasive paper example, I chose the argumentative paper from my Spanish Composition class. The essay is a literary analysis of La camisa de Margarita, a traditional tale by Peruvian author Ricardo Palma. My argument essay defends the claim that Palma develops the story to reflect a patriarchal society in colonial Peru and the importance of honor, birth, and wealth to that society. I brought in external sources of opinions on dowry and inheritance in colonial Spanish America and presented textual evidence from the tale to support my position and persuade the audience. The process of crafting this essay challenged me as it required in-depth comprehension of the literature and the ability to draw connections between elements that form the theme of the literature. This argumentative essay showcases my ability to go beyond the facts in a Spanish literary work, offer my judgments about the meaning and impact of an aspect of the work, and supply evidence to defend the thesis.
The research paper selected from my Spanish Composition class demonstrates my ability to gather and synthesize information from multiple sources, develop the topic with well-chosen facts and examples, and organize ideas to make meaningful connections and distinctions in Spanish. This essay is in an argumentative form and contains a detailed study of whether transgender women's participation in female sports is justified. I had a hiccup working on this assignment because I previously selected a different topic, which aimed to compare and contrast the implied political stance by various mainstream traditional and social medias, to work on. The previous topic was too controversial and required additional background information to explain the controversies to fit the scope of this assignment. I did not realize this until I formed a tree of main ideas for the essay and received my professor's feedback on it. Since the objectives of the course was not to perform social or political science research, my professor and I both found the current topic more appropriate for growing my research paper writing skills in Spanish. In an attempt to use more authentic Spanish phrases when explaining the Olympic committee's rules of who qualifies to compete in women's sports and medical terms related to hormonal changes, I looked up expressions in Spanish news articles for those phrases and found multiple peer-reviewed sources written originally in Spanish to produce my paper.
I am grateful for the opportunities to improve my critical thinking and expression skills in Spanish through my coursework. I want to continue doing so as the intricacies in writing often vary between languages in their preferences of grammatical modifiers, sentence structures, cultural and historical impact on languages. In my Spanish learning experiences, writing research and opinion essays has been the most effective way to develop analytical and persuasive skills. I want to continue practicing writing in Spanish and expand the set of topics I am comfortable writing about.