A REFLECTION by Nicolas

This is my third English assessment and I’m so grateful that I was given an opportunity to discuss my topic, transportation system, in series of academic writing pieces. In this assessment, I learn how to construct an essay and to create a bridge that connects my ideas that are separated in different texts.

There are five different text types that I need to work on after I choose my topic, which are compare and contrast, reaction or opinion, research, persuasive and a reflection. To make it understandable by everyone, I decided to make a sort of storyline. I started with my compare and contrast text in the form of an essay where I introduce the problem, which is Jakarta’s inappropriate transportation system. In this essay, I compare Jakarta that has a terrible public transportation with Tokyo that has one of the best subway systems in the world. I choose Tokyo as a comparison to show a contrast and to display Jakarta’s transportation problems more clearly.

This problem continues to my reaction/opinion partial essay where I contribute my idea, as the citizen of Jakarta. This essay is not presenting the transportation problems but it presents what happens behind those problems. The main problem that I consider is about traffic problems throughout Jakarta and this partial essay could answer why this traffic jams do occur in Jakarta.

After noticing the problems and its backgrounds, I’m trying to give a solution towards a better Jakarta by doing a research about “Mass Rapid Transit” or MRT. For me, MRT is the best solution to overcome traffic congestions in Jakarta because most of the world’s major cities, like Tokyo and Singapore, have implemented this system and it is proven effective. Mainly, I based my decision to choose MRT on four reasons. I think of a transportation system that able to transport lots of passengers at a time, cost-effective, timely or saves time, and environment friendly.

Through a visual or multimedia text, my persuasive text is intended to persuade the Government of Jakarta to built MRT with a huge connection that mainly serves all North, East, South and West directions to solve traffic problems. I decide to make a poster that contains existing part of Jakarta’s street map. What I’m trying to do is to design the MRT route throughout Jakarta that connects all outlying districts around Jakarta to the city center. I hope, that through this map, the audience could understand that Jakarta needs a transportation system with wide area coverage to completely solve traffic problems.

By doing this assessment, I could learn two different things. First, I learn how technological advances really support humans to be a highly mobilized creature through the development of transportation system. Second, I learn that all topics have the same difficulty level and I’m sure that my portfolio is not graded based on my topic but based on my academic writing skills. That is the importance of writing, which is to deliver a topic to others so they could understand the same thing as I am.