Self-Reflection
Throughout this course, I achieved the course learning objectives to a great extent. I am able to reflect on my improvement for each goal of the course as I completed each assignment and wrote the essays. I was able to improve in the course essays through teacher reviews. During the lectures, the techniques that were taught also helped me improve. In addition, I had to apply the skills that were taught which is a very effective way of learning the skills needed to achieve the course learning objectives.
To explore and analyze, both in reading and writing, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations I learned how to inform and persuade the reader by giving context to provide a better understanding of the evidence and making multiple points out of one statement to highlight the importance of what I wrote about such as in the Researched Critical Analysis Essay. As for developing strategies, for reading, I learned to annotate key parts of the text as homework assignments form class. For drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing, me and my peers reviewed each other on the Literacy Narrative where I was given mostly positive feedback, such as how well I expressed my struggle with learning Spanish, and how I learned how to improve on my Exploratory Essay with my teacher as my peer during a conference.
To recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies, I learned from both the homework and the essays. For example, in the Cover Letter of my Language and Literacy Narrative, I wrote about how the term “rhetorical situation” helped me learned how to present my subject matter, in this case, my struggle to learn Spanish, to an audience that might relate such as Spanish-speakers.
As for the collaborative and social aspects, I got feedback from my peers for the Literacy Narrative from my class peers and my teacher shared feedback on the Exploratory Essay, as I mentioned before. I was also able to obtain a glimpse of the various perspectives of my peers, and some of them could relate to my language troubles as they too were descendants of foreigners that wanted to learn their language as well as preserve the English. Using actual print texts and online sources to address a range of audiences also became important when writing essays such as the Researched Critical Analysis Essay, where I used print texts such as Anzaldúa’s article or online sources such as the scholarly articles that I used for evidence. Speaking of evidence, finding credible sources that were recent, relevant, accurate, and were not heavily biased on a certain belief was crucial for this essay as a myth that affects us now, one that suggests that English can only be spoken in the workplace, needed to be proven wrong and sources that are more up-to-date with our current time as well as accurate towards the subject matter and unbiased are important for providing sufficient evidence and data. In order to optimally use these sources, one must take summarizing the texts, analyzing their significance towards the subject, synthesizing texts to make then connect to the claim, and argumentation with strong support with context, evidence, and analysis into account, as these became important on all of the essays. Finally, citations in MLA in both bibliography and in-text format were also useful for me to practice.
As you can see, I made plenty of improvements while completing the course learning objectives. Much of these new skills I obtained from the assignments I was given will be very useful in future written works. I have already done well in assignments from other classes and with the help of this class. Overall, this course truly made a great impact on my learning.
