Ana Perez
Prof. McIntosh
ENG 210
December 15, 2021
Self-Assessment
When taking this course, I had an idea of how it would play out because I have taken a similar course before. The class I took freshman year was Composition of Individual & Society FIQWS 10108I, which taught me a lot about writing, rhetorical situations and how to expend my writing. I had some expectations before starting this course, I expected to learn more about writing and how to expand my horizons. My expectations were met, however, I learned even more than I expected.
My first essay, the opinion editorial I got a good grade. I was proud of it because it was my first piece, I got a good grade, and I put a lot of thought and effort into the piece, and it paid off. The Opinion Editorial was a piece where we choose a social, political, economic, or cultural issue that impacts us and took the format and structure of a opinion editorial from a known print or digital publication. The goal of this essay was to create a piece where I can add my own opinion to but still replicate popular opinion editorial structures. I believe I nailed the replication of the chosen publication, however, I struggled matching my claim to. my evidence, for example in this part,
“However, none of these things are new, quarantine has always had this reputation, even in the 14th century According to the article, Epidemic, quarantine, and mental health, “Quarantine began in 14th century Venice, when ships from infected ports waited at anchor for 40 days before sailors were allowed ashore” (Chatterjee). From these regulations, quarantine has been the primary form of safety in the world” (Perez),
where the claim I was making, which was that quarantine was negatively influential mentally. Another problem I had in this essay was being clear about my claim. After writing this essay I was able to see what it took to pass this class and learn to exceed the expectation professor McIntosh had for me, which I struggled with. I. have noticed that, not only in this class, I have an issue articulating and formulating a stance. I tend to deviate from my point and go into a spiral.
My perception of writing indeed changed, I went from having basic knowledge of writing and just writing research papers to creating reflections of my own writing, creating visual aids, and engaging in discussion in our Discussion Posts with other classmates and seeing how they express themselves and their ideas. Seeing other people’s ideas and ways of writing impacted and influenced my own, when I would see someone use certain vocabulary words or expressions in their writing, I tend to use a similar vocabulary to match the level of sophistication of the writing.
I have achieved a few of the course learning objectives given in this course, which were one: “practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects” because I have used many different types of articles to incorporate in my essays. I also learned how to navigate deeper the online database at CCNY for my critical source-based essay. I have acknowledged my own and others range of linguistic differences in a sense because when I rhetorically analyzed, specifically in the tone and wording of an article, I tend to match the wording of the other article to my own. A goal I have not achieved, and I wish I did, was “formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing”. This is one of the hardest things for me, because like I said before, I tend to lose focus of my thesis or argument and spiral. For example, “The article has a lot of graphs and pictures of women which emphasize the purpose and audience of the article”, in this piece I didn’t have a specific claim and it was just a random statement with no body or stance. This class also made me realize that my classmates and I had and have contrasting ranges of linguistic differences as resources, for example, some of my classmates excelled in the essay portion of the course, while others, like me, excelled in the visual part of the course. Also, many of my classmate had an easy time creating the rhetorical situation pieces, while I relied on different recourses to help me develop a rhetorical sitiation. I often used many handouts from the writing center to start my essays or structure them. For the learning objective three, I also struggled with it because at the beginning it was something I did not do before. Everyone creates a draft, revise a paper and edits, however, the analysis of your essay I had never done. I never took the time to reread my paper and question why I did in my paper and why I chose the tone, genre, or audience of an essay, of my essay.
What is writing? Is an important question that varies from person to person. To me writing is a way to express yourself, for example, texting and massaging is a form of expression, a short story is a form of expression, and a research paper is less expressive, however, it shows the persons understanding of a topic and their ability to research. Any form of writing gives readers the opportunity to understand a person’s thought process, structures, and goal.
