Self Assessment

We have completed three phases so far this semester. The first phase really helped jump-start my engine because, before the semester, I was in Pakistan for 8 years. I remember when we started the first phase, I was really struggling to grasp the question, like what I needed to do. The assignment was beneficial for me because it really helped me to get a better understanding of the English language. The problem I had was that I would write while thinking, but during this phase, I was really able to focus and properly write. After years of not doing anything related to writing an essay, writing one helped me get the practice that I needed to again familiarize myself with the English language. 

The assignment helped me achieve the course learning outcome “Develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing.” While doing this assignment, the in-class peer review was also helpful because it helped me get an idea of where I stood, while seeing my peers point of view on my writing, which led me to judge my writing from a different perspective, further helping me in editing it. Besides this, I was able to understand questions in which I was facing difficulties before, thanks to the brainstorm worksheet that helped me develop a strategy of breaking a question down to fully understand what it’s asking. I wrote the essay based on my own experience with the English language. During the writing stage of the essay, I remember having to think back and recall trying my best to add the tiniest of details that could help me make a connection with the audience.

 The second phase, on the other hand, was tougher than the first phase, which in the beginning really scared me. The second phase required a rhetorical analysis along with an op-ed. As I previously mentioned, I didn’t do much English writing because I was in Pakistan let alone research for it, in the past 8 years. When the time came to write the essay, I was nervous to the point that I asked the professor whether I could write the op-ed on a source we had already done in class so that I wouldn’t have to do any research. But, to my surprise, I managed to successfully find a source that related to my point. The assignment gave me the opportunity to learn about different websites and sources that are credible. The second phase helped me achieve the course learning outcome “locate research sources (including academic journals, articles, magazines, and newspaper articles) in the library’s database or archives and on the internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias”. I say this because the second phase helped me learn a bit about credible sources. Also, because of this assignment, we had a library day, which helped me better understand the library’s database. This assignment ended up also helping me with my annotated bibliography. Because I had gotten familiar with researching and the library database, I was easily able to do the research I needed to do for my annotated bibliography. For this essay in the rhetorical analysis, I chose to write in a neutral tone, explaining why I chose the article while also stating what the article talks about. While the op-ed was biased since it was an opinion piece, I added my own experiences to back the claim made by the author to appeal to a specific audience. 

Finally, the third phase the hardest out of all the phases the research essay. This assignment gave me the toughest time, especially in the beginning. I was confused because my topic was hard to research, plus the fact we had to write 5–6 pages was really weighing me down. My friends helped me a lot during this assignment, and it’s because of them that I was fully able to understand the steps I needed to complete this assignment. The assignment helped me gain insight on how to properly do research and write a research essay, while also helping me better understand the MLA format. In this phase, I was able to learn the course learning outcome “Compose texts that integrate a stance with appropriate sources, using strategies such as summary, analysis, synthesis, and argumentation”. I learned how to take different sources and synthesize them together, which I couldn’t do before, while also gaining knowledge about the stances you need to take for different essays, along with learning to identify credible sources. My first draft for this phase was quite bad, but because of the peer reviews, I got a idea of the stance I needed to take in my research essay, because of which I was able to edit my essay and make it a proper research essay. For this assignment, compared to the last two, my tone was not for a specific audience, it was for everyone who had read “Cinderella.” I did so to give everyone an idea of what Cinderella actually faced and how something similar is happening in real life, and to indirectly create awareness for victims of abuse. The tone was strictly informative, and the essay itself didn’t have any connection to me, unlike the other two. 

Overall, this class has been very helpful for me. I was able to improve in my English language while enjoying doing so. I’m glad that I chose this class for my first semester. I am a much better writer now than I was at the start of the semester.