Reflection on the Course and Self-Assessment
The writing was an important lesson that we need to learn in our life, and I noticed that I need to improve this technique since I am a second language student. As result, I enrolled in this course and it gave me great opportunity to improve myself on writing. Throughout this semester, I found my strengths and weaknesses of writing. And I realized that I am an unconfident student in class and a poor writer in life. The classmates and professors help me a lot in the writing during this semester.
Throughout the numerous assignment from this class, I found that my weakness in writing was much than the strengths. I felt confident in writing before I attended college because I usually got a high grade in an argument essay. I thought I was familiar with writing strategies, but this course showed me that I had limited strengths in writing and need to improve a lot in many areas. The language barrier was my major weakness because I am a second language student and I had a hard time on grammar and words chosen. Fortunately, I could see my improvement in writing from the first assignment to the last assignment. I believed that the improvement of my writing progress had a great relationship with my sounding.
The first assignment over the semester was the literacy narrative essay. I had a lot of grammar and spelling problems in the first draft and it made me felt depressed and frustrated because when I wrote it I felt great and confident in my paper, but I received a lot of improvement areas from peer reviewers. Through this assignment, I noted that I need to add more detail to the setting of my essay because the audient did not know my background. In order to make a clear background I need to give enough information to my audiences as the writer. Moreover, the outline was very important for us because we could clearly identify the rhetorical situation. The rhetorical situation gave me a clear direction on the writing. When I finished the first draft, I found a gap in the conclusion. Under the help from peer reviewers and the professor, I saw my essay was run on a positive way from the first draft to the final draft. This literacy narrative helped me develop the strategies on writing.
Revision essay was the next assignment. I had a great improvement on analysis throughout this writing assignment because I learned how to revise and edit the poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats. I was able to identify the colorful imagery, metaphor, and personification in the poem and tell the surface information from the poem on the origin essay. However, it was not deeply getting into the poem thus I used secondary resources in the revising essay to help me make the theme of truth beauty more clearly. John Keats used some static moments on the urn to show the truth of beauty nature to the reader. Those moments on the urn was important for the poem because the poet wants to tell us the lifespan between art and human in order to remind posterity to comprehend the art. I used the article “An Introduction to ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’: Time, Mortality and Beauty” by Hebron to help the audiences to understand the theory of true beauty from the poet’s viewpoint. By used the secondly resources, my essay was to get stronger and more persuade. This writing assignment helped me improve my edit skill and revising skill.
Before I enrolled in this class, I never revise or made an outline for my writing. And I also did not know the rhetorical situation on writing. I realized that great writing was not only written down what you think but also know how to use outside information and edit and revise it again and again. A good essay would not come from simple progress. Before I wrote the essay, I need to think about the audiences, the purpose of my writing and how can I make it more persuade. Throughout the first assignment, I learned the importance of outline and rhetorical situation. And I learned the significance of revising from the second assignment. I could see myself improved little by little in this course. Although it was a writing class, it also likes a speech class. I still remembered the first time I stand in front of the class and read my journal out loud. I found that it was extremely difficult for me because I felt nervous and I am not comfortable on public speaking. I had a hard time to express myself and felt overwhelmed when I read my journal. But toward to the end of the semester, I felt confident to read my poem out loud because I know classmates would not laugh at me, instead, they would encourage me gave me the comment. It was no need to fear others laugh at us because silence would never help us improve. The comment from the Professor and my classmates would improve my shortcoming and they would also point out my advantage. I knew that I should keep my advantage but change my disadvantage. Moreover, I found an interesting event in this class which was the library trips. Before the trips, I did not know how to identify the bias resources. The trip helped me a lot because after the trips I knew how to research my resources for my essay. It taught me to evaluate what I find and identify the credible of the resources.
Not only learned how to write an essay but I also learned how to annotated bibliography in this course. This writing assignment helped me to analyze my resources and evaluate whether the sources was fit my essay “Catcher in the Rye: A New era of Mental Illness” or not. By analyze the resources, I know how to arrange them into my essay. And throughout the analyze, I could see whether the bibliographic information prominent and correct. Additionally, I could identify the thesis and major claims of each article thus use the sources correctly to support my thesis. More importantly, I could clearly see whether the article can be synthesized into my argument or not. It was an important lesson on writing because credible resources would make our argument stronger.
Then the Researched Critical Analysis Essay was our final assignment. From this point, I knew how to use the rhetorical situation in my essay “Catcher in the Rye: A New era of Mental Illness”. The purpose of this essay was to try to inform people how did things get changed during the 1950s and how does the development influence the progress of the mental illness. It mixed up the former perception and the open mind of mental illness. Throughout this paper, I want everyone to understand the importance of public perception of mental illness because it would directory influences patient’s whole life. In this paper, I used all the learning outcomes across the semester. But additionally, I learned to add counterarguments and rebuttals on this paper. It made my essay stronger and responded to my reader’s objections. It could show that the essay was reasonable rather than bias because I had show two sides’ viewpoint. The grammar was still a major problem in my writing although I tried my best. But I could see the decreasing mistaking on the writing.
Overall, this class improved my writing in many ways. It was generally covered all the knowledge in writing. Like the used of the rhetorical situation, revision essay, annotated bibliography, peer review improvement and how to research the resources. I strongly believe that, without this class, I would never get improve in writing. I hope I could keep in mind that knowledge in my future.
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