Self Reflection

Self Reflection

As the fall semester comes to an end in my FIQWS course I can reflect on all the course learning goals we were presented with at the beginning of the semester and how much I have achieved with the different assignments assigned throughout the course. With every homework assignment I was capable in analyzing the texts and identifying the different techniques the authors used, then through my essay assignments I was able to improve through each phase by using the feedback given by my professors and peers. Through the in class lectures I can say that the different techniques taught to improve my writing did help in the in-class worksheets and homework worksheets. The different course learning goals I have achieved are analyzing texts, recognizing the different rhetorical situations used, developing strategies for reading, revising and editing, using digital technology to look for resources, locating resources for my essays and much more. With both the Topic and Writing sections I can achieve these course learning objectives in depth with a very well understanding on how I could keep using these techniques later in my future writings.

During phase one of the course we were assigned to write our literacy narrative essay and how a literacy or language situations impacted our lives and influenced us in our language. To be able to write our essays we focused on reading and analyzing the different readings in the course reading packet that gave us a base and outline on how our narratives should be like. With reading text like “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan and “African American English From the Hood to the Amen Corner” by Geneva Smitherman I was able to “explore and analyze in their own and other’s writing a variety of genres and rhetorical situations” as well as “Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations.” Using the different rhetorical worksheets, we got to break down the author’s purpose and the different techniques used by the authors to catch the reader’s attention and to prove their claim. As I wrote my narrative I was able to use rhetorical terms such as pathos, ethos and logos to catch my audience attention and make them interested in my narrative. I used pathos to make the audience feel empathy for the hard time I faced learning English and by giving them background information of who I am that was me using ethos throughout the essay. As we went finished our first draft to this essay I was able to give feedback to my peers in their own narratives and they helped me out as well. We were able to “develop strategies for reading, drafting, revising and editing” when we were given a worksheet by professors to fill out based on our peer’s draft and we helped them identify parts of the essay where they succeeded and parts of the essay where they needed to work on. Then through the feedback we got we revised our own narratives and concluded to write the final draft. 

Moving on to phase two of this course we got more in depth with picking a specific topic that dealt with language and literacy and then pick sources based on the topic and what stance did the articles take. We used a combination of techniques to form the essay in a coherent matter as we had to summarize the articles, synthesize, connect the articles with each other and take a stance on your topic to create a powerful thesis. Therefore, some course learning objectives I accomplished was “Recognize the role of language attitudes and standards in empowering, oppressing, and hierarchizing languages and their users” as well as “Practice systematic application of citation conventions.” When I figured that I wanted to focus on the individuals oppressing someone’s language and how by doing so it is a form of violence I learned how there are individuals throughout the world who idolize a certain language so much and by doing so they discriminate someone else’s language. I was able to recognize how everyone people all tend to have their attitudes toward a language and based on the research I did about the United States I learned about how many individuals and states oppress a language that isn’t English just because they believe everyone in the country should be forced to speak English since it’s the “common language.” When I had to include sources into my essay at first, I didn’t know how to exactly cite properly but as the professors showed us a few examples on how to do so I can do in-text citations as well as a work cited page.  I can say that by learning how to cite in MLA format will help me write all my future papers from now on since it is a great portion of an essay.  Personally, this next course learning objective I accomplished since the first phase of the course, but I grew throughout each phase even more with “Develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.” During lecture time the professors always made sure to give us group work and gave us different tasks either in reading a passage and figuring out the different rhetorical situations presented, or the genre of the text and we would share in our small groups first and after have a whole class discussion.

During phase three which was when we focused on writing our critical analysis essay we “Understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences” and “Locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives an on the internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, and bias.” The way we did the print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences was when we had homework assigned through the discussion board and all the students had to answer a few questions by a certain time and then respond to one of our peer’s responses. I think this really helped me because we were able to interact with one another and be able to see the point of view of our classmates and see something that maybe we missed from the analyzation of the text or video clip. The locating the research sources was done throughout phase two and three because we had library lectures in which we learned what journal articles are and how to find them through the cuny library either being from one search or just a normal search of articles.

Throughout this course I can say that I have learned a lot that I will know will help me in my future courses and my college career as I am only a freshman. I think that one search will help in looking for resources way quicker since we could use advance search and it will help me control the type of articles I’m looking for. Now that I look back at all the assignments I did and all the hard work I put into my work I can say that synthesizing and summaries are helpful when we must write an essay because it helps outline the essay in an effect manner.search or just a normal search of articles.

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