Self Assessment Essay

In this class, course learning outcomes have played a crucial role. As I reflect on my growth as a student, I was able to learn different strategies of reading, writing, and addressing audiences and how to analyze them. Each learning outcome provided me with valuable tools that I can apply not only academically, but also in profession. I was also able to learn how to apply those strategies to develop my work. There were a certain number of learning outcomes that we addressed in this class which I will revisit along with the strategies I learned, and the challenges I faced during different assignments.

The first one is “Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations”. This was one of the most important learning outcomes to me. It successfully helped me understand the bigger picture and the wider significance behind certain texts. I was able to figure out things like “Who is the audience”? Or “What is the context”? behind a text, and other aspects like the genre of the text. At the beginning of the course, I had no clue about the importance or what they were. An example of this was when we were analyzing the Rhetorical Situation of two articles surrounding the conflict behind Ariel’s casting in the little Mermaid live action movie titled “‘I Don’t Want a Black Ariel.’ Why We Shouldn’t Be Satisfied With Race Switching” by The Final Cutback and “The white nostalgia fueling the ‘Little Mermaid’ backlash” by Brooke Newman. At the end of this assignment, I was able to thoroughly understand different aspects of both articles such as their purpose, in which case the two had different purposes. The Final Cutback disagreed with the casting of Ariel and wanted audiences to not be okay with it, while Brooke Newman supported the casting as it tackles implicit biases and allows representation of different backgrounds in mainstream media. This activity was very helpful in helping me understand rhetorical situations.

Another outcome is “Develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing”. The key component of this learning outcome in my opinion was The Norton Field Guide to Writing. At the beginning, I only wrote what came to mind and just submitted rough pieces of writing for class assignments. Through the guide, We were able to learn different strategies. The strategies consisted of different ways of effective reading by annotation or skimming. We also attempted multiple drafts for each writing assignment, each draft being a prerequisite to the next. We did peer review which in all honesty did not help me at all, but maybe it would have worked if I asked more peers to do the peer review. When it came to editing, whenever we were done with our final draft, Revision and editing really came in handy making final polishes and fixing minor errors acting as the final cherry on top.

Moreover, another outcome was “Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations”. A big part of this was Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Ethos being credibility, Pathos being empathy, and logos being logic. Each of these can act as a key factor into making what we are writing more credible and coherent. I already had a great understanding of this when analyzing other texts or writing debates. However, the activities we did in class also helped me to understand when and where to introduce certain key information and arguments while being able to back it up. I was able to utilize these terms effectively in each of my writing assignments such as the Researched Critical Analysis essay. In the essay, I introduced an important argument towards the end of the essay. After getting feedback from the second draft, I moved up the paragraph towards the beginning making a more bolder statement towards the beginning and increasing my ethos capability.

Furthermore, one of the learning outcomes is also “Understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences”. This would connect to our digital portfolio we made using a word press site. First we had to make an account using CUNY academic commons, then we created a website and added pages to upload each page: About, Fairy Tale Narrative Essay, Rhetorical Analysis, Researched Critical Analysis, and Self Assessment essay. Each of these pages were labeled as mentioned after which we uploaded our final drafts for each writing assignment page and learned to edit accordingly. This is an important thing to learn as having an online digital portfolio can be helpful outside academics as well, especially to address a larger audience.

The final learning outcome is “Compose texts that integrate a stance with appropriate sources, using strategies such as summary, analysis, synthesis, and argumentation”. In this class, I was successfully able to learn this through the Annotated Bibliography and Researched Critical Analysis. I was also able to use different skills to make arguments by using academic sources and analyze different aspects of fairy tales. An example from my Researched Critical Analysis would be how I argued the influence of Western Consumerism on the Evolution of fairy tales. I used tales such as Aladdin and Cinderella as my focus and used articles that supported my arguments.

I was successful in achieving all the learning outcomes to the best of my ability. Being able to learn many new things that I have never even heard of before enhanced my approach to writing, reading, and critical thinking. Each Learning outcome has contributed significantly to my growth as a student. From creating my own texts to analyzing other texts using rhetorical appeals, I believe I am well equipped to tackle future academic challenges. I will try my best to utilize all the knowledge and each of the skills I gained from this class and further flourish them while learning from my mistakes.