Abstract
In this essay I will assess my improvement this semester and my writing abilities. I will discuss to what extent I have achieved the course learning objects which include: acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility, enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment, negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation, develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes, engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond, formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing, and practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects. I will also state how my perception on writing is and how it evolved this semester.
Self- Assessment Essay
Throughout this semester as a student in writing for English, I believe I have shown development and improvement as a writer in my essays. From how to format a proper business letter and research paper, to also expanding in my writing ability. Using my previous essays throughout the semester, I would like to take you into a journey of someone who’s writing ability I say was decent, to now being able to easily formulate and express myself better in my writing, and also note taking skills. I will demonstrate to what extent I have achieved the course learning objective, and also, I will like to illustrate in what ways has my perceptions on what writing is have evolved this semester, and topics I feel I can still improve on, but first I will answer the question: What is writing?
For a long time, up until college I had a not so pleasant relationship with writing. To me writing was something that I only did for papers in school, homework, and projects. I never associated writing with being pleasant or something I did on my free time. It always felt forced and majority of the time not that enjoyable. Recently I have felt that my attitude towards writing has changed. I used to get discouraged and possibly even disliked the processes of having to write papers. To me it took too much time to write and get my thoughts together, I also felt that I lacked strength in being able to cohesively write and express myself since it wasn’t my strongest aspect when it came to writing, but that has changed. I feel more motivated and ambitious when it comes to writing. I want to be able to keep doing better and better until I can be completely satisfied with my ability to write a perfect paper. I still need to work on my writing, reading and understanding how to structure papers, which will only help me improve. Another aspect that has changed my view in writing is being able to free write. I have come to enjoy this form of writing because it doesn’t feel pushed upon. It is free and flowy and not as ridged as per say writing a paper for class, but both require for a person to be clear and articulate with what they are saying. I started to incorporate free writing in my daily life thanks to this class and I really do enjoy doing this. Free writing will also help me strengthen my ability to write as well.
Over the course of the semester I believe I have improved in my strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing and self-assessment. To being with reading, using the IMRD has helped me break down scientific articles in a more manageable and simpler way to understand what I am reading, especially when some articles can be difficult to understand if no prior knowledge of the subject is known. I also believe I improved at omitting the information I need for my essays when it comes to backing up my claims, and also analysis what the article states. This also comes in hand with my drafting ability. In my first two informative essays I understood well what I was reading but I lacked in responding to the article. Being able to use it as basically a draft helped me improve overall, and I believe I improved in my assessment and format from my first informative essay to the last one. Another aspect doing drafts have helped me improve, is getting notes from my peers and also seeing how their writing and formatting differed from mine. This helped me build on my skills and helped me realize what I lacked in my essays. The same can be said about revising. After getting all my essays and being able to look at them I saw how the growth in this semester transpired. This helped me pinpoint where I lacked and helped me edit my work and self-assess where I needed improvement, which I believe is evident in my scientific controversy paper. I was able to use the notes professor Coppola gave me, and my peers to excel in that final paper from receiving low 80s to getting a 90 in that paper. There is definitely more room for improvement but did progress throughout the semester.
Another learning objective that I feel I improved this semester was being able to formulate and articulate my stance throughout my writing. This was my weakest subject when it came to writing. I noticed that I would do very well expressing what the article stated, but I wouldn’t give any form of response to the information what was presented. In my 3 informative essays, professor Coppola advised me that I didn’t respond to the articles effectively, with my first informative essay having almost no response, just a verbatim of the article. However, I build off from the comments by professor Coppola, and I started to respond more to essay, which is seen in my last informative essay and scientific paper. I also was able to redo my first two papers and added my response to them. As the semester progressed, I saw an improvement in this aspect of my writing. I also strengthen my ability to change my dialect to differentiate between what was stated in the article and what I was stating, which can be seen in my controversy paper. and I was able to tie in different studies to support my claim. Another learning objective that I slightly improved in was using various library resources, online databases, and the internet to locate sources for writing projects. Since I am a senior at CCNY I already knew about our marvelous database and how to find articles, but having the class with the librarian tech also helped me on being able to narrow down my search, which I didn’t know could be done with separating the searches with “and” and “or”. This made it a lot easier in being able to search articles for my controversy paper, and also the group project we did.
The group project was probably one of the best projects I have had in CCNY thus far. My group members and I were able to split our work efficiently and without having to be on top of each other to get things done. It was extremely effortless, and we all communicated and collaborated well together. Each of us had a designated section from IMRD that we had to do. We split the sections by how better our understandings and preference were, being that I took statistic and also experimental psychology, I chose to do the results section. I Believe I presented these points well in our group essay and the power point because of my background in stats.
My writing goals for this semester were to broaden my usage of words, improve on my essay composition, and also in presentation. Even though for this class we based our essays on science fields, and we didn’t dip into other fields, we actually managed to look at different topics in the science community. I was able to apply what we learned in different settings, like: expressing what I thought about using cancer cells to treat heart diseases, to how companies are misusing products for monetary gain, but possibly sickening farmers. These subjects are very different, but they all fall into the realm of science. I don’t think I got to explore different topics as much I would have liked, but I also believe it is due to my inclination towards medicine and psychology. Even though I feel like I still need to practice more on how to formulate what I am saying to the audience by using key words, or phrases to transition my information and keep it flowing smoothly, I believe I improved in this subject as well. Another aspect that I worked on, but I also want to work on more is being able to acknowledge more the linguistic differences as resources. It definitely takes me a while to process some academic articles. If I’m reading a regular pieces: like something from the New York Times, for our informative reviews, I can easily understand what I am reading. When it comes to scientific journals, or peer reviewed articles, I have to re-read the article to grasp what it is saying. This took time in searching for the perfect article in my scientific controversy position paper. Even though it took some time I managed to find articles that backed up the arguments I presented.
This semester was filled with positive learning experiences, and I can say that I have improved in my writing. I still believe there is still work I can do, like expressing and responding to what I am writing but overall, I have enjoyed the progress of this class. I have not taken an English class in a while so being able to do different assignments like formal letters, bibliographies, and a group essay was fun. These have been new things that I’ve just learned to do and I also enjoyed learning something new.
