Self-Assessment Essay 

 

Welcome to my writing portfolio! It excites me to show you all my journey through my first year of first year composition. This is my first semester back in college and it wasn’t easy, it was pretty difficult if you’d ask me. In all honesty though I am proud of myself for getting this far in the semester. This is my last assignment for my English class and that is it! I will be talking about a reflection for this post. This is more like my self-assessment reflection of what I learned and didn’t learn about the rhetorical techniques taught in class, and how I demonstrated them in my writing. I am excited to show you how I grew in a writing perspective this semester.

 

The first learning outcome states: Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. I have completed the first learning outcome according to my exploratory essay for example. In my exploratory essay my purpose was to make my audience aware of how the New York minimum wage may effect individuals from different socioeconomic levels. The goal of my stance that I projected for this essay was a critical and sincere attitude. Lastly, my media/design for my exploratory essay consisted of a New York State poverty guidelines chart along with average rent prices of cities across the New York State. In the image below is how I prove I accomplished including the rhetorical techniques of purpose and stance in the introduction of my exploratory essay.

 

The second learning outcome states: Develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing. I have completed this task with the workshops held with my peers for my exploratory essay and my critical analysis essay. For my critical analysis research essay, my professor and one of my peers revised my draft. I then collaborated their revisions and then edited my essay to complete my final draft. In the image below to the left you will see my peer’s comments about my draft and in the second image to the right you will see how I edited my essay along with what my peer said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The third learning outcome states: Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations. I demonstrated key rhetorical terms in my personal narrative essay. I accomplished this learning outcome with my purpose which was to explain how a personal past experience shaped me into who I am. My audience was towards anyone who can possibly relate to having a family member who was involved in a car accident, a loved one who lives with an undocumented status or being first generation college student and facing financial struggles. My stance within my essay that I projected was neutral but very personal attitude. Lastly, the way I displayed my media/design was through print online.

 

The fourth learning outcome states: Engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes. I completed this learning outcome through peer review workshops. For my first group for a peer review session for our exploratory essays, one of my classmates wanted my other peers and I to give him a critical opinion and revision about his essay. We all helped him out by explaining how to properly cite. In addition to that I helped him by giving him feedback on what he could possibly include to make his essay better and one or two sentences he could move around to make the essay more impactful as well.

 

The fifth learning outcome states: Understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences. With the help of technology and the usage of it in this class I was able to use print and digital technologies to a range of audiences. An example of this learning outcome is when there was a blackboard assignment based on a reading of an author named “Carl”. Our assignment was to respond to at least two classmates’ posts and comment on their response to the five questions based on the reading. I accomplished this with a majority of my classmates as well, it was great to get a response on what their point of view to our response.

 

The sixth learning outcome states: Locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias. I accomplished this learning outcome by locating an academic scholarly source to use for my exploratory and critical analysis research essay. I used the City College library website and looked through their database to find a credible source based on my topic which was the effects of minimum wage in New York. The academic scholarly sources that I ended up choosing over the other sources I crossed with was about two professors writing letters to each other and their point of view on whether minimum wage increase was a good idea and the effects that it has on individuals. The image below is the academic scholarly source that I decided to write about in my annotated bibliography.

 

The seventh learning outcome states: Compose texts that integrate your stance with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation. I accomplished integrating these strategies in both my exploratory and critical analysis essay. For both essays I demonstrated my argumentative position and included sources as support. In the the image below is an argument thesis example that I wrote for my critical analysis research essay.

 

Lastly, the eighth learning outcome states: Practice systematic application of citation conventions. Throughout the semester, by the second essay we had to start including MLA format citations in our essays. At first I didn’t fully understand how to cite properly but by our class’ first peer workshop, a classmate of mine helped me out a lot along with a worksheet given out to the class on how to properly cite in MLA format. By the end of this semester I completely understand the whole process on how to properly cite sources and you can see it my work on my works cited page above along with my annotated bibliography.

 

This semester has completely come to and end and I am truly proud of myself. Although I may not be the best writer, I have honestly progressed more than I would’ve possibly thought in the beginning of the semester. I give thanks to my English professor, Professor Rogal along with a few of my classmates as well for their feedback and help, they have helped me grow as a writer. I still have a long way to go and a lot more room for progression but I am definitely grateful for such a great english semester!