Self Assessment

Throughout this course, I’ve learned new things. After self-assessing myself, I have noticed I learned most of the course learning outcomes. For example, before taking this course, I had little knowledge of writing an assignment correctly. Also, I did not know how to use strategies for reading correctly. Another thing I knew very little of before taking this class was how to use the library to get scholarly sources or what databases I had to use to get the sources that applied to me the most. However, after I took this course, I learned how to cite in MLA format properly. It turns out that I did not have to add footnotes on my paper as I did on my Exploratory Essay. I also learned that I need to add a Works Cited page on every assignment. I also learned how to better my reading strategies to get better notes and get the best quotes from my sources. I learned this after noticing how horrible I did on my Exploratory Essay; I did not use proper sources to support my argument. My argument was about rape and violence was being normalized in society, and I used sources that either helped the counterclaim or did not support my claim at all. Later, I had to restart, and I managed to fix my Exploratory Essay; I found a good strong claim and used my sources to support it. Still, I realized that I couldn’t make my claim clear. I am still struggling with that. 

As stated before, at the beginning of this course, I did not know how to use the library databases, but after working on my essays and using the CCNY databases a lot, I can now find my sources easily. I ended up using sources from these databases on my Exploratory and my Research Critical Analysis essay. Continuing, throughout this course, we did a total of three peer reviews. I could say I have seen an improvement while revising other people’s work. At first, I did not really elaborate on how my partner should really improve their Literacy Narrative. I only gave basic answers to the questions we were presented with, but now while writing our Research Critical Analysis, I managed to give more detail as to how my partner would be able to better their essay. In this course, I also learned the difference between an Exploratory Essay and a Research Critical Analysis, at the beginning of the course, I thought they were both the same because I thought you needed to have your own opinion on them. This was not true, however, because the Exploratory Essay did not need my own personal opinion. I noticed how at the beginning of this course, we had to write the Literacy Narrative, and it was somewhat difficult to come up with my topic and what I had to say or write about. Then I noticed that I changed while writing my Research Critical Analysis because I had an idea of what I had to write about. I also had an outline. This example shows my growth because I did not consider outlines to have a big impact my writing at the beginning of the course.

Also, throughout this course, I have seen some growth while writing my journals. At first, I was really confused as to what I had to do or how to reach the word count, but then I noticed that my writing in journals changed; I could finally reach the word count, and I was not confused when it came to answering the journal prompt. Also, while doing my writing assignments, I learned how to appeal to my audience. Before taking this course, I did not really know how to get my point across to the audience, but after practice and some research, I managed to make my writing appeal to my audience. Appealing to my audience was a big step for me because I always lacked appealing to the audience when it came to writing. To add on, I can say that the reflections that we had to do after every writing assignment helped me improve. These reflections made me a better writer by helping me assess what I write and make me realize what was right and what needed improvement in my writing. Self-assessing is a good strategy that I learned this year, and I would be self-assessing my writing from here on out.

Though I feel I might have learned a lot, there are still some things I did not get from this class. For example, I didn’t learn how to make my stance clear when it comes to an argument, and I feel that I never really got that from this class. Overall, this was a fun class, and I enjoyed learning from it.