Self-Assessment 

Before starting the fall semester, I thought that this class would be like every other literature-based class, where I would simply read articles or books and answer questions about them. I came in on the first day of class with very weak writing skills due to being in an English literature course for a while. However, I’ve come to the realization that throughout the semester I managed to learn strategies and develop new or existing skills that can possibly benefit me in the future with other classes requiring essays.

Although this class has a main focus on the genre of fairy tales, rhetorical situations from these fairy tales are analyzed through pieces like op-eds. This semester, I explored and analyzed a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. At some point in the semester, the class was focused on the fairy tale “Cinderella” and “The Little Mermaid”, including their retellings. After reading the retellings for each, the topic of race-switching was brought up and in groups, op-eds and articles were analyzed to uncover who the intended and extended audience was for each writing piece. During the process of uncovering who the audience is, I had to research who the author was to figure out each of their audiences. Learning how to find out about an author’s audience was extremely helpful for the rhetorical analysis assignment. Before the semester, I never thought about caring about the author’s audience and how it impacts the way they write. 

Throughout the semester, I learned and developed strategies for drafting, revising, editing, and reading. The strategy that I found to be the most helpful would have to be the color-code revision technique. Doing this technique for the second draft of the fairy tale literacy narrative was helpful to me since it pointed out the missing requirements that I needed for that assignment. Alongside pointing out the missing requirements, the color-code revision technique let me know if I focused too much on a certain requirement. For example, in that writing assignment, I found out that I did not use many direct quotes and that characterization was lacking. In that assignment, there were a lot of purple highlights which meant action. In the final draft, I decided not to entirely delete certain areas that were highlighted purple, but to edit them in a way that it can cater more towards the element of characterization.  At the beginning of the semester, the class handed out a packet with the Norton Field Guide to Writings. After reading each section of the Norton Field Guide, I found tips and tricks to be helpful to me and my writing. One strategy I enjoyed was learning how to write a “shitty” first draft which so far has helped me a lot in my writing. All of these strategies have made the process of writing assignments much more bearable in my opinion and will definitely be used in future assignments. 

During this fall semester, I was able to recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations. I have been able to achieve this in class by working on a rhetorical analysis assignment, and other worksheets done in class relating to race switching in both the “Cinderella” fairy tales and “The Little Mermaid” fairy tales. In the rhetorical analysis assignments, the main task was to examine how texts were rhetorically designed to appeal to their audience. Authors use rhetorical terms such as ethos, pathos, and logos in order to do that. Ethos uses credibility, pathos uses emotion, and logos uses logic to persuade the audience.  In the two texts, I decided to focus on which were one of “Cinderella” and another of “The Little Mermaid”. I discovered that both authors use pathos in order to appeal to their intended audience.  I managed to learn a lot more about key rhetorical terms and can’t deny that before the fall semester, I had very little to no knowledge about key rhetorical terms and strategies. 

Throughout the semester I used my advantage of digital technologies to address a range of audiences. This is a course learning outcome that I am extremely confident in. While working on the rhetorical analysis assignment on my own and the worksheets done in class and groups, I would conduct research on my laptop on any information I can find on the author of certain articles and or op-eds. From the research done about the authors, I was able to find exactly who the intended audience was for their articles, as well as their extended audience. The research I did on the authors of different op-ed pieces was extremely helpful for my rhetorical analysis assignment where I had to include rhetorical information on the author itself. 

In this class, I was assigned to write a research essay based on fairy tales where I had to create an argumentative question and then support my stance using scholarly credible evidence. This is considered the first time in almost two years of doing thorough research on sources that I need for a writing assignment. I did find it difficult at first to look for sources that could either support my stance or go against it. Navigating through the CCNY library database was complicated but now after going through it once I feel a bit more confident. When writing the first draft of the research paper, I found that looking through the synthesis matrix worksheet was helpful in putting my thoughts together. Then, when writing the final draft I was missing a huge component which was integrating my sources in order to gain credibility from the reader. 

This is my first composition class in college and I feel like this class has well prepared me for future classes that require a lot of writing assignments. Not only did it give me more of a refresher, but helped me develop skills and strategies that can make the writing process more bearable. I can confidently say that I have managed to achieve all five-course learning outcomes this semester. There were many points in time where I had to face challenges when writing my drafts but at the end of the day, I overcame them and learned how to work on them. I continue to work on goals for myself when it comes to writing and even make new ones as the year progresses. This class has helped me with my growth as a writer and has given me the proper tools to help me in the future.

Earlier Drafts: