Self-Assessment Essay

            When I was enrolling into this “FIQWS” English course, I was wondering “the actual heck is fIqWs, this is going to be so boring, and two parts to the class!?!?”. Fast forward three months, it is November, and I am thinking about how I saw FIQWS in August and how I see it now. In High School I was a shy kid, never really raised my hand to participate but my work usually came back with a good grade. I didn’t really put myself out there for people to get to know the real me, I limited the real me. That was until Professor Zlotnick and Professor Vicars made us do this slideshow about ourselves. I had included everything I wanted everyone to know about me, so unlike high school me. Part of the reason is because this FIQWS class taught me to be myself, to find my voice, who I am, and to appreciate it. After that, FIQWS was known as my favorite class, because it got me to find myself and who I am, I put myself out there and that slideshow presentation was a big push. That presentation also made me confident to get up there and present about myself, without being shy or worrying what everyone else in the class would think about me and my personality. I would love to thank Professor Zlotnick and Professor Vicars for helping me find myself, my voice, helping me become a better writer, and reintroducing free writing to me.

            Each course learning objectives this semester have helped shape me as a writer, I feel that I picked up different techniques to becoming a better writer each learning objective that we would go over. It has enhanced my skills at citing, analyzing, and understanding texts. Throughout the many prompts I have completely throughout each class, I found myself creating a personality diary of some sort, which was controlled by Professor Vicars. I used to be a messy writer, jumping from one story to another about my day, but the prompts gave me something to speak about, which made me feel like I can write for days, whereas when my thoughts would be a mess, I would easily find writers block as an issue. I have learned to escape writers block, organize and write my thoughts in an organized manner, critically discourse, and much more that I am not even aware about at this moment. I still find myself realizing how much this class has helped me with my writing throughout the semester.

            The biggest takeaway from Phase 1 is how language is a topic where so many people have so much to say. The conversation never stops, it’s hard to stop because there are so many key points to cover. For example, one is not illiterate because you are using a type of English, such as broken or black English. For Phase 2, my understanding of visual rhetoric has changed and deepened because I was exposed to actual cases and heard people’s thoughts, opinions, motives, and just their perspectives as a whole. Phase 3 helped my understanding of research writing deepen because it helped me understand which sources should be reliable. It also helped me understand that there should not be any biased opinions throughout the research paper. To my knowledge, a research paper should not show its fight, but inform the reader about the situation or problem, and lead the reader to think about what should be done about the situation while subtly hinting at the writer.

            One of the course learning objectives that I have deeply connected, grown with, and achieved was recognizing and practicing key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations. The reading notes for our class course texts have helped to recognize the rhetorical terms and strategies of people who dealt with language as a big factor in their lives. For example, in one of the reading notes taken by myself, I mentioned, “There are many different dialects, many different ways that English is used across the country. For example, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, phrases, and even expressions.” For these reading notes, I was able to recognize the rhetoric and find out the different techniques that the writer has tried to figuratively send a message to the audience. At the end of the day, I was able to recognize the rhetorical techniques that may be used in these course texts that we have been analyzing throughout the semester.

            The second course learning objective that I have deeply connected, grown with, and achieved was practicing the systematic application of citation conventions. In the recent research paper that I have written, I was given the ability to cite the 8 different sources that I was mandated to use. Throughout the 8 citations, I was able to use a bibliography generator to help me cite these citations. The website would ask for the link of the article, and then translate everything into place. 5 out of the 8 articles made me do the citations because the website could not locate any information needed to successfully cite the articles. This made me learn a new skill, citing sources using citation conventions. Although the rules for citation conventions are a bit weird and annoying, they start to make sense when it comes to the organization once you start being able to successfully cite with conventions.

            The third course learning objective that I have deeply connected to, grown with, and achieved was developing strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing. When the class was writing their research papers, we were given our peers, whom we were in charge of peer reviewing their research paper drafts. We were obligated to make comments, give critical feedback, and list the pros of their paper, all while having a positive manner. While reviewing their research paper, it made me realize everything that I did not involve in my paper. It helped me jot down certain things that I wanted to include in my paper’s final draft. This prompted me to go back and add more to my research paper to make it so that it did not lack the things that I was seeing in my peer’s research paper. Which was a really interesting piece that enlightened me on the situation at hand.

            The fourth course learning objective that I have deeply connected to, grown with, and achieved was locating research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine, and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluating them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias. When we were working on our research papers, our first step was to find credible sources that would back up our initial purpose of the research paper. We found about eight sources that we would be successful in using in our paper. The paper was a breeze once the sources were planned out, it was a matter of explaining the sources to the extent where the sources did damage when read by the readers. The ability to include these journals/articles is something that is needed when writing an important research paper with a strong topic, to become successful, one must have strong concrete sources that can back their thesis up and prove the purpose of the research paper.

            The fifth course learning objective that I have deeply connected to, grown with and achieved at examining how attitudes towards linguistic standards empower and oppress language users. There have been many course texts that we have had to read over, which were mainly about a different person every time talking about their experiences with language. Each person had a different story and viewpoint. That made me acknowledge how there are many different ways of seeing language. For example, in my reading notes, I mention how the text proved that just because you speak a different version of English does not mean that you are illiterate. If one speaks broken English or black English, does not automatically mean they are illiterate.  At the end of the day, this skill helped me analyze and get through my reading notes and further critically discourse the different reading text courses.

            In conclusion, I have found a home within myself, as mentioned in the title of an assignment that was assigned to me by Professor Vicars. I remember that gave me more inspiration when my professor told me that that was so poetic of me. Even this week, she loved my poetic line in my free writing, “life is on a straight line, not ascending positively, not descending negatively. Just going with the flow of the line.” This line was written by me in my messy unorganized brain at 2 pm on Thursday. The compliment from Professor Vicars made me feel like a better writer. Throughout the semester both Zlotnick and Vicars have given me a good boost to be a better writer, these two classes have positively changed me, helped me find my voice, and made me a person who likes to share and use their voice, a better participant in class. My two favorite assignments that I have known to make me grow to a high point were the physical portfolio and portfolio cover because it was like I converted my thoughts into existing, and the presentation because I got to share myself to the fullest extent for the first time in my life, and I was not nervous or anything about it, more like proud. Again, I just wanted to thank Professor Vicars and Professor Zlotnick for helping me become a better person and shaping my freshman first semester in this particular way, it helped a lot so thank you!