Final Reflection

Abstract

In this essay, my development as a writer is the subject and the writing itself is my evidence. I will be referring to the works that I have included in my portfolio. This essay tries to answer the question: To what extent have I achieved the course learning objectives this semester? This prompt provides me with an opportunity to demonstrate how I have developed as a writer and thinker this semester.

Essay

Freshman Composition was one of the best English courses that I have taken out of all the English classes that I have muscled through in thirteen years of my life. This course went by too quickly, probably because I enjoyed the course work in this class way more than the course work in any other class. In this course, we did lots of group work that developed our skills in organized writing and analysis, and had discussions on passages we read in class. In addition, the essay prompts that we had to do in this class were fined-tuned to bring out our creativity and to amplify our voices in writing. As a result of taking this course, I was able to explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations, compose texts that integrate my stance with appropriate sources, and develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and drafting.

            One of the course learning objectives that I can check off was exploring and analyzing, in writing and reading, a variety of rhetorical situations and genres. In the first phase we read passages that were non-fiction such as Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, and those that were fiction such as Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. We used these texts to learn how to chart a text, for example, in which we write what the text says and what the text does in relation to the overall passage. In this phase, we also learned how to utilize the rhetorical situation worksheet in establishing credibility of the author, identifying who the author’s intended audience is, identifying the author’s purpose and main argument, and recognizing how the author accomplishes his/her purpose and supports his/her argument. Charting passages and using the rhetorical situation and analyzing an argument (phase 3) worksheets helped in the process of analyzing passages and arguments.

            Another course learning objective that I completed in this course was composing texts that integrate my stance using appropriate sources. In the second phase, we were able to learn this objective by using worksheets such as the rhetorical precis worksheet, in which we learned to describe arguments and contexts that we may present in a text in a four sentence structure. This worksheet helped to make my writing concise and to the point. We used the “Identifying a Thesis statement” worksheet to learn how to write a thesis and how not to write a thesis. In this phase’s essay, we were able to express our opinions slightly, but not as much as the next essay we wrote. We learned skills such as writing a good summary of a text and critically analyzing texts using the worksheets provided by Professor Nagales.  We found out how to find appropriate sources that connect and bolster our arguments. Lastly, we learned how to quote a source that we use and how to integrate it into our writing very nicely. 

            The last objective that I felt I completed taking this course was developing strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and drafting. We developed strategies for reading by charting a text. We developed strategies for drafting by using the “Responding to a Draft” worksheet. We learned how to collaborate our ideas through group work and group discussions in our class. Finally, we learned to edit our writing based on feedback from our peers and our professor.

            This class has been beneficial to my writing career. Not only did I gain valuable skills from taking this class, but I also developed a more creative mind. I was able to get an awesome professor who was awesome in teaching a pretty boring subject to be honest. I was able to get great classmates who I can talk and discuss the coursework with. I was able to be more expressive in my writing.