Muhammad Mamsa
Professor Voisard
English 210
23 May, 2022
Final Self-Assessment

Over the course of this semester, I have learned a lot about my own writing and where it matches on the college level. I came into this class with little to no expectations because I thought I was knowledgeable in this subject. Little did I know my 4 years of English class in a Bronx public high school only prepared me so much, in hindsight it was only a fraction of what I really needed. The course learning objectives really helped me set a goal for my writing of what college standard writing should be.
I didn’t use much of the course learning objectives in the Literacy narratives because it was the first essay of the semester. It was hard to transition so quickly and implement these strategies in my writing since I was so used to writing the way my high school teachers taught me. I learned to engage in the social and collaborative writing processes during our time revising in class. While looking and revising my peers’ papers I learned new ways to implement writing strategies I’ve never thought of before. I’ve also learned new ways to apply research throughout my essay in more creative and unique ways. For example, in my critical analysis I used peer reviewed sources and those peer reviewed sources helped tie into my thesis and made my essay better overall. Before this I had multiple biased sources that wouldn’t have made my essay credible. Over the course of my life, I have asked myself many times. “What is writing? What would make my writing stand out in the best possible way?” Employing the course learning objectives in my writing is what made my writing 10 times better. Multiple times throughout this semester I’ve had writer’s block or I was stuck and didn’t know what to write. The course learning objectives gave me a guideline. Through this I’ve learned how to address a wider audience towards my writing as well. In my exploratory essay I used rhetoric to engage my audience on what America is doing about drug trafficking. I used statistics and facts to catch the reader’s attention about facts they didn’t know and to speak about how not just the government but average citizens are impacted every day because of this issue.
Some course learning objectives that I didn’t spend enough time on are Developing strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing. I handed my assignments late so it was hard to edit and revise without enough critiques and different people’s opinion on my work. Another one was practicing systematic applications of citation convention. I feel my Citations aren’t even close to where I want them to be. It feels like I’m missing something or just not citing correctly. There are some sources that are hard to address because there wouldn’t be an author or dates. Other than that, I focused on analyzing genres and different rhetorical situations. That was another thing I was really weak at first. Throughout the course of the semester, I’ve practiced and worked on it. Another example is my critical analysis again where I dedicated an entire section to how the communities, we live in are getting destroyed and how the United States government is dealing with it. I used ethos as the form of rhetoric to appeal to the reader’s emotional side so they can read how the communities in this great country are being torn down. With facts and Statistics to back up my claim so they know my essay is credible. I’ve applied a lot of what I learned this semester in my writing and will continue to do so.
In conclusion this course helped me improve as a writer coming in from high school. It set the bar for me and showed me what college level writing really is and what I should strive for when writing any type of essay. I learned the flaws in my own writing not just for English but every class, this course helped me become a more in-depth writer.