Self-Assessment essay
Emmy Desire
The City College of New York
English 21002
Professor Kay Bell
Throughout this semester, I was able to achieve the course learning adjectives to an extent and to the best of my ability. I started off the class being conditioned to already have certain expectations about certain places, people, or even their stories without even being aware that I did so. After continuing on with the semester and hearing the engaging conversations we had in class about the readings or videos we watched, I learned to try and be more open-minded by putting my expectations aside and doing more research on the topic itself. I feel as though I already had a sense of rhetorical sensibility seeing as I am a black woman. It is very common for people to not be rhetorically sensitive towards me, so I try not to do so towards others. One strategy that I had enhanced regarding my writing this semester is breaking things down. It was very helpful for our professor to provide us with a break down of questions to apply to our essays. It helped me feel less stressed and become more aware and detailed with my writing, especially in my other classes. I do feel as though even though I have become more detailed with my writing, I can still do better in this area. I feel as though when writing I do tend to miss certain important details and that I should try to be more detailed by digging deeper and asking more detailed questions. I was also able to develop and engage in the process of collaborative and social writing. We were able to do this through peer interviews, peer reviews, discussion posts, and break out rooms. I found this very helpful and very insightful. It allowed me to look outside of myself and into the conditions and situations that are present in the lives of the people/students around me. One type of multimodal composing that we did this year was creating our portfolios. I found this process very interesting. I learned that when creating a portfolio, even if it is academic, it helps to add your own twist to it to make it your own. I found this to be very different seeing as in my past classes, we were not encouraged to do so. With citations, I learned how to do an annotated bibliography and how to properly cite it. This class has helped me to grow and enhance my critical thinking skills. I now try to think more outside of the box when I am writing by using as many sources as possible to conduct my research to get different perspective that I chose to explore and write about.
​The ways in which my perception on what writing is and does changed this semester was that I now see writing more as a way for people to not only express themselves but to help create awareness and inspire others to do so. I also see it to get your audience to see outside of themselves more often. Reading someone else’s story can change your perspective. It is very common for people to be unaware of what is happening in other communities or the world besides their own. Writing can be used to open our eyes and dig deeper into exploring many issues that are happening in our world and how we can contribute towards making it better.
​The way that the research I have done in this course has helped me to understand the importance of providing evidence for my claims is through better understanding the importance of research. I learned that providing research for your claim can help your audience better trust you with the information you are giving them. Doing research for your claim can also lead you to more information about the topic than you thought you already knew. Also, without solid evidence, a claim can just be an opinion to someone else.
​The way that I learned to investigate without bias to produce a comprehensive view of the topic is by avoiding certain things. I learned to start off with an unbiased and neutral research question before I choose my main question. An example would be, instead of starting off with “Why is chocolate ice cream better than Vanilla Ice cream?” I would ask a more neutral question, or I would just research the topic itself and after doing research I would formulate a question regarding my topic based on the information I found. I also learned to avoid making assumptions when conducting research and make sure my questions are based on facts and not opinions. To be completely honest, I am still working on this course adjective. I feel that it is easy to include bias in any type of research you do since we are usually so used to it. I am still trying to break out of this habit.
​What I have learned about the importance in the issues that people in marginalized communities face is that people within marginalized communities tend to be neglected. This is very often overlooked and has been going on for years. People within marginalized communities tend to deal with being denied by the government and being negatively targeted every day. This issue is important because it plays a role in how people view people within marginalized groups, and this is where stereotypes are built off. It leads the unfair and many times inhumane treatment and behavior towards marginalized communities. These issues need to be addressed more and resolved.