Briana Elome
FIQWS 10108
Self-Assessment Assignment
Over these past weeks, I have grown and developed as a writer in many ways. I have learned how to write using different styles of writing and rhetorical terms which are the rhetorical situation, purpose, audience, genre, stance, media/design and exigence. Throughout the many assignments I have done such as papers, peer reviews, reflections, etc, they have shown my growth from the beginning of the semester to the end. I have not excelled in all of the categories but have progressed and have broadened my scope as a writer.
Starting off the semester with the literacy narrative paper, it was a style of writing that I haven’t done before: writing about how I interpreted the message of a painting and how it made me feel. This paper was challenging but using the rhetorical terms such as rhetorical situation, purpose and audience helped me express myself. Situation was seen in my writing because I had to explain what I thought was happening without much information about the background of the painting. I also had to explain how it made me feel, so that was based on the situation happening in the painting. We saw purpose because there had to be a purpose that I set behind the painting. Exigence was also shown because looking at the painting, it brought the emotions of anger and disturbance. That prompted me to write the paper, focusing on how I felt and why it made me feel that way.
Following that paper, another paper that was assigned was the Exploratory essay. In this paper, we had to use a short story and show the Freudian concepts displayed in the story while summarizing and interpreting the text, this was the genre. Here again, I had to interpret the text which I was not used to doing. The audience was seen in this paper because I wrote to an audience who knows of Freud’s lectures and wants to see his concepts interpreted based on a passage. We also see purpose because the point of the paper was to show what Freudian concepts can look like, apart from what is bring told in the lectures. This paper was more challenging than the last because it was no longer a painting but a story that could have many different interpretations by different students. Therefore, I had to go through it and see how I aimed interpreted and write about it.
The Critical Research Analysis paper was the most challenging assignment of the semester. This paper had to be the longest and had to include many sources including Freud’s lecture which I was used to. This expanded my knowledge of using the computer databases and searching for sources that would go in depth about Freudian concepts and/or the story we chose to use for this paper. Those sources show the rhetorical media used in my paper. This paper helped me grow in my writing because we had to do very little summarizing and a lot of analyzing using sources.
Along with these papers, I also did reflections. The purpose was to reflect on my writing and highlight the rhetorical terms used. My reflection assignments are somewhere I did not excel at because I would not know what audience, what genre and what the exigence of my writing was. I also felt like I was just writing a summary of my paper. This is somewhere I struggled, but there was growth from the beginning to the end of the semester because it made me write my papers with more intention and helped me keep the rhetorical terms in mind.
Peer reviews were something we did often this semester. It is a big part of why I feel my papers were a success. Having my peers review my writing, giving me pointers and suggestions helped me a lot. For example, I did not know how unclear my thesis was for my Critical Research Analysis paper until my partner reviewed it and helped me improve. I also reviewed the writings of my peers and saw growth in their final papers at the end. Writing multiple drafts were also crucial to my paper’s improvement. With the drafts, I only was able to add better points to my papers and see what I was doing right and wrong.
Within our papers, it was required that we cite our sources that we obtained information from. This was not something that I did often before this course, so it was a learning experience for me. I learned how to do citations myself, even though there are many websites available to do citations for you. This was very helpful learning this in class because it is something that I will be able to do for my other classes and future papers. Citations taught me the importance of crediting the author and giving the reader information of where they themselves can find the sources. It is something that is necessary, so using it for all of my papers was something great to learn.
Overall, there were many ways that I improved as a writing throughout this course. With the use of rhetorical terms, drafting, revisions, peer reviews, technology, my papers were taken to another level. Though I did not succeed in some areas such as my reflections, I still progressed as a writer and will continue to do better. I have learned a lot and this information that I obtained will be of use to me not only for the rest of my academics, but beyond higher education.
