Self Reflection

In English 21001, students are to be expected to reach all 8 course learning objectives within this course. I have done all these CLO throughout during classwork and in writing assignments. Overall, I see that I have progressed in my writing ability due to applying rhetorical elements.

The first CLO shown on the list is to understand how to read other people’s work and learn from it. Everyone writes in a unique way, not just handwriting style, but the usage of words as well as how diverse the writing is with the vocabulary. I demonstrated this in my interview essay as I read and responded to my partner. Our questions mostly pinpointed our careers, which helped me to better understand my own career because I have never thought of ways to think some of those questions.

The second CLO is to generally improve in writing an essay by reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment. In my arts review essay, I wrote about how Cowboy Bebop is considered a classic anime. I believe that revising and editing it came out to be better for it as I took upon my professor’s notes on one of the aspects that I misinterpreted. I “reread,” by reviewing the show again to carefully think what is being portrayed. I came to the conclusion that all the characters in the show are equal and my previous statement was wrong.

The third CLO introduced students writing in ways to appeal to a specific audience in a certain genre, medium, and rhetorical situation. This course introduced many new topics to write about I did not know about like the Op-Ed. The Op-Ed is an opinion based writing that exists to oppose another party. I wrote about emperor penguins and why they should be given attention due to climate changing. My audience was meant for everyone since my writing was also like another one of those global warmings is real pieces that everyone needs to read about. Rather writing about global warming, which is a stronger topic to write about, I wrote about emperor penguins dealing with global warming, to show the effect of it existing.

The fourth CLO explains how students are to engage in social aspects of writing. Social aspects can mean talking for a group project which we performed as our last assignment besides this one. The grant proposal allowed me and 2 other to agree and work on a project to fund for. Each of us discussed what we will be focusing on, like having a sandwich, where one is the bottom bread, meat, and the top bread. All together made our grant proposal whole. We communicated through texting, in class, and phone calls in what to do next or for asking help on our parts. Compared to other group works that didn’t have our instructor pushing social aspects, this one went very well and was quite fun.

The fifth CLO discusses learning about genre and planning out a topic that can be fitting. This can revert back to the third CLO as the class learned how to write an Op-Ed. During class, we read over two Op-Eds, showing how opinionated it is but at the same time having sources to prove the statements. Lessons about it helped us to understand what the purpose of an Op-Ed is about. Not to forget, in all of our assignments, at the beginning everyone had time to find a topic to write about in class.

The sixth CLO puts importance on having a stance in all of our writings. Stance the position where you stand when there are oppositions in your writing piece. All of our writings had stance, besides the interview. In the Op-Ed, my stance was to support emperor penguins against climate change. In my arts review, my stance was to prove how Cowboy Bebop is a classic anime. Finally, in the grant proposal project, our stance was that CCNY is in ruins and changes needed to be made, explained in our abstract.

The seventh CLO explores in finding sources to strengthen our writing pieces. In my arts review, I thought it would be difficult to find sources since I never wrote about a show. Luckily, in Wikipedia, I found where its sources came from by heading to the reference and found interviews about the director of Cowboy Bebop which allowed me to complete my essay. Since our class did the interview assignment first, it was easy for me to fly through Cowboy Bebop’s interview and find out the questions and answers.

The eighth and final CLO goes over students practicing in using sources by citing without plagiarizing. I usually stick with paraphrasing unless the quote short and very important. But longer details are summarized shorter so I can add in my analysis as that is what is most important.

In conclusion, these CLO have opened my senses in writing for English even further. The introduction of new writing topics sounded a bit scary at first, but with the navigation of our instructor, I managed to get by pretty well. I enjoyed the arts review the most since it opens up a lot of topics one can choose from. This will allow me to work even better in my future English courses.