Mahir Shahriar
ENGL 11000
Phase 4 Final Self-Assessment Essay
I came into this semester of English not expecting much. I always struggled in English classes for varying reasons. I’ve always had difficulty writing essays and papers, and I always operated in a manner that there was always a right answer and a wrong answer. English classes always rode the line between right and wrong, using your creativity to create an answer that was neither right nor wrong. But I also knew this class was just a freshman introductory course for ELA. My upperclassmen said that the class was nothing too big and we wouldn’t do much. As time would have it though, this class would be a struggle for me. The writing we did had much higher standards than those that I did in high school and often took hours on end to complete. At the beginning of the course, we were presented with the course objectives, and through the coursework, we were tasked with meeting those objectives to the best of our ability.
One of the objectives we were tasked with was to see how attitudes toward linguistic standards empower and oppress language users. I believe that I achieved this objective very well as some of the works we read resonated heavily with me. The pieces of literature we read at the beginning of the semester such as June Jordan’s “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and The Future Life of Willie Jordan” and Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” brought into perspective how the way someone speaks, regardless of how hard they try to show their emotions and relay their intentions. The standard of “white English” being normal and all other forms of English being wrong causes prejudice. Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” highlighted this best for me. The story of her mom getting discriminated against at the hospital due to her “broken” English resonated with me as my parents also did not have the best English back then, and they too were sometimes subject to discrimination.
Our next objective was to explore and analyze writing and reading a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. While I believe I achieved the aspect of reading and analyzing a variety of genres quite well, my analysis of rhetorical situations could be much better. Even with the worksheets’ help, I struggled to set up the rhetorical situations and find key information to complete them. Through time, I was able to improve at setting them up but I still do not believe that my proficiency in doing so is up to par with the expectations you set for us. The texts we read throughout the semester covered a variety of genres, we read personal narratives, essays, and poems, and watched speeches in the form of TedTalks. While these are all very different genres, the authors were all able to convey a similar message from similar experiences regarding language and its effect on the perception of a person, mainly showing how it can negatively represent a person, regardless of who they are and what they are trying to convey. Reading these texts allowed my understanding of language to grow, as I never really thought of language as affecting someone’s public perception, I always thought of it as just a standard on how people communicate.
The third goal was to develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing. I believe I hit the mark for this objective. While my strategies for reading have stayed the same, I always enjoyed reading so it was always a strong point and I never needed to change my approach to it. My strategies in drafting, however, have changed. Before when I would go to the draft, I just wrote random ideas down, most of which were wrong and that would eventually get scrapped in the final version. Now I start with bullet points, trying to come up with my main points and ideas before I write. In terms of revising and editing that draft, I often write my second draft as if it’s the final version of the paper, putting my all into it. Then I put it through Grammarly to clear any mistakes, then I wait a couple of hours, maybe a day before I look at it again. When I go to look at it, I read it aloud to myself as my writing style is very similar to how I speak. If I say something and it doesn’t sound right, I know where to fix and improve.
Our fourth goal was to recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations. This is an objective that I do not believe I’ve made sufficient progress in. Over the semester, I’ve consistently struggled with this even with the help of all the different worksheets. After weeks of doing it, I feel that my proficiency in recognizing and practicing key rhetorical terms and situations has improved, however, I feel that I am not adequately proficient at it to consider this goal to have been met. That does not mean that I do not plan on continuing practice on this. Utilizing rhetorical strategies greatly helps with the comprehension of the text and its deeper meaning, and properly learning how to do so will greatly aid me in the future.
Our last learning objective for this class was to adequately understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences. This is the objective that I believe I was most able to meet. I am someone who gravitates toward numbers, statistics, and research. Digital technologies such as Google Scholar helped connect me to research studies and academic journals easily and while I was introduced to it for the research paper we had to write, I definitely will continue to use it. I’m someone who enjoys research and learning more, and Google Scholar gives me easy access to accredited research studies and academic journals I can learn from. For this reason, I felt both extremely proud of my research essay and also quite ashamed. Those adjectives are quite contradictory, but the research paper was the first chance I had to do lots of hard research on a specific topic. I think for the first research paper I’ve ever written, it was quite good, but my passion for research was not satiated with that paper. I wanted to do more research, refine the paper more, and make it better, and I know I definitely could have if it were not for circumstances out of my control.
For the most part, this class was one of the most impactful English classes I’ve ever had. Most of the time, I go through English courses not learning much, not connecting to the texts, and not being proud of the work I was producing. This class was different, however. The work I was doing was meaningful and I was reading texts like Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue”, that I could connect with. I learned a new perspective on language and literature that deeply changed how I see works of literature and the rhetorical strategies I learned revolutionalize the analysis of texts. The course objectives of exploring and analyzing writing and reading a variety of genres and rhetorical situations, discerning how attitudes toward linguistic standards empower and oppress language users, developing strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing, recognizing and practicing key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations, and understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences; they all were put in place to help us grow as readers and writers. While I may not have proficiently met a couple of these objectives to a high enough degree, I can unquestionably say that I have grown as a reader and writer.
