reflecton paper
4/29/2018
English 101
Final Reflection Paper
I had just previously finished English 90 before starting this class for second semester. When this class started I thought it was going to be essay after essay but even though it didn’t have a lot of essay there were a lot of small things that collectively made the class hard to do. Somethings that I will be talking about that I improved, stayed the same, or didn’t improve on is writing, communication, and reading. Writing for me in this class was a lot different than any other English class I did. I did a lot of responding, breaking down what happened, and filtering out what ideas where in the text or video etc. that we were looking at. Communication in this class for me didn’t get better because the professor never really looked up at the students and didn’t always explain things clearly if asked a question or just at the beginning of the class. Reading, it didn’t come to a surprise that I would be doing a lot of reading for an English class so, when I did all those discussion board assignments it constantly kept me thinking about whatever it was we were doing that day. For example, when we had to figure out ethos, pathos, and logos in a speech. Throughout this semester I feel that because the professor’s inability to keep communication as a priority, but always having the class thinking with nearly daily discussion board problems, and writing nearly daily helped me improve in two of the three main ideas.
When it comes to the Rhetorical Knowledge category, the outcomes had a positive effect on my progression throughout the semester. First, analyze and respond to the needs of different audiences and rhetorical contexts, throughout the semester. I have seen and done this because of the discussion board but also because the movie critic assignment on the movie Black Panther. In my movie critic I say “The director of this movie Ryan Coolger gives a different aspect to movie making with the cast of this movie being mostly African American with only two key characters being white. The way Ryan Coolger puts the architectural and technological advances in this movie visually really puts an image in my head of a true fantasy world that anyone would want to be a part of”. In this I sum up how the director Ryan Coolger really does a great job introducing aspects into a movie well awaited. I show how much I know this category with my in-depth unwrapping and explaining of the key reasons why this movie did so good. For this outcome making rhetorical choices consistent with a controlling purpose. I can show you when I worked on my personal essay. For this part of my essay I said, “I immediately screamed as I saw a stick in my right hand with blood everywhere”. I put this in my essay because I first started off with how traumatic of an experience it was. I feel this shows how I dealt with this outcome. lastly, recognize basic elements of persuasive and argumentative writing (appeals, claims, reasons, evidence, etc.). With the two artifacts that I have I have nothing to show how well or not that I did this but for my position paper I feel that I did ok on this sense I got an A on the paper.
Critical Thinking/ Reading was probably one of the more harder categories for me to improve on over the semester. One of this categories outcome was read texts actively and analytically, identifying the purpose(s) and audience(s) for which a given text has been constructed. This outcome had a good effect on me because of my movie critic assignment on the Black Panther movie. When I said, “This Plot is giving this movie outstanding revenue at almost $400 million, that’s $200 million over their movie budget” and “All the ideas shown by the director Ryan Coolger explains why this movie got a staggering 97% on rotten tomatoes”. In these examples you can see that I explain how because of what was in the movie showed extremely good results. As for making informed connections and distinctions among others' ideas as well as between one's own ideas and those of others, I feel that because of my movie critic I performed adequately. When I said, “The Black Panther movie has loads of fighting, comedy that is on the same demographic as its viewers, and drama that got me and will get others watching this movie off their seat every time they watch this movie”. As you can see I showed a distinction in the aspects in the movie and what that will do to the person watching the movie. Lastly, Understand knowledge and information as existing within a broader situational and cultural context. When it comes to this I don’t think I did this this semester with the two artifacts that I have.
The researching/ writing category I feel had a little improvement on me because I already have a strong idea on the category. one of the outcomes was to Understand and practice writing as a recursive and strategic process, utilizing prewriting/invention, drafting, revising, and editing. With my personal essay I utilized this outcome when I looked over it again to edit anything that seemed wrong. What I saw where all these grammar errors that if I didn’t look at before my essay would sound wrong every so often. For understanding the collaborative nature of writing, and demonstrate the ability to critique one's own work and the work of peers. I fell that I met this outcome because every time we did a big assignment we would critique others. For example, in our personal essays, we all had to critique other classmate’s essays. The last outcome learn the basics of academic research, I feel that I meet this outcome because of my midterm essay where I got 4 different sources. I learned how and where to get good credible sources, how to make them in the right format, and how to analyze them.
Throughout the semester in class we very often had discussions on many things so with all that and more the Academic Writing Conventions category had much improvement for me. For the last category the outcome, understand what it means to join an academic "conversation" on a topic. In class it felt like everyday we would go on the discussion board and talk with the people around us about the topic at hand. For example, when we were coming up with our ideas we had a talk with the person next to us about what we were going to talk about. Another outcome would be use conventions of structure, style, grammar, mechanics, and format appropriate to the rhetorical situation. For the personal essay I used or at least tried my best to use proper format, grammar, etc. with every paragraph. To show for this I said in my personal essay” My brother and I decided to go to their house, a couple houses down, because it was a nice day out (had to be in the summertime), barely a breeze, and they were the only kids that were around my brother and I’s age”. This shows me including my commas in the right way and the certain style of explaining what I was doing.
Throughout this semester I feel that because the professor’s inability to keep communication as a priority, but always having the class thinking with nearly daily discussion board problems, and writing nearly daily helped me improve in two of the three main ideas. This semester there have been a lot of ups and downs academically for me but, I feel that I learned a great deal more from when I started out in the semester. If I have to learn anything from my mistakes it would be to take more out of what I get for research and critically think more thoroughly and accurately.







