Reayanul Haque

Professor Alyssa Yankwitt

Writing for Social Science 

Self- Assessment Reflective Essay.

17th May 2020.

Writing is an important part of college life. Every student needs strong writing skills to succeed in their life and it is not different for me. When I am writing an essay, I try to reach my audience. In my essays, I used tons of difficult words with knowing the meaning of them to make my essay unique from others. I knew I could write an essay, but my strengths were limited which I needed to fix to write a cohesive strong essay. In this class, I wrote three different papers which included different types of strategies, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing. 

My first paper was a personal artifact essay. The purpose of the essay was to share my story with the reader of how my grandfather was so inspirational to me and taught me so many techniques about cricket. The primary goal of this essay was to let the readers know that you will get success if you work hard enough and be passionate about it. For this essay, I used my life experience with the use of sensory details and more visible for my audience. The targeted audience was the people who also cherish memories and things of their loved ones. And cherish the valuable things they taught us. In my first draft, I made so many mistakes with punctuation, grammar, and organization. I have noticed I used vague language that was hard to understand. I tried to fix my mistakes on my final draft which later was submitted and graded on. 

My next assignment was an interview essay based on an unbiased topic. The essay was based on my partner’s artifact topic which was about DACA. For this assignment, I had to interview my partner to get to know things about DACA which was very interesting. I get to know my partners very closely while interviewing her. I did not know so many things about DACA which I got to know after interviewing her. DACA is a program that deports undocumented immigrants from the United States. I got to know how the application process works for DACA recipients, how my partner and her family struggled with their life and education. The first step was to interview and then write a cohesive and extended essay about the interview. I included my opinion about the topic and incorporated my partner’s opinion about being DACA recipients. In the rough draft for this essay, I used too much information and asked some questions that my partner was not comfortable answering. Also, the transitioning of the paper was not good enough. I tried to fix my mistakes for the final draft and the reflection. However, peer reviews from my classmates and professor also helped me to get to know my mistakes and helped me to write a better draft. 

Lastly, I did the position paper which was based on the artifact topic I chose for my first essay. This paper included an argument of the cons of the physical and mental effects of sports. I had to choose a side for my argument and claim the side using evidence from credible sources online. I used the APA format to cite all my sources and repost the evidence. Before this assignment, I did not know how to use the APA format in my papers. My draft for this paper got plagiarized for using the direct quote from the source. My professor told me to fix my mistakes which I did later with the help of my tutor. Also, we discussed in the class about the APA format and how to use them correctly and cite the source with it. For the position paper, my first draft was sloppy, and I did not claim any argument for that. But in my final draft, I tried to fix my mistakes and claimed my argument without any obstacle. 

In this class, not only I wrote essays but also I did the reading, discussions, library sessions, peer reviews, group works, purpose, stance, brainstorming, etc. that helped me to analyze in writing and reading a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. All these assignments helped me to write better every day. I learned new techniques and how to use them in different ways and applied them to my papers. I also learned new skills using the technology, an online self-assessment portfolio, online where all my work will show that I did throughout this semester. This portfolio will help to see how much I progressed as a writer. It will comprise a personal artifact essay, an interview essay, and a position paper essay. After analyzing these documents, my professor will test my work based on the learning outcomes.

 I am sure that I developed into a writer that I was never. I feel like I explored all the course learning outcomes and demonstrate that I understood the rhetorical terms. I successfully developed skills because there were assignments that were based on different genres that touched the rhetorical situations. I tried my best to explore my thoughts, research, and communicate with the readers to fulfill the purpose of that given task. Before I had a hard time putting my thoughts in the paper, I have also made grammatical mistakes. But I think that my ability to write and express my ideas, thoughts, and knowledge has grown stronger now. English class taught me how powerful the written word and language can be. I have developed my organization, grammatical, revising, editing, and summarizing skills after this class. It took me some time to understand my mistakes, but I feel like I have done everything that was required for each paper which made my writing clearer and easier. All these learnings in this class will help in my future papers.