English 110 is a fundamental English class as it explores and breaks down pieces of literature to find the main message but more importantly, the rhetorical appeals used by authors of these texts. While I did not realize what I would be experiencing in each academic phase, the phases had their own individual focus on certain course learning objectives that have helped me achieve a higher understanding of the course goals and literature. Phase 1 opened me up to fully “recognize the role of language attitudes and standards in empowering, oppressing, and hierarchizing languages and their users, and be open to communicating across different languages and cultures.” After reading Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, I found a lot of similarities between her narrative and my personal life. Like Amy Tan speaking in her comfortable mother tongue, I too speak in my comfort language, a mix of Bangla and English. “Wassup Ma, kemon aso?” A common phrase I would tell my mom after coming back home, translating to “Wassup mom, how are you?” These minute mixes of culture were similarly reflected in Amy Tan’s essay. Even in Betel Nut is Bad Magic for Airplanes this core learning goal was highlighted, specifically the role of language attitudes in oppressing languages and their users.
The essence of this essay taught me to be more open to communicating and learning different languages, dialects, and cultures because the texts show how these socio factors create rich lives. After I had peer reviewed my peers’ works and read their personal narratives, it became evident to me how ashamed some of them were of their mother tongue, at an early age, due to condescending adult figures in their lives such as teachers. I specifically remember a story where my peer’s kindergarten teacher had discouraged them from speaking their comfort language because “This is America.” While gaining insight into my peer’s life during this peer review, I was able to really achieve the course learning outcome where you “engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes” and “develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing.” The collaborative and social aspects of the writing processes were present and more crucial during this assignment as I spoke to two other peers who shared anecdotes from their past, like my essay, and we all had a unity in similar experiences. It also led to us collaborating and leaving each other constructive criticism to make our anecdotes fulfill their purposes better. The strategies for the parts of the writing process really came down to the experience gained through this whole semester of English. It was a little challenging to navigate the best strategies for the LLN essay, but this essay gave me the most insight to improve my strategies with the parts of the writing process. The experience was especially useful for my Research Essay, where I had so many sources and could not decide on which would be best to use and which source belonged to which scientist so I developed an organizational system of labeling sources and bookmarking sources by their list number so I could refer to them easily throughout my essay.
Writing the Rhetorical Analysis Essay helped me achieve other Course Learning Outcomes considering I was able to “explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations” and “recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations.” There were other outcomes carried out in and out of class discussions, but these were the most consistent and crucial for this writing. This phase was full of texts that depended on rhetorical elements, and we would break them down in class and out of class while writing our reading responses. When the class was watching Ava Duvernay’s 13, there was a lot of discussion on how statistics were an amazing way to incorporate logos into an important documentary and show credibility. Yet, the film also balanced it out with pathos and really invoked emotions especially pity and hurt when they conveyed stories of innocent criminals who had their lives taken from them through civil injustice. This analysis was easy to pull because the rhetorical aspects of 13 were well executed for their purpose. In the RAE essay itself. I distinguished and compared the way rhetorical strategies were used by Hammad and Staples in their literature. The entire assignment was a terrific way to dissect language and literacy and how rhetorical appeals were used to deliver information about an essential theme ongoing in current events and even in our lives.
The research essay gave me a clear insight on how to effectively deliver proper evidence to help my audience understand the validity of my point. To do this, I had to “locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine, and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias.” All four criteria for evaluation were extremely important as I put together this essay because credibility speaks for itself. Credibility was a necessity as I wanted to be using reputable sources but on top of that, this is an essay that is dissecting, analyzing, and synthesizing scientific research findings so I made sure that my sources would be the content I am directly referring to. News outlets were used for the general background so my audience would be able to easily digest the information-heavy content I speak about, and I encountered many student researchers’ papers but avoided them as I considered other factors for evaluation: accuracy and bias. The accuracy behind their papers seemed questionable as I would read the abstracts and find discrepancies that would neglect the credibility of my results. Bias was clear in a few as psychedelics are a niche that some teenagers and young adults share and try to clear or enforce the stigma behind hallucinogens, but this could make some parts of my research essay invalid as I try to present scientific findings and add my separate take on psychedelics.
This essay also taught me to “compose texts that integrate your stance with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation.” All these strategies were essential when composing this essay and are expected, due to the nature of the essay. Frequently, my body paragraphs follow the same strategies to effectively deliver information that readers can understand. I set up background before introducing the information from my sources. Once I introduced the information, I summarized that information for the main takeaways my reader is trying to find. I critically analyzed the information, breaking down implications, conclusions, and further questions that the information may have had. This part was essential because I understand the value of providing analysis of the information’s importance and what is being said and created. I added some personal takes where I added my own interpretation of what was being said and then synthesized the information from sources used throughout the text. This was a step that I was not the most familiar with, so I tried to put as much effort into that strategy because I realized that synthesis is crucial for research progression. While weaving summaries, paraphrases, and quotations from multiple sources and my own knowledge and claims, I was able to connect information and strengthen claims that I presented in my essay and tried to support using evidence. Finally, we have argumentation which is, without a doubt, the essence of a research paper; you conduct research to prove something true or false or discover something new.
While the main learning outcome was the strategies used to integrate several different strategies, sources and my personal stance, this essay demanded me to practice systematic application of citation conventions as well. This course learning outcome was used in every essay and assignment, but it was especially crucial for this paper because my essay contains many thoughts and ideas of many scientists who have conducted many hours of research and deserve credit for it. After reflecting on this essay, despite the ability to choose my topic, this essay demanded my best efforts. It required me to focus on the last 3 course learning outcomes the most, which required the most writing and perfection considering the difficulty in preparing and delivering an essay that followed all the criteria in the learning outcomes. Presenting my research paper was the most prominent example of me to “understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences.” Creating visually appealing slides with the right amount of information, I was able to use PowerPoint to help teach my peers my topic, stance, research, and the relevance of the topic. With all that said, all the course learning outcomes were achieved as the curriculum was designed to target. While some course learning outcomes had more relevance than others throughout the semester, the significance of each outcome was shown when writing these 4 different essays.
