At the beginning of a semester there is always a set of goals or targets that we as students are guaranteed to meet. In this semester of English 110 we were given a set of outcomes that we had to meet in our several writing assignments. Some of those outcomes were Developing strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing. Secondly, Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations and lastly 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.
At the beginning of the semester, when it came to drafting, revising and editing, I wasn’t all that good at it. I would struggle when it came to revising/editing others’ work as I couldn’t give any useful advice to my peers. But slowly throughout the semester we did a lot of group work, almost everyday where we would sit down in small groups and look over each other’s work and give feedback. Those little group sessions definitely helped me improve my ability to better look over others’ work and provide feedback. Not only that but I was also able to correct certain mistakes of others’ work and alongside that I was able to better understand and critique my own written drafts by the end of semester as well.
Before taking this class I didn’t know much about rhetorical terms and how to incorporate them in my writing, I didn’t even know that they existed in pretty much all my writings. We started the semester with going over rhetorical terms and several ways to put them together in our writing. We went over several readings, identifying all the rhetorical terms. We also did practice writing on how to incorporate different rhetorical terms in our writings and what’s the correct way to use them. Constant and different methods of practice with rhetorical terms has helped me to better understand and use these terms. Now when I look back at my writing or read others’ writing I can easily identify all these different rhetorical terms.
Although I did have some knowledge on researching and evaluating the credibility of certain journals, magazines, newspapers, etc, I wasn’t quite accurate or spot on with it. Sometimes I misjudge, get lost or take very long to figure out which article is reliable. Throughout this semester we did a couple of papers in which we had to use multiple sources and we had to make sure that those sources were hundred percent trustworthy. Alongside that we also did practice identifying reliable sources with our peers. Every time we looked over some article, we were taught to identify who the author is, when was this written, why was it written, how much information is provided, etc to help us determine the reliability of the article. At the end of semester, I can say that now I have a much better understanding of identifying the reliability of certain articles than I did before.
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