Reflective Self Assessment

In the beginning of the term I was assigned an essay that described me as a writer and thinker. With this essay being my first assignment, I was quite stressed with the feeling of failure. After this assignment I learned the importance of the drafting system. After my paper was graded I received it back and noticed multiple mistakes. This was the first step I practiced improving. Writing multiple drafts helped me analysis the material I wrote from another point of view. For example, I was able to eliminate sections that were unrelated from the main point. Building my vocabulary up another step I had focus as a writer and thinker. I used a combination between the dictionary and thesaurus to help me increase my vocabulary. Overtime with experience, I saw improvements in all of these categories that I was struggling

Kimora acknowledged, “I did not want to eat and her getting stern with me and making me sit at the table just made me start crying uncontrollable.”

Throughout the course English 101, I believe my writing skills have improved through understanding concepts such as rhetorical situation, purpose, audience, ethos, pathos, logos, and rhetorical analysis. Looking back at the semester, I reflect on my strengths and weaknesses. My strengths include my note taking skills and being attentive during class. Doing this, I was later able to use these notes to look back at while writing, which I found very useful. For example, for the essay Comparative Rhetorical Analysis, I took note of almost every piece of information Dr. Braun gave us, writing in the margins of the articles and highlighting important phrases. Because of this, writing came very easily to me not only for that essay but also others,

Typically, when most people think about the writing process they think of terms such as a ‘thesis statement,’ developing an outline, body paragraphs, conclusion; it’s imperative to view writing this way. We have only been taught THIS way of writing almost directly after we learned how to spell words—you decide what to write about, usually specified in the thesis statement, then you write a series of paragraphs entailing how you came to this conclusion. Finally, you conclude your paper by restating exactly what it was you spent an entire essay writing about. And most people will go their entire lives believing that is the formula for an effective, well thought-out work of literature. But how often do we go back and read through our writing and completely resent how amateur and forced it sounds? This is usually a direct result of a lack of revision within a work. Defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a change or a set of changes that corrects or improves something” and “a new version of something that has been corrected or changed,” Revision is not a common word we think of when writing—this raises a serious question: how should you revise? In response to this to this, research was conducted to find a general view as to the significance of revision within various individual’s writing processes. These results, along with research from several academic articles provide a clear description as to where revision could be

When creating a self-assessment for Student N, I wanted to generate a self-assessment that would be clear, simple, and provide beneficial information for myself and the student. The goal of my self-assessment was to involve the student in identifying their own thoughts and feelings towards reading, discover areas of strength and improvement, and encourage self-reflection of their learning. The student was asked to circle thumbs-up (always), thumbs-middle (sometimes), and thumbs-down (not yet). I prefer using the term “not yet” because it shifts the attitude as a work in progress versus a failure. After allowing the student to complete the self-assessment privately, I was able to sit down with them, take notes, and have a mini-conference to dive deeper into their responses.

This should be the same approach when editing a paper. After finishing editing a paper, always try to think about ways in which it can be improved even more. Think about this not only after writing a rough draft, but also in between writing papers. This will improve the writing process immensely and spark new ideas of how to

      Additionally, another weakness that I had when coming into English 101 was that I was a selfish writer. Like Trimble said, “His natural tendency as a writer is to think primarily of himself- hence to write primarily for himself.” (Trimble, 4) I was a writer who only cared about impressing one type of audience my professor and not writing to prove a point or expand my knowledge to several other audiences. However, after writing several unsatisfying essays I had come to realize that my style of writing was too narrow and boring. In this realization of writing I discovered that what matters the most is pleasing your audience (many not one), and

I used to consider writing as tumble words from your mind, write, read it through, fix minor mistakes, and done. However, you rarely get successful. The truth is many students, including myself, struggle with starting to write a word, or getting stuck in the middle without knowing the main point of the writing. After completing English 101, I can explain the writing process, evaluate the strengths of my essay, and identify my weaknesses.

Making revision to my rough draft was difficult but a rewarding task. At times I felt like I needed a break from my paper and I did take many breaks. Taking breaks is understandable however when an individual take breaks try to keep in mind the timeframe in which you need in order to complete the final research paper. This experience has taught me that planning is a must and sticking to the planning schedule is necessary in order to produce a grammar, well structured and organized paper.

Reflective practice is when you think about the work you have done and how well it went,

When composing an essay, or journal entry, or just plain writing, I struggle as a writer with avoiding awkward or wordy phases in my written work. This struggle is yet again based on last year’s experience and feedback from my English class. Improvement with this struggle can be made by the following strategies: reading over my paper more carefully, avoiding the use of words that sound intelligent but don’t flow with the paper, and editing my paper with peers. Recognizing this struggle and following these strategies would improve my writing.

In comparing my behavior and my cognition, I noticed that I had small difference with regards to my study habits as I had two ineffective cognitions and one ineffective and one effective behavior. I think the difference exists due to several factors that influence my cognitive process. The first is that I was in a severe car accident many years and I have trouble remembering through rote reading and memorization. This has caused me to become frustrated and self-critical, believing I cannot learn like other people. I have also found through this exercise that I have tied my self-worth to my grades. I will need to accomplish several tasks to make them more congruent in a positive way. I will need to find a more effective way to study, which will account for my impairment. The second task will be to develop a more set of positive cognitions. In order to accomplish this I will need to find my learning style, which I now believe is a combination of aural and social. The second task will involve challenging my perceptions and cognitions. I will accomplish this through making an honest self-assessment with the help of my mentor. My plan also includes making use of audio recordings

On behalf of my mother, KathleenTarburton, I would like to provide a family member statement regarding her previous downgraded assessment to her Personal Independence Payment.

My second pieces of writings (two proposals) reflected my progress in the ability to to use feedback and revise my writings which was a course goal. In this case, many rhetorical strategies were employed. Revisions weren't as simple as changing grammar and using correct punctuation (although that was something that helped me grow as a writer). A change of style was implemented from my “Cornell-styled Box Project Proposal #1” to my revision. I also used feedback I received to rewrite many parts of my rewrite. Effectively using feedback has helped me move towards the course goals since revisions were never my strong point. This usually was because I never needed to do many revisions in high school and especially since high school was much easier than now. Also, I progressed enough to understand how to use the pathos in one text and turn it into something entirely different yet arguing the same things. “The strongest feeling I received from the text Inception is the cliched saying of

The results of my self assessment were pretty accurate to what I know about myself. I have strong intrapersonal and interpersonal skills. I maintain strong relationships with others and think deeply about my life choices, goals, and ambitions. The only score that I thought would be higher was my musical score. I can play a musical instrument and I enjoy listening to music, but I don’t like to sing or play for others. Thinking back to my childhood, I was a linguistic learner. I followed directions well, if someone modeled how to do something, I could follow it and explain it back. I liked talking with someone personally to understand different concepts. The older I got, I was able to adapt to how my teachers’ taught. I had one teacher who loved using bodily-kinesthetic activities, I had other teachers who loved to sing and use logical-mathematical thinking. If I didn’t adjust to their styles of teaching, I wouldn’t have been successful in their class. I believe learning patterns can be altered because my learning pattern was altered. I’ve learned many different things from teachers who have different teaching styles. Teaching is an art and all teachers should use different teaching styles. Having a wide variety of teachers with different teaching styles made me a well rounded learner.