Self Assessment

Self-Assessment Essay

Miguel Infante

The City College of New York

5/17/20

Over the course of English 21007, all of the students in that class, including me, have worked on our and each other’s writing in order to complete different assignments that make up the semester’s work. Each of us had our own method of approaching and completing the assignments. Self and peer reviews were done to see what in our writing could be edited to bring improvements. In the end, our method and style of writing would become more advanced in some way. The works completed also made me and my peers think about how well we understood and completed our class objectives, and also how we further evolved as writers.

In English 21007, there were Course Learning Objectives so that we could see if we had met them or not in the assignments and activities me and my peers did for the class. The first objective was to acknowledge individual linguistic differences to better understand each-others writing. The second objective is to enhance our writing, reading, and assessment strategies. The third is to negotiate our writing goals in order to adhere to the audience’s expectation when they read our paper. The fourth is to develop and participate in collaborative writing. The fifth objective was to analyze various forms of composition to write in different disciplines. The sixth is to have stances in writing and the seventh is to use every resource available to complete the assignment. Lastly, the eighth learning objective was to strengthen our practices when using sources such as annotation and citation.

The first assignment that the class had to complete was the Letter of Introduction not shown in the portfolio. In it, students would introduce themselves to each other and the professor. We each read our own letters and get an understanding of what our writing looked like. Some people had grammatical issues and others had some skewed sentences that were confusing to read on my end. Through this, I got a sense of how my classmates wrote their words and acknowledged their linguistic differences as mentioned in the first course learning objective. Each time peer review would be done between individuals, the style of writing would be kept in mind to offer constructive criticism on what would have to be done to better what was being worked on.

After the first assignment of the introductory letter, the Technical Description followed. The Technical Description involved describing an object precisely and holistically in its components, processes, and mechanisms. The object I chose to describe was the steam engine – an iconic product of engineering. Before starting it, I thought I could just look at something informative about it on how it works and go off into the assignment from there. However, this was a fallacy because each informative description was different. I then had to devise a strategy for generalizing the description of a steam engine. I found similarities in the description of the steam engine in between each informative description and generalized the properties of a steam engine. I had met the second objective by improving a portion of my planning skills when starting an assignment off. I made sure to collect enough information to know what I was going to write about in the Technical Description.

Not too many people know how a steam engine works and most have only surface knowledge of what actually happens. I needed to find a way for the audience to follow the description on how it works. For this, I described the components in a specific order. I then described the steam engine process where each of the components worked with each other in the order that I described them in. I put the third learning objective into practice in order not to confuse the audience too much on how the steam engine works by writing in an ordered flow of description. My goal was to describe the steam engine according to how I saw it and I considered how the audience would view my writing in their perspective.

The third assignment done in the semester of English 21007 was the Formal Lab Analysis. In it, the elements that went into two research papers such as the introduction and abstract were analyzed carefully and compared with each other. Purposes behind why the authors of the research paper wrote it in their way were also considered. When analyzing both lab reports, confusion and difficulty reading arose since there were bulk amounts of complex sentences. A part of the assignment was to practice annotating and my method in doing so was to annotate an entire sentence without looking at each word. This didn’t work quite effectively as the annotations didn’t translate the words properly. I then started to define complex terms off to the side of the annotation to better understanding. Through this, I had reached the eighth course learning objective by strengthening the practices done when looking at sources of information. More comprehensible annotations were created by me and writing the analysis became easier for such complex research papers.

Through an understanding of the eighth course learning objective, the fifth objective was put into practice. The lab analysis involved analyzing two lab reports written differently by their authors. They were written for different audiences in respect with the subject area of the research paper. For me, analyzing each composition took different levels of attention. The research paper for improving nutrient content in plants was more complex and had greater amounts of variables than the paper studying the Taiwan strait fault. Translating what was written in the papers into simpler terms to allow the audience to understand the context and information of them led to what I wrote down for my analysis.

The biggest assignment me and everyone had to face was the Engineering Proposal. An engineering innovation was the be proposed by a group working together. Research and brainstorming for the proposal were all done online. Internet and app resources were used in order to create the paper and presentation. The first and seventh objectives are already achieved here again with everyone carrying out plans being made and using electronic resources to do so. Everyone had a part as the engineering proposal was group effort. Since it was collaborative, the fourth objective was realized by everyone. it was also achieved before the Engineering Proposal in the form of peer review when everyone socialized in order to provide criticism to each-others’ work. In the Engineering Proposal assignment, I wrote about how my group’s product was superior to that of the competition. In doing so, I took a stance in writing and proved that our product was better than those similar to it. The sixth course learning objective had been met by doing this by taking a stance through writing.

In each writing assignment done, I feel that every objective was met along the way of writing in the time it took to complete the assignments. Each of them were made so that different course learning objectives could be met as explained. It feels as if the objectives and my time spent writing had somewhat improved my skills in writing. In my las semester in English 1100, my answer to the question of “What is writing?” is that it is a form of memory. People write things down so that they won’t lose their ideas or let them die. This answer was strengthened through a typical practice that I did for all of my assignments that every writer also does. – outlining. Through all of the assignments, I have constantly started an outline in order to finish the paper quickly. I started every paper off from the top of my head but I started to slow down in coming up with ideas along the way. The flow is lost because of me running out of mental endurance in order to see what I should write in order to connect one sentence to another and I forget my ideas. Outlining has eliminated this in nearly all of my writing. To add on to remembering the ideas that I wrote down, a clear structure of organization can come out of outlining. My perception of writing may yet to change but in that perception is always the practice and value of outlining. Even this self-assessment was outlined for completion.