Throughout all of my English classes, this has been the class that has been the most useful for me, although it also being the hardest. I feel like I’ve achieved and got taught many new topics in the past 4 months, like learning how to write a research essay, how to analyze a text/video, and write on what kind of rhetorics they used, and lastly using some rhetorics myself with a few stories about me in the literacy narrative assignment.

The rhetorical situation assignment Safwatt Saleem’s video on “Why I keep speaking up, even when people mock my accent” helped me achieve the first learning objective on “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.” It helped me achieve this because I needed to explain the different language challenges that he had as a kid and also as an adult.

For the second learning objective “Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations,” the second phase “The Rhetorical Analysis Essay” helped me achieve it with Safwatt Saleem’s video. To summarize, my essay states “He used an incredible amount of rhetorical strategies in his presentation. Not only of what people thought was normal and the jokes used in his story.” (1) It helped me achieve it because we needed to view and understand the rhetorics in the video/reading that we chose to do our essay for.

In general, the peer reviews throughout the entire class helped me achieve the third learning objective on “Develop[ing] strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing.” During the peer reviews, we needed to collaborate and read each other’s writings, revise their writings, and edit them for them by giving feedback on them. 

The second phase “The Rhetorical Analysis Essay” also helped me achieve the fourth learning objective “Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations.” Similar to the second learning objective, we needed to observe and understand the rhetorics in the text/video of the author/presenter that we chose.

For the fifth learning objective “Engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes,” the pier reviews for the class helped me achieve this. Similar to the third learning objective, we needed to collaborate and socialize with each other and give feedback in the peer reviews.

The research essay from the third phase helped me achieve the sixth learning objective, “Understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences.” For the research essay, we needed to find evidence that related to our topic and supported our stance on our opinion, as shown in the quote from my essay, “Similarly, researcher Kirsten Drotner’s and author Sonia Livingstone’s chapter of a textbook addresses the topic of video games and argues that they could be used in the learning environment and help strengthen the brain’s functions.” (2) this was to show the audience different kinds of supporting details.

Similarly, for the seventh learning objective “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,” the research essay from the third phase also helped me achieve this because we needed to use evidence that was credible for our essay and was accurate for our topic.

Likewise, the research essay from the third phase also helped me achieve the eighth learning objective, “Compose texts that integrate your stance with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation.”  For my essay, we needed to take a stand on which side of an argument we were on for the research essay and needed to use sources and make summaries of those sources. We also needed to analyze the sources in order to make an argument.

Last but not least, once again the third phase helped me achieve the ninth and final learning objective, “Practice systematic application of citation conventions.” Although we were doing citations since phase 1, I felt that the research essay really helped me achieve the application of citations since we were using professional ways to do citations. As shown in my essay (2), it shows that I added a “works cited” page, something that I have never done, and I also used it for this self-assessment essay to cite the works that I did.

Works Cited

(1) Grullon, Guelimanuel. “The Rhetorical Analysis Essay.” 2021. 

(2) Grullon, Guelimanuel. “Research Essay.” 2021.