Karielle Echavarria 

English 21001

Dr. Kelly Lemons 

Reflection Letter Based on the Course Learning Outcomes

Throughout the course I have been learning and applying all of the course learning outcomes and its requirements in all of my assignments, tasks and observations. We will go through how I have met and understood these course learning outcomes throughout the semester. As well as reviewing ways in which I have not met them and in what ways I could better understand them and apply them to my writing. To begin with the first course learning outcome which is, acknowledging yours and others linguistic differences as resources to then draw on those resources to better my rhetorical sensibility. I have understood and completed this learning outcome various times throughout this semester. One of the main tasks I’ve done in relation to this is peer review. Peer review for all of my drafts allowed for me to understand and see how different people write from me as well as seeing my writing from an outside perspective. I read other classmates’ papers and helped them better their papers and even give them ideas they can build off of and improve. From this I was even able to use my own advice for them on my own writing and make sure I wasn’t making the same writing mistakes as they were.  This allowed for me to visualize writing from an academic evaluation standpoint to better improve my own writing. Most importantly though, I saw my writing from an outsider’s perspective and utilized this to look at my own writing strategy and other writing strategies and better my own rhetorical sensibility based on them. Another important thing I used to improve my rhetorical sensibility through visualizing linguistic differences is doing our rhetorical worksheets based on the Mother tongue, and should writers use their own english readings. These two readings helped me understand that I should be able to be more free with my writing and understand that the way I talk and write is a viable way of expressing myself and I shouldn’t confine my rhetorical strategies to societal norms. I visualized how rhetorical strategies in my own and others writings are just as effective in getting our writing across and are uniquely beautiful.

 This learning outcome can be in direct connection to the second learning outcome which is the enhancing strategies in revising, editing, and self-assessment. Peer review is a major effective strategy in enhancing my revising, editing, as well as self assessment because it allows me to be able to evaluate and edit my writing based on the suggestions of my peers. Most of all it helped me self-assess my writing and see the recurring suggestions other classmates in different breakout rooms always point out. It helped me understand the things I needed to work on as a writer. An underrated strategy that I used in class that helped me better my writing was using my notebook to draft out my writing beforehand. Being able to create things like topic idea maps, it helped me define my writing and all its topics. This connects me to the topic of negotiating my own writing goals and audience expectations because in creating topic idea maps and writing out drafts in my notebook I was able to negotiate the writing strategies I wanted to carry in my creative writing efforts as a result of brainstorming. I also chose to negotiate what my fellow classmates suggested in my writing with what I believed was the right writing choice based on my own natural linguistic approach. 

Engaging and developing in the collaborative and social aspects of the writing process was deeply involved with peer review and discussions with my classmates on blackboard and in the breakout rooms. As well as commenting on each other’s collages as a social writing process activity.  Peer review collaboration and its social aspects allowed for me to enhance my writing and also connect  with my classmates. Being able to bounce off of each other’s ideas and suggestions helped me grow as a writer and evolve in my rhetorical strategies. When me and my classmates posted collages on blackboard and gave each other nice encouraging comments it really boosted morale and helped us understand that we can be free in our creative writing efforts and people will still get our message. Another Important amazing outcome that came from the social writing process was going on zoom breakout rooms and discussing our rhetorical worksheets and the readings that came with it. It was interesting to see other peoples interpretations of the reading and better helped me understand the readings better since I could gather different perspectives. 

Multi modal composing was one of the most funnest aspects of the writing process in this class. I was able to explore effective writing strategies to form a stance in all of my writings and works. Notebook pages were a significant process in the multimodal composing writing process, we were able to journal, jot down, brainstorm, and even draw up some ideas that were based on our writing process. We were able to plan our writing across effectively and this made me more organized in the writing process which allowed for me to transform my writing to be more concise. The brainstorm pages in the notebooks as well as the topic idea maps really carried out my rhetorical writing efforts, themes, and strategies to life in my writings. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing how the notebook pages transformed themselves into real works of art that I’m fondly proud of. I was also able to carry my writing into new rhetorical strategies that I’m not so equipped for. In my frida Khalo research paper I was able to transform that research paper into a poem that represented it well. I wasn’t confident at first writing a poem but I knew that adding this detail into my writing would concise greatly with my theme and message of who frida Khalo was as a person. That’s what I found this class to be mainly about becoming free and liberated with my artistic choices and decisions. Everything that I did in this class is to learn how to be a better writer with what I already know and let myself fully express myself. This is actually really ironic because my paper was based on how Frida Khalo was unapologetically herself when it came to her writing and she didn’t care if she went against societal roles in her art as long as it was real and true to her she bravely pursued it. This topic taught in two different ways helped me better grasp and learn the closure learning outcomes but also be able to understand kahlo’s impact in a much better way because I was going through it as well. 

One key thing to being a “good” writer is to know how to cite and how to find reputable sources. Throughout the course I learned how to do that by understanding that I can’t have really long quotes in my readings. I can use a short quote or really just paraphrase and it will still be enough to go with my context and defend my claim clearly. I learned this through peer review by seeing it in others writing and as well as how redundant and long some quotes of mine sounded. I was able to strengthen my source and citing practices by ensuring I was looking up reputable sources like journal articles from JSTOR or using online research in my paper to help me get my point across more effectively. I learned how to find reputable sources that got my message across just as easily without the need for a long block quote. As much as I have learned and evaluated in this course there are many other things I could have done to better help me as a writer and enhance my rhetorical writing skills and one of those it that I should have used more sources that from JSTOR rather than the internet in my Frida Khalo research paper. I used two internet based research papers and they were from a reputable source. I did make sure that it’s just that I found some really good JSTOR sources that I would’ve loved to work with. I just didn’t want to overbear the research paper with too many quotes. I think that I could have found a way to use these sources without overloading the paper. I believe I got in my head about how to be able to use writing sources efficiently and that went against one of the major liberty themes I was taught in the course learning outcomes and class structure. Overall though I was still able to evaluate the errors in my writing because this class provided me with the course learning processes that helped me evolve as a reader, writer, and overall become a more freer creative person. 

Below I have provided some notebook pages that show how I have met the course learning outcomes: