Sarah Mendez
FIQWS
Ms. Miller & Ms. Nagales
12/10/19
Self-Reflection
Throughout the 4 phases of this semester I’ve learned a lot about language, what it means to not only myself but others. Like Lippi green, June Jordan, Robert MacNeil and many many more. I’ve learned about how others views about language and how it effects the youth and their ideas about language. I’ve learned about how to relate language myths and ideas to everyday life. Being able to disprove and learn more about the way’s that language is used to symbolize status, intelligence, and value in America. In this essay I just want to reflect on this whole semester and take a look at how I’ve either achieved or attempted to achieve the important course outcomes.
During Phase 1 we read a lot about people’s experiences with language, how it shaped their views and how dialects of certain languages are seen as better than others. Through those pieces I was able to do the first course outcome. Which was “Recognize the role of language attitudes and standards in empowering, oppressing, and languages and their users”. For example, through June Jordan’s personal narrative, where she speaks about racial issues and how it plays a role in a languages value. Different dialects, in English specifically, are shown as worse than others. She herself attempts express these ideas that the standard has over other versions of English, in her case it was black English. Jordan during the end of the narrative shows the struggle that Black people have to face when using black English. Her and her class are in the predicament of whether to use standard English or black English. No one will listen to them if they use black English, because it’s not as valued as the standard is and for many its seen as an uneducated way of speaking. The standard is seen as intelligent and if they’re able to speak that standard they’ll have some sort of voice in society. While Amy Tan speaks about the opposite, she speaks on how empowering and creative it is to use English in forms other than the standard. Her mother’s English while being incorrect in many people’s eyes was perfect to her and through her struggles as a young girl with seeing her mother’s languages as something, she called imperfect. To seeing it as a creative form of the English language using basic phrases to get her point across in a unique way. She also saw her mother and how intelligent she was even if she couldn’t speak with the standard. Proving that language use doesn’t inherently mean that the person is unintelligent. The personal narratives allowed me to see that these events happen very often, and with the rhetorical situation I was able to get a better grasp of the pieces of work. Which leads me to the next course outcome “Explore and analyze in their own and others writing a variety of genres and rhetorical situations”, with that I was able to identify the purpose these writings had. Being able to see the context of a piece such as the time that they were created in was an important tool to show the struggles and other factors that effected the writer as well as their ideas on the topic. As well as their purpose for writing the narrative, which helped me invent my own story. By figuring out my purpose I was able to find the meaning behind what I was writing without just writing aimlessly about a specific topic and I was able to achieve 5 on the course outcomes “Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations”.
Phase 2 was an exploratory essay, where we selected a specific topic and found evidence in order to prove the point, as well as explain a way that would help improve the circumstance that we wrote about. Mine specifically was about how language discrimination effects children and their views on language and what ways that it could be improved. In this essay I was able to achieve course outcome number 6 “Develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes”
There were plenty of times where we were able to help revise each other’s pieces, which really helped with being social enabling me to get more in depth with my ideas and get more involved with the piece itself. As well as learning new ideas or new ways to change my piece to better my thesis plus new things to add that would either be good points or good pieces of evidence. It also allowed me to have a better grasp of who I want my audience to be, concentrating it more toward a specific group of people. Because this essay was a research essay number 8 “Locate research sources in the library’s databases or achieves an on the internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, and bias.” Came into an effect a lot of the time. While using the databases I learned how to use keywords more effectively, picking out specific words in the search box that would help me find what I was looking for. For me personally it was much easier to look up what I wanted through the google search bar and adding Jtsor or one search at the beginning or end, just so that the variety in works weren’t so broad. For example, it would look for things that had those words in the title, so there would be a lot more pieces of literature that weren’t what I was looking for. Through the lesson that we had on those two specific databases I felt like it better helped me understand how the computer search worked, it was hard to use at times though for reasons stated before, but I was still an important tool. For number 4 in the course outcomes “Practice systematic application of citation conventions” I am still unclear and unsure if I properly applied citations because of the different ways that they could implemented into the essay, sometimes you can state something and site it without quotes around the statement and other times it was better to put quotes over it. I also felt It was hard to pick whether to take a specific line or paraphrase the whole statement itself. I think that it’s something that I still need to improve on, but it will get easier with time and constant use. I’m not sure if I properly applied the citations into my essay, and I feel that I still have a lot to learn about the different ways of citing as well.
For me, it felt like Phase 3 went by fast, and it felt like it was the hardest to write out of all the essays. Just because we had to take two things, a myth and real events or pieces of media, that weren’t exactly related to each other and connect them together. Not only for this essay but most of the essays I liked to plot out my pieces which goes into the 3rd course outcome “Develop strategies and reading, drafting, revising, and editing”.
Through structuring my essay before the drafting process I’m able to lay out what I plan on doing throughout the whole essay. I can plot out the entire essay from what I want the introduction to include about that topic, to the first few body paragraphs and how I want them to flow into the conclusion. Then the conclusion where I take everything, I’ve learned from writing the essay and evaluate what needs to be changed about the topic or how a certain topic impacts the world.
Through this final phase I’m learning how to make a website and put all my works that I’ve done throughout the whole semester. Which would give more people an opportunity to see my work and take what they want from it and either learn something disagree and so on. This website would expand my audience to anyone who has access to the internet. I’m able to share my feelings on the certain topics that we talked about. Which I feel means I achieved number 7 “Understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audience” on the list.
Finally, I wanted to talk about what I felt I personally had problems with that aren’t on the course outcomes. For me time management is a big problem that I had and have still. I feel if I spent more time on each piece and putting in the upmost effort into everyone, they would have come out good. For the REE specifically I should have put more time into finding good pieces of evidence that would have helped prove the point a little better or pick something that wasn’t so specific. Its important to reflect and learn from what I’ve experienced, and I hope to keep improving on my writing for years to come.
