Description:
Our final project was to write a self-assessment essay. This was about our learning throughout this semester and our reflection on our progress through each assignment, and how all our work comes together into one. In this assignment, we have to make at least four clear claims about what we learned and didn’t learn from this semester. Then we support these claims by providing evidence to support them, such as quotes, examples from our previous work, and showing how we improved or what we must work on still.
My First Semester Reflection:
Cindy Nivicela
Self-Assessment Essay
English 110
Before my first semester of university, I just relied on my high school resources and previous teacher’s suggestion when it came to my writing skills. At the beginning of the semester, I struggled with using parenthetical citations properly. I often misused it and put the author’s name and page number and thought that was the same process for every kind of resource. But after countless reviews, one-to-one conversations, and being in the writing center. I paid careful attention to these habits and started to use the website that my professor recommended and used them as an advantage to improve my essay.
One of the major skills that I’ve developed throughout this semester is how to correctly use parenthetical citations. I often forget what information was needed to put inside the parentheses. When I reviewed my previous essays, I’ve noticed how I misplaced the author’s name or when it came to many authors in source I would have mentioned every single one of the author names. An example of how I used to do parenthetical citation before learning the right way was during our first project “NYC Cultural Narrative”, I noticed that when I used a YouTube video to explain cultural music, I didn’t give a proper citation. I just copied and pasted the YouTube website, thinking that’s how we’re supposed to cite YouTube videos.
(Screenshot of NYC Cultural Narrative Essay)
As time passed during this semester my professor gave me feedback, and during one of the lectures she showed us a website and taught us how to properly cite a source. The website was called “Purdue Owl”. This website taught me how to use MLA format and how to cite each different source that someone will use in an essay. After being introduced to this website I began to use the last name of the author and formatting the punctuation correctly. A recent essay that showed how my citation had improved was during my Research Essay. During my research essay I had a YouTube video as one of my sources, so I cited it differently than the citation I did during the Narrative Culture Essay.
(Screenshot of my Research Essay Citation)
This improvement shows how I developed my parenthetical citations. This shows how I became clearer when it comes to working on sources and making my writing more professional and avoiding plagiarism. Since I don’t want to get credit for another writer’s work. By improving my citation skills, I prevented plagiarism and made it clearer for the reader.
In addition, I’ve also improved in learning how to properly apply MLA formatting to my essay. In the beginning, during my first essay, I did not include a proper heading, page numbers, or 12-point Times New Roman. Although these were small details, these details were still important since they were in the format of MLA formatting. An example of this demonstration was during my NYC Cultural Narrative.
(Screenshot from NYC Cultural Narrative)
As you can see in the screenshot of the essay, it shows how the essay doesn’t have a title or the correct Font Name or double spacing. Also, it doesn’t have a header, which could confuse and look unprofessional. Throughout each lecture, draft, and review, I started to develop the correct MLA format and apply it to my recent essay and project. For example, during my Research Essay I started to use the MLA Format correctly and had a title for my research essay, which gives a hint to the reader about what the essay is about.
(Screenshot from Research Essay Draft)
From this screenshot of the recent essay, you can see the difference between the Research Essay and the NYC Cultural Narrative Essay. Also, the introduction of the essay introduces the issue clearly, and I explained why this issue matters. This improvement helped me engage the audience more and have a clear statement to avoid mis consumption. Overall, I improved when it comes to information and stating it clearly for the readers to see the topic is about English and the debate of how people could be affected by their accent of their English and how they could be viewed.
During peer reviewing, something that was common that I was suggested to do to improve my essay was to revise my topic sentences to determine what the body paragraph is about. During the NYC Cultural Narrative essay, my peers commented on how transitions between paragraphs were weak or could be improved between each body paragraph.
(Screenshot of NYC Cultural Narrative Essay Body Paragraph)
As you can see in the blue highlight in the screenshot, the transition starter jumps quickly from my family’s attitudes to the event, but I didn’t give a clear explanation why this moment matters. Since the paragraph moves from how Ecuador was talked about at home straight into the dance competition it didn’t give my audience enough time to understand what was happening around me. As I took these comments and suggestions into consideration in the Research Essay, I started to revise my topic sentences to reflect my main ideas of each body paragraph and to connect it with my thesis. I started with a new idea in my body paragraph which was accent bias in the workplace.
(Screenshot of my Research Essay Body Paragraph)
This suggestion helped me because this transition sentence helped me connect accent bias to real consequences like employment and promotion. It was an improvement because I gave a specific point and topic, except for a general topic which could confuse my readers. As a result, my writing started to focus and help guide my reader to understand my statement and the ideas I was implying.
To improve my essay, one area I should improve is reducing repetition between my introduction and conclusion. During my NYC Cultural Narrative Essay my introduction was about my personal experience about my identity experience during my childhood and started during my 3rd grade.
(Screenshot of NYC Cultural Narrative Essay Introduction)
It describes how I felt lost and unsure about my Ecuadorian heritage compared with of my classmates. But during my conclusion I mentioned a change of myself after the experience.
(Screenshot of NYC Cultural Narrative Essay Conclusion)
The conclusion was a reflection about me and my personal growth. It also shows how my aunt taught me about my culture and shows how I have grown into someone who can express my identity as a first-generation Ecuadorian college student. However, in my Research Essay, my conclusion and introduction seemed to repeat the statement and lacked growth or reflection after gathering information from scholarly resources.
(Screenshot of my Research Essay Introduction)
In the introduction, it was about how there are communities that favor Standard English, which causes bias and unequal treatment of people with different accents, even though they speak the same language. The issue is that while revising my conclusion of my essay there seems to be repeating my statement twice.
(Screenshot of my Research Essay Conclusion)
My conclusion is talking about how Standard English causes unfair treatment and affects how people see others, even though some people disagree. As well, it repeats the word “leads to discrimination and unfairness in many various ways in someone’s life”. I realize that I could strengthen my conclusion by summarizing or reflecting on why understanding accent bias matters, rather than repeating the ideas from the introduction, and not giving my reader a better understanding of the overall essay.
In the end, this course helped me to improve my writing skills and focus on helping the reader understand my essay. During this course we were provided with a writing center, 1 on 1 meeting, and a meeting with the professor and these opportunities helped me improve my essay. This gave me a realization on how my introduction and conclusion repeat some of the same ideas but now I could use this experience to help me prevent myself from making the same error. Overall, writing this essay helped me realize the importance of clearly connecting my ideas and showing growth in my thinking so my audience could understand my essay.
