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Self-Assessment
Throughout the course I believe that I have made improvements in each of the goal
learning outcomes. I would like to focus on the goals of [demonstrating] awareness of the
dynamic relationship between rhetorical situation, discourse community, genre, and inquiry;
[developing] flexible strategies for revising, editing, and proof-reading writing; and to read,
analyze, and synthesize complex texts and incorporate multiple kinds of evidence purposefully in
order to generate and support writing. This course has not perfected all of my skills but has
greatly improved them from what I learned in high school and ENC1101 at Seminole State
College.
A big portion of the class was spent working on rhetorical situation and discourse
community. At the beginning of the class, I felt like a decent writer but throughout the course I
have changed my opinion and now believe I am a strong writer. I have improved on many things
throughout the course thanks to the Everyday Writer, Writing About Writing, and Critical
Thinking to Argument. All of this books helped shape me to be the reader I am now at the end of
the semester. Our reading responses had a lot of focus on taking into consideration rhetorical
situation and the discourse community we were writing to. Although I have not memorized each
part of the rhetorical situation, I know what to keep in mind while writing. I have been
conditioned to work around my audience, constraints, etc. without clearly thinking about them
during my writing. The discourse community I have been writing in is our class. Knowing that
the class has learned the same things as me throughout the class helps narrow down what I have
to write about. Explaining what I read for reading responses or in texts is not necessary because
the class has the same background. I can also focus more on what the author meant rather than
what they said when responding to reading responses. I learned this early on in the course and it

has stuck with me as I move on to my research paper. In my research paper, I had to explain
things that seemed like common sense to me because my class did not have the same background
as me. I feel as if I could use more practice with genre and inquiry because I am still not positive
on what it is. I will need to read more about it and strengthen my understanding before I have
completed this learning goal.
Another one of our reading responses that benefitted me greatly was when we read about
how to effectively revise, edit, and proof-read writing. I learned to focus first on higher order
concerns so that the writer can then focus on the big idea of their paper. After the paper is in
order and the main ideas are worked out, then one can revise the lower order concerns such as
grammar, formatting and punctuation. You can see this in my work as it improves from draft to
draft. This came naturally as I was editing my groups papers because by the third draft, there
was not any more high order concerns to look into and all that could be fixed was simple things
that they missed while writing and rereading the work themselves. An example of this in my
work was adding in subheadings and a footnote towards the end of my revision process on my
final research paper. At the beginning I was focusing more on adding details where they were
needed.
Working with evidence was the main part of my research paper and a majority of the
course. In order to have a strong argument, I have to be sure to have multiple types of evidence
that can back up my claims. While making the digital paper trail, I started working on finding
different types of sources to make it easier for me in the long run. I found sources that were
editorials, such as The Trouble with the Common Core by the editors of rethinking schools,
sources that were articles such as 5 Ways to get Common Core Right by Cindy Long, and
sources that were scholarly journals, such as Common Sense about the Common Core by Alan

Schoenfeld. I wanted to include a personal interview but did not have an opportunity to meet up
with a current teacher to discuss how they felt about the Common Core State Standards. The
variety of sources gave me a variety of viewpoints. After finding a variety of evidence, I made
them talk to each other in my research paper. I learned that the sources are most effective if
you talk about them and make them communicate rather than just summarizing each one. If you
read some of the paragraphs arguing each side in my final research paper, you can see how I
made sources agree and back each other up. I believe this is where I greatly improved over this
course and this is my most improved skill.
These three skills allow me to produce complex, analytic, persuasive arguments that
matter in academic contexts. If you reference to my final persuasive argument paper, you can
see how my writing compares to the beginning of the semester with my rhetorical analysis paper.
I believe that my work successfully convinces the reader of the best way to work with the
Common Core State Standards so that they reach their full potential. My research also shows
how I have improved in strengthening my argument by using multiple sources per view in my
research and how much finding stronger action verbs can change your paper. Thanks to my
professor and The Everyday Writer, I was able to make my paper stronger just by changing a few
words in each paragraph.
Overall, I believe that my work in this course has benefitted me greatly and that I had put
in all of the effort I could have. My work has reflected in my grades. I am very happy with my
final grades so far throughout the course and believe that they will stay up to my standards as it
finishes up. I believe that my hard work and dedication to each project and paper was shown
throughout the semester. My peers also gave me a lot of positive feedback and said that I had
strong arguments in all of my papers which only improved with each draft I turned in. This class

has improved my writing and researching and will benefit me as I continue on in whatever field I
go into. Writing is an important skill to have mastered because it is necessary in communicating
with people in the workplace or anywhere online. With a growing technology age, writing skills
will become more and more important in communicating correctly with anyone around you. If
writing skills are not improved among everyone, communication will decrease and
miscommunications will happen often. This course is very important for everyone to take even if
they believe it does not relate to themselves or their major. I started the class believing this would
not help me and hating English. But after finishing the course, I see how important all of the
learning goals are to me and everyone else.