December 15, 2021 

Progress through the semester 

My first semester at City College was both eye-opening academically and exhausting. The Freshman Composition (ENGL 11000) class gave me an open perspective on issues regarding language and advice/feedback on how to improve my writing. A few learning objectives that I had achieved were #1 “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.” and #4 “Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations.” I primarily achieved these objectives in Phase two, my Rhetorical Analysis Essay. In the rhetorical analysis essay, I recognized the issue in the U.S of immigrants being mistreated based on the language and form they speak. To achieve #4, I used Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” to analyze the author’s rhetorical techniques to demonstrate the issue in the U.S. In the essay, I was able to recognize the rhetorical techniques of logos (logical facts), and pathos (emotional appeals). 

Though I did accomplish learning objectives, there were some that I wasn’t able to reach. This includes #7, “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.” I couldn’t fully reach this objective since I had trouble seeing if the source, primarily magazines and newspaper articles, was unbiased or current to the news today. But I was able to find sources that related to the topic and issue that I was writing. 

All around, this class allowed me to practice and fix my writing abilities and acknowledge the mistakes that I’ve made.