Brian Ortega

Prof. Robert Balun

29 October 2018

Reflection

In the course of writing my exploratory essay, I achieved a few course learning outcomes. One of them was to explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. I achieved this course learning outcome by beginning with an annotated bibliography, this helped me analyze the sources that I was using and find out where it belonged in my essay. I encountered many genres of reading while conducting my research; I encountered textbook chapters, scholarly articles, and books. All of this helped me structure my essay, it made my essay as formal and informative as possible.

The second course learning outcome that I achieved was to develop strategies for reading, drafting collaborating, revising, and editing. The first step was to read examples of exploratory essays in class. Reading these examples allowed me to find the right structure for my own essay. It also introduced me to the details and information that should be incorporated in an exploratory essay. We had an information literacy session in the library classroom, this helped me discover my sources. My strategy involved a great deal of planning before I started writing. I thought about the structure carefully before I wrote much, this made my revision easier. The annotated bibliographies that we wrote helped me draft my paper. Multiple drafts were necessary for my essay to be well developed. Every draft helped me improve. When I finished my essay I read it out loud to myself to make sure everything made sense and was fluent. The next day we did peer review in class which helped me revise my essay by getting a classmates opinion. Then I used the peer review sheet to revise my essay on my own.

Another course learning outcome that I achieved was to recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations. First I created “quote sandwiches”. Creating a quote sandwich helped me cite my sources in a proper manner. My professor revealed different signal phrases that I may use in my essay, this avoided me from being too repetitive in my essay and made my essay fluent. The following course learning outcome I achieved was to engage in the collaborative and social aspects of the writing processes. In class, collaboration played a big role in our writing. We posted our annotated bibliographies on Blackboard, this helped me cite my sources correctly. Even though, our goal was to do as well as possible on the first draft, peer review day helped me get others opinion on my writing. My peer found a few mistakes that I haven’t noticed and we talked about a way to rewrite it and make it clear. I benefited from my peers’ feedback.

I located research sources in the library’s data bases or archives and on the internet and evaluated them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias. I achieved this course learning outcome by using CCNY databases for research on my exploratory essay. This was pretty difficult for me at first because it was the first time I’ve done this for a paper but it did help me after all. This helped me find sources that are more reliable than the sources found on the open internet. The last course learning outcome that I achieved was to practice systematic application of citation conventions. I achieved this by completing an annotated bibliography and writing in-text citations. The annotated bibliography played a big role in structuring my essay and the in-text citations made my essay stronger. All of this assisted me on making my exploratory essay finer.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.