Lalita Drepaul 

Professor Nicholas 

ENG 210 

20 May 2019 

Self-Assessment 

In my Spring semester English; writing for the social sciences course, I have written many essays that has become a great help in improving my writing skills. I have learned to reflect on my mistakes when writing and have been able to use the challenges I have with writing and be able to improve myself. I was able to obtain many ways in which I can enhance and better my writing. Such as editing and proofreading. Making my purpose of writing the essay clear and concise in order for the reader to understand the rhetorical situation. The use of the learning outcomes given on the syllabus gives a good recognition of what should be taken out of the course when pertaining to one’s writing ability. 

Writing and speaking are very different, when you speak you are more informal, but when you write you want to sound formal so that your wok is professional for others to read. For example, when doing the interview skill building exercise, the individual I interviewed was speaking informally, so when I went to write their responses, I had to convert their words to sound more mature and elaborate. For example, when writing emails for possible interviews, you want to be polite and speak appropriately so that the receiver will want to reply and possibly set up a meeting with you because of your professionalism. 

When submitting my first drafts for the assignment prompts given, and receiving all the notes, corrections, grammatical errors, that should have been improved in my writing. The notes given back to me by my professor has helped me understand how I need to improve my writing in ways that will improve my overall writing ability in my future classes. Revising these errors has made me aware of how proofreading is an importance to make an essay understandable and error free. 

My writing goals and what I wanted the reader to learn or absorb what I was saying. In my essays I made my purpose affective in the first paragraph, so that there would be no confusions of what the writing is about. My stance was clear in the subject matter, in my survey skill-building exercise, I made it clear what my essay would be about and how to process the information from the surveys conducted. The medium used in the course was the final presentation of our field study that would show the purpose of the study, the measures we took to interview and survey individuals, and the results and overall discussion. These aspects allowed for the class to understand the study and the process and methods taken to achieve our goal. 

The main assignment for this class, the group field report, was a challenging assignment for me to do. I never worked in a group the entire length of the semester. So, communicating with my other group members was an obstacle.  The use of blackboard was an effective way to share information and materials needed for the progress of the report. While other areas lacked some communication. But majority of the time the social aspect of the course allowed for improvement in ideas and created a collaborative atmosphere.  

Effective communication skills were needed for this class. For example, when conducting interviews, you must be intrigued in what the interviewee is saying and show interest and understanding to get the most information out of them. As well as, conducting surveys, you must appear kind and approachable when asking strangers to fill out a two-minute survey. You must be articulate as well when conducting these interviews and surveys, so that you are understandable and direct. 

My stance for my writing was written in my skill-building exercises to allow the reader to obtain the necessary information about the subject. The observation, survey and interview skill building exercises allowed for me to practice my writing in various forms. In my observation skill-building essay I effectively discussed why I was at the event I attended and what questions I had while attending and observing the different activities occurring between students. I was able to give reasonings as to why observing this environment and atmosphere was important to further my skills in order to do a possible observation for my field report.

The most appropriate research that would have been affective for the field report, was online sources. Because the topic was a recent and continuing one, no new or relevant information would have been found in the library, or CCNY library database. Articles from different newspapers and online blogs were most relevant and usable at the time for this assignment and gave the most appropriate information. Although there were a few articles on the CCNY database, but those reports were lengthy and hard to comprehend and use in my literature reviews and references.Through my sources, quoting was an effective way to make the ideas and topics clear in my writing. These sources were best used in my introduction for explaining the topic and situation properly. I was able to cite my sources in order to incorporate them into the literature review and reference pages of my field report.

Overall throughout this semester I have been able to apply the course learning outcomes to my writing assignments. The various skill building exercises were a great practice for writing the different components needed in the field report to make it substantial. I was able to use those exercises to see the flaws in my writing and was able to recognize them through peer editing and the grades and feedback given by the professor.