Self Assessment Essay 

From the beginning of highschool, the skills a writer had in terms of capturing key fragments of information, citing them, emphasizing an audience, and more have always been foreign to me. The papers I had dealt with were more analytical in nature, requiring personal studies, heavy statistical data, and thorough qualitative and quantitative analysis. However, throughout the semester, I have learned numerous methods and techniques that not only make me a better writer, but a better resource gatherer as well. Techniques that I have learned when     examining how attitudes towards linguistic standards empower and oppress language users includes my ability to cater to a specific audience based on the word choice and formats that I end up using. To quote from my essay one reflection “When writing this essay, I attempted to connect to a general audience. My idea was mostly to aim for context about the genre as well as what it meant to me personally” (Khandakar 1 2022). I believe this shows my understanding of acknowledging whom I am communicating with and how I intend to compensate for any gaps of knowledge that the audience may have. Additionally, I had mentioned how “. I feel that I now understand how to engage the reader and combine my story with data to create a somewhat strong narrative recounting my own journey. Before I wrote this essay, I had to establish what story exactly I wanted to tell. What was impactful to me?” (Khandakar 1 2022). I believe this also addresses my acknowledgement in key rhetorical terms and strategies as I had to consciously think about how I wanted to tell my story for the context in essay one which ultimately would segway into the research and study itself. 

For reading, drafting, collaborating, and mostly, editing, I learned a great deal about how to provide helpful feedback by focusing on positive aspects of the paper and emphasizing the positive points while also providing ideas. I learned this from Jillian Grauman, who mentions how “He later reinforces that positive judgment by noting that the thesis is clear” (Jillian Grauman 158 n.d). This to me, while small, serves as an example of how it’s important to be very thorough with your comments, bounce ideas off of your partner and elaborate on unclear scenarios. This also benefits you to an extent as it allows you to see from a general point of view what audience the paper caters to and if you as the reader, can understand the rhetorical techniques used and the message conveyed. 

Locating research sources was undoubtedly a trickier challenge to partake in due to the obscurity of my subgroup. However, the ability to narrow down searches using key phrases and filters did make it far easier. It was through me learning that certain phrases like AND or OR can conjoin terms to yield larger results. Thanks to this, I was able to find articles more relevant to my paper, such as those that refer to emotion in games rather than emotions and games in the same search result. In addition, I also managed to learn how to synthesize the textual evidence that I had singled out along with the ability to connect these to my claim. An example of this can be seen in essay two where I mention how “While that is mere speculation, the fact that children remain attentive to the game and can comprehend and experience feelings of joy and engagement allows them to soon with assistance, comprehend sadness or anger. So, with some change in execution, it is possible to use a metroidvania’s side scrolling world based narrative to invoke possible emotional responses” (Khandakar 4 2022). This shows me interpreting a quote in a different manner in order to make sense of it for the context of my paper. I did this while also accepting the limitations of said quote as it did debunk some certain prior beliefs. 

While there were many things I have learned over the course of the semester, I still have many things I need to work on. Examples include the synthesis of my observations and data collection (for interviews specifically). However, I am confident that as I continue to work on myself as a writer, these challenges will soon become natural to me. 

 

References

Mustafiz.K. (2022). Personal Narrative. Composition for WCGI History and Culture FIQWS. City College of New York

Mustafiz.K. (2022). Research Paper. Composition for WCGI History and Culture FIQWS. City College of New York

Grauman, J. (n.d.). 9 what’s that supposed to mean? using feedback on your writing. Retrieved December 7, 2022, from https://writingspaces.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/grauman.pdf