Kevin Phan

Mr. Slater

Adv. Composition, Period 2

8 December 2015

Course Assessment

Course Assessment

            I honestly feel like all the goals of this course were met. We had many experiences with rhetorical knowledge especially with the last three essays. We learned how to speak effectively or how not to speak effectively through the TED talks we watched and through the many examples of writing that you showed us. I felt like I had to definitely think critically with the Literacy Narrative and the Op-Ed because I had to familiarize myself with these pieces of writing that I wasn’t completely comfortable with. The Argumentative also tested my critical thinking skills because I didn’t really have much to go off of but I thought about the data I found and I was able to use it to make a cohesive essay. My writing process has greatly improved over the last semester because I was very lazy when it came to rough drafts. I did them but they were not nearly as polished as rough drafts I had written for this class. This class definitely helped with my conventions. I had a severe lack of understanding when it came to colons and semicolons but I now feel I understand them a little better. I still have to go over the rules now and then and look at examples whenever I have the chance to. I felt like the class allowed for polishing our essays instead of rushing with them. Because of this formatting, I was able to really focus on what was wrong within my essays and try and avoid making those mistakes again. I enjoyed that because I actually had a clear cut plan of where my essay was going and what I wanted to fix in it. Because of this system, I was able to see where my writing skills stood and I improved on that. I strongly believe that I took more risks than I did before. I never thought that I would write “turnt” in a paper but I did and had a lot of attitude in my Op-Ed piece. We had so much time offered to us to work and so I read other people’s pieces before writing my own. It gave some creative approaches to certain essays and I feel like I took more risks because of that. I would place more of an emphasis on the teacher conferences. I know I only took advantage of them once out of the numerous amount of times they were offered and that was a mistake. I feel like I could have greatly improved but for some reason I didn’t take the time to fill out the conference sheet and actually go through a conference.