In this essay, I will be talking about the different learning outcomes I have achieved throughout this class, some of the skills I have been able to enhance thanks to the course, and the challenges it made me face. All of these techniques and outcomes I have been able to implement while writing other pieces of papers. Skills that have become helpful when planning, organizing, and correcting all of my documents. And many other skills that are very useful when writing a paper. Also, the learning outcomes I was able to accomplish taught me how important it is to recognize the language, analysis, keywords, and many other things when trying to comprehend a piece of writing entirely.

In the first phase, I was able to achieve one of the first course’s learning outcomes I got was, develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising and editing. I completed this when I wrote the first paper for this course, which was a personal narrative. Although, in the first phase, I was able to work with other peers to make a well-developed story about me, I was also able to strengthen other techniques such as drafting and revising. I first mentioned in the Personal Narrative when the following was written “I always made sure to read whatever I wrote multiple times to make sure it was correct, and in case there was something that could be written differently I will fix it right away. Also, I collaborated with my peers to give each other ideas, and ways in which we could make our writings better.” (Acosta, 2021). Here I mentioned how in that phase, I implemented these learned and strengthened skills in order to make a well-organized story, with the intent to create a story that would be easy to comprehend. Another course learning outcome I got from this phase was, Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations. In this first phase, I also tried to learn different ways to attract the readers’ attention, making them more engaged with my story. I tried to use rhetorical devices such as pathos to appeal to their emotions, allowing them to connect with my writing. We can see how I try to implement them when I state the following, “Moving to a new country— an anecdote that can be told by billions of people in different ways could be seen as a story with many parallel sides. But still, each is different from one another. It is frequently seen people coming from their home countries to the United States.” (Acosta, 2021). This quotation mentions how the story I will tell relates to millions of people who came to this country seeking a better life. Each story is related in many ways, but they are still said in different ways. In phase one, I was getting deeper into writing, demanding myself to use skills that I have just recently learned, looking for a way to develop my understanding of them further.

In phase two, we went more in-depth on the topic of rhetorical devices. In this phase, we had to analyze one piece of writing from an author and look for different devices they used in their document, then try to understand why they used those devices in the way they did. In this section, I was able to achieve more course learning outcomes. One of them is to explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. This is explained in the rhetorical analysis when I said the following, “helped me gather a better understanding of rhetorical devices and their purposes. I also learned that there were more than just Pathos, Ethos, and Logos. Rhetorical Devices are used through every writing in order to make a well-organized piece of writing. They also help style writing and give it a clear understanding of it.” (Acosta, 2021). This quote implies that writing the analysis was considerably helpful because it allowed me to understand rhetorical devices and their purpose better. Furthermore, the second phase was also beneficial because I acquired another course learning outcome: the practice of systematic application of citation conventions. For this phase, I had to deeply analyze the writing and seek different devices within the article; by doing this, I could draw the information I would use in my analysis. To use this, I had to use citations from it to get as much information out of them and explain it in my rhetorical analysis paper. These procedures helped me strengthen my reading and analyzing skills to gather as much information as possible for my essay.

Lastly, in the third phase of this course, I had to write a research essay about a topic that we preferred, this time, we had to get deeper into the subject, choose stances in the matter and make an argument that supported our point. In this phase, I met one of the course learning outcomes: Compose texts that integrate your stance (i.e. you thesis) with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation. It is implied in my Research Essay when I wrote the following, “The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the United States in many aspects; it has affected the country’s economy, the mental health of the people within the country, and most importantly, the physical health of the people it has attacked.” (Acosta, 2021). This was my introduction sentence; here, I told the reader what my writing would talk about, making them anticipate what to expect from my writing. Then, as they kept reading the essay, they would see how I supported my stance with evidence and analyzed each evidence to help the audience understand why I chose those pieces of evidence. Another course learning outcome I achieved during phase three was the following: 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. During this phase, I looked for articles and images from academic and online sources that would help me support my stance. This would help me make a more credible and robust argument, which is very important when writing about one’s thoughts on a topic. I also had to better understand each article before deciding if I was going to use it, which is very important because before using a piece of evidence, you first need to make sure that it is accurate and does not include any biased information: this paper took me more time than the rest to make because of this. 

In conclusion, I can say that in each phase, I was introduced to a different type of writing, which would require me to learn additional skills that would allow me to get through each stage, while at the exact time each phase helped me get to each learning outcome of the class. For example, in the first one, I was introduced to rhetorical devices, which helped me get the readers engaged with my story and understand the importance of language usage in a piece of writing. Then, in the second phase, I got deeper into the topic of rhetorical devices, allowing myself to seek them and try and explain the purpose for which the author of the paper used them. Lastly, in the last face, I was introduced to the analysis of an article to get accurate information to support my stance. While in all of them, I had to collaborate with my peers to provide each other with feedback about our works that would help us make a well-written essay.

 

Work cited

 

Acosta, J. “The Story of A New-Comer” September 28, 2021. FIQWS 10111: Thoughtful Choices, The City College of New York, online forum post.

Acosta, J. “Extended Rhetorical Analysis for Ghost of the Future and Biodiversity Loss” October  19, 2021. FIQWS 10111: Thoughtful Choices, The City College of New York, online forum post.

Acosta, J. “Effects of the Coronavirus in the United States” November 13, 2021. FIQWS 10111: Thoughtful Choices, The City College of New York, online forum post.