Jada Brown Brown
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Professor Stephen
Brandon
English 111
19 October 2012
My
English Course Evaluation
As a result of my completing my
English 111 course, I hope to gain basic skills such as: writing and presenting
a better paper, improvement in my communication skills and the ability to analyze
and interpret a paper. My English 11 course is supposed to teach me the general
basics, the knowledge of persuasion and communication, how to process, and how
to critically expand my knowledge.
General Course
Goals
The general course goals or “the basics” are the simple
writing, communication and academic skills a freshman should know, such as
adapting different forms of the writing process and knowing the steps. A
freshman student should also learn how to evaluate and interpret a paper. Also,
when writing a paper one must be able to use evidence to support his/her claim.
So far in English 111 we have learned how to properly write a paper in MLA
format. We also learned the correct steps to take when it comes to writing a paper.
For example, our English class is a learning community with our History 111
course. We recently finished our first essay paper for history where we not
only followed the writing process steps but also worked
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on getting our purpose
across. In addition, we worked on keeping our audiences attention by
proofreading which is the step where you distant yourself from your paper and
look at it threw your audiences point of view. I will further explain the
writing process steps in an upcoming section.
Your audience is the
person or group of people of whom you are trying to persuade. Your audience can
be your classmates or your teacher. Your classmates will help you by giving their
point of view. We will continue talking
about audiences in the next section.
Rhetorical
Knowledge
Rhetoric
is the art of becoming a better communicator; Art of persuasion. In this section I will explain the other
parts of paper such as voice, tone and formality. I will also go over different
review genres: ethos, logos and pathos. I will also explain how and why most
writers use rhetorical devices. Genre was one of the first things my Professor,
Stephen Brandon, taught us. Ethos is based on a writer’s reputation and
credibility. Logos is based on logic,
facts and ideas. Pathos is based on
emotion and getting people to feel.
Genre is a kind or type of topic, and there
are three effective ways to communicate in a genre:
1) Audience
Expectatios
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· Style(formal
and informal)
2) Format(first,
second, presented)
3) Context
· “Clear”
Academic Style
4) How
they are used
Genre
of the review is the basic structure of all academic purposes. Reviews are an objective opinion based 100% on
your experience and how you truly feel about the topic. Another thing my professor
taught me and I feel is important, and helped a lot, was the triangle. The
triangle consist of three major points that helped me better my writing and
that is author, message and purpose. The author has a purpose and that purpose
is to craft a message, which is then received by the audience, which must meet
the audience’s expectations.
Rhetoric
Audiences do two things: make a decision about what is being reviewed and
trying to decide about what they reviewed. Reviews help an audience make up
their mind. For example if you plan on going somewhere new like to a restaurant
and you’re kind of skeptic about the place, you might try looking for reviews
on the place, and these reviews are based highly on the person’s experience.
They can be negative or positive and will affect the audience’s choice.
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Process
Process is the main thing that’s
been mentioned in this evaluation, which is the writing process. In this
section I will simply explain the steps one through six of the writing process.
Number
one: Prewriting. Prewriting is the discovery step. Getting an idea on what you
are going to be writing about and putting that idea on paper. During this step
you must research on your topic by brainstorming, questioning, mind wrapping, and
free writing. Then look at your genre and decide if it will be ethos, logos or
pathos. Next is the audience you will be writing for. Your goal dictates if you
are trying to persuade your audience or just present them with basic
facts. Next you have to think about
limitations; what you can and cannot say in your paper.
Number
two: Drafting is the process of getting your ideas out of your head and putting
them on paper so that you can manipulate them.
Number
three: Assuming you wrote your draft, you then add, cut and reorganize your
paper. This step will most likely be repeated more than once.
Number
four: Proofreading and Editing. Proofreading is identifying the surface areas
and correcting them. You have to gain distant from your work to see how your
readers will view things. This is probably the most difficult step when it
comes writing a paper because we tend to write a paper as if it will be viewed
by
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our
eyes only. Editing is when you handle appropriate syntax, usage, grammar,
punctuation, and spelling.
Number
Five: Publishing and delivery. In this step of the writing process, you finally
put your paper together and give your message to the reader(s).
Number
Six: The last and final step is review. Once you have your work out and in the
open you can now allow others to review your work and accept negative or
positive feedback.
Critical Thinking,
Reading and Writing
If
it’s one thing my Professor taught me before beginning this section is “By
understanding the context you can understand the unknown”. We are currently
working on this section and it’s probably the most important section thus far. This
section is about pushing your brain to the limit and trying to find little
hints in an author’s story to make it easier. It also explains joining others
ideas together with your own to get a better sense of what the author is
writing about. This section also teaches how to properly read, summarize, and
respond.
My professor also taught me that the general
purpose of an author’s critical writing is to inform, explain, or persuade. We
also learned about cultural work which “transmits rewards and trains specific
ways of thinking about and knowing the world”. A couple weeks ago we had to
critically think about a video that was being shown to us called Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Long story
short this video
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explains
that just because you haven’t experienced the outside world doesn’t make it
less real.
Overall
All
and all my experience with English 111 has been great. My professor knows what
he is talking about and because of that I enjoy listening to him. He speaks
with such depth and eloquence that I never have a problem staying awake in his
class. He gives great examples whenever we are learning something new that helps
us understand what’s really going on. He doesn’t teach with a PowerPoint and I
love that. He writes the facts on the board over and over again so that the
next time it comes up we already have it down packed.
I
do believe as a student I am doing quite well. When it comes to individual work
I am more than happy to oblige. But when it comes to being in a group, I am
usually the most quite student you will see. My academic performance is
outstanding. I do my homework, take the quizzes and participate when I have to.
But I know for a fact I have a lot to learn this year and I am willing to do it
happily.
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