Phase 4 Self-Assessment Essay

Over the course of this semester, I learned a lot. Through the number of drafts and outlines, I can see the steady improvements in my  literacy.Recalling my early years in school, I struggled with being confident in my writing skills. Writing always used to be one of my weak points when it came to school, and I would often shy away from tasks that included writing such as in group work or even working in pairs. I am unable to pinpoint a specific time in my life where I began liking writing, but it came to me slowly. As time went by, I did enjoy writing a little bit more, and most definitely felt as though I improved significantly. Through the ups and downs during this semester, I have learned a lot and even grown more confident in my literacy skills. Reflecting back on the previous three assignments, I can see the small improvements. Developing my writing skills was not always easy; there were a lot of bumps in the road but just like everything in life, I embraced the challenges and dealt with the circumstances.

The topic of “language” was a key point in the beginning of the semester as. In the beginning of the semester, we were introduced to two texts which were “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, and “Nobody Mean More To Me Than You” by June Jordan. These two texts showed the importance and richness that the English language can contribute. In “Mother Tongue”, she speaks in a disheartened manner as well as speaking off of personal experience. Amy Tan shows how challenging it can be to be raised by a parent who is not fluent in the English language and is limited by it. Tan’s message to her audience is to embrace the “broken English” she speaks of, and to not be constrained by it. June Jordan explains the importance of “Black English” and teaches her class to not forget their background just like how Amy Tan’s purpose of “Mother Tongue” is to teach her audience to embrace “broken” and “limited” English. Both of these authors showed the importance of background, and they both played a strong role in helping me develop my phase one assignment.  In the end, these written pieces helped me to not neglect my past, and to embrace my starting point as well as to be proud of my progress.

In the beginning of the semester , our first assignment was to reflect on a point in our life where we faced an obstacle in language and literacy. As stated previously, I was not confident in my writing and literacy abilities. This is because I would incorporate “Vietnamese” words with my writing tasks which were supposed to be in English. This was a huge problem for me during my early years of writing, but I saw this point of my life as the first obstacle I overcame. Slowly but surely, improvements were made and my confidence skyrocketed. I thoroughly enjoyed phase one because I was able to relate to my peers, and realized I was not the only person who struggled with literacy; at some point we had all been in the same boat. This allowed me to be more open with my classmates, and I did not fear making mistakes anymore.  Phase two and three were also very enjoyable.,  many disagreed as it was more difficult for them. it was the opposite for me. Phases two and three required more research, and the cover letters were more difficult compared to phase one;t phase one was more difficult for me because I struggled with opening up about my past and my feelings,I had never come across an assignment where I had to speak about an experience such as this one. However during phase two, the rhetorical strategies were a little confusing because at times I felt multiple strategies were being used. One thing that helped me resolve this difficulty was reading the text multiple times and figure out which strategy was better suited. Overall I really enjoyed phase’s one to three, and I can see the development in my abilities.

Recalling the “ups and downs” I faced throughout this semester, I believe I kept the “downs” to a minimum. However, some difficulties I came into contact with during this semester was finding credible sources and how to format my works cited page. Unreliable sources on the internet can give false information, and this is because there are many perspectives on a topic that can be biased rather than being based on research. For example, during phase three I knew this was going to be a problem since my topic was “College Should Be Completely Free”, and it sparks a lot of opinions. A lot of my sources were based on that viewpoint, and to support my claim, I had to find sources that strongly emphasized my claims with statistics and research. Throughout this assignment, I constantly had to keep changing and find new reliable sources. In the end, I learned a lot while completing this assignment, and this gave me confidence to look forward to the next written assignments in the near future.