Cesar De Leon Pereira

English 110

Throughout the course of this semester, I have been introduced to a platitude of new ideas and concepts once it came to the application of English in written language and daily conversations. These new ideas assisted me in comprehending the intricacies of literature, as I had been exposed to a language I had never before seen written down in non standard form in a way that was deliberate and academically recognized. The various activities performed both at home and in the classroom allowed me not only to get useful revisions that ensured that my work would be submitted in its most complete form, but it also allowed me to gauge and review the work of my colleagues.

The first skill that I gained in this course was the ability to understand the nuances of the English language, and how its usage can drastically vary amongst social groups as well as affect how they are perceived in our society. The work that I did both in class and at home helped me realize not only the linguistic adversities faced by others, but it also helped me see my past experiences with more clarity, allowing me to comprehend how my process of learning English in the United States impacted my life. For example, in my WLLN I state: “However, wherever there is powerlessness, there is also an opening for empowerment. The prospect of fully adapting, which once seemed impossible, eventually began to happen throughout my fifth year in school. Through the miserable process of sheer brute force, the unfamiliar words and sounds began to have meaning in my mind. It was almost like seeing a new color for the first time.” (De Leon). This quote is a perfect demonstration of how my work reflects my improved understanding of the power that the English language holds for an individual, as I was able to reflect on how deeply my speech empowered me and shaped my daily life. Additionally, in phase one I was able to hone my skills in analyzing different rhetorical situations and genres. During my first few blog posts, I was required to complete the “Rhetorical Situation Worksheet” for the readings that had been assigned to us. With this worksheet, I had become far more conscious of the multiple aspects of a text, such as who wrote it, for whom they wrote it, where it was written and in what form. These made me more capable of discerning the true intent behind the literature that I was reading, and made my work take those same aspects into consideration. For example, in my second blog post I write “Author: the author of this essay (Amy Tan) is an English major as well as writer, however, they do not claim to be a scholar. Their personal investment in this subject comes from the fact that their mother does not speak standard English.” (De Leon). This shows how early on I had already begun to take rhetorical aspects of literature into consideration when analyzing them thanks to the work handed to me.

It is evident upon reading my own work that one of my biggest strengths gained from this course was the ability to work with others in order to better develop my writing skills. The workshop activities performed in class played a key role in improving my ability to draft, revise and edit my essays, as giving my work to my classmates served as a great incentive to ensure that whatever I wrote was carefully composed and had enough effort in them to get the most efficient feedback from my classmates. For example, in my WLLN feedback towards Marvin’s paper, I gave feedback on how the writer should remain more focused and provide more detail on the specific stories they were telling, and I also suggested that they should implement a more clear message to their writing. Though this shows my ability to criticize external writings, it also shows how this activity heavily strengthened my skills in detecting whether or not the prompt of the activity had been fully met. This in turn made me able to apply these same sets of skills to my own work, making me stronger at revisioning my work and applying the same standards to my own papers as I was to my colleagues. 

Throughout the semester, I also became increasingly more observant of rhetorical strategies used in literature presented before me. Phase two of this semester is the perfect embodiment of this learning process, we had to analyze our own creative work for rhetorical devices. Having to look for these devices in one’s own work made me more aware of when they were being utilized, and not only made me better at comprehending other people’s works, but it also made me better at applying it on my own. This is shown by my Part 2 activity on “Oh Hateful One”, where I state, “he poem makes use of the rhetorical device of pathos through the use of emotionally charged language. The presence of words such as “harm”, “venomous” or “hateful” indicate powerful negative feelings towards the actions taken by this character for which this poem is being addressed to.” This quote is a demonstration of my understanding of how wording and language choices can be used in order to convey emotions through a text, thus applying one of the three rhetorical devices. This same text and activity made me more aware of how to address a specific audience.

Another way in which this course allowed me to reach my learning objectives through the semester was with my researched essay writing process. The whole process of finding a variety of different sources with different scholarly backgrounds and with unique formats made me more proficient at looking for them. Phase three of this course made me understand which resources to use when seeking to find relevant academic sources. I believe this becomes evident from my “8 Sources” assignment, where I was able to compile 8 different scholarly sources obtained from the City College online database. Even if I were to only have ultimately used 3 of them in my final paper, ALL of the scholarly sources used in my final draft, those being “Immigrant and emigrant earnings: a longitudinal study.” (Borjas), “Race and ethnic group differences in socioeconomic status: black Caribbeans, African Americans and Non-Hispanic Whites in the United States.” (Manuel et al.) and “Psychological and Acculturation Correlates of Work Status among Soviet Jewish Refugees in the United States [1].” (Vinokurov),” (De Leon) this still demonstrates how that particular assignment made it easier for me to improve my ability to search for articles in the CCNY database, as even for my final draft, many of the sources from this early assignment were still relevant and incredibly useful for my work later on. 

Additionally, phase 3 made me far better at composing arguments and stances while efficiently using synthesized evidence that directly relates to the topic at hand. My comprehension on how to properly integrate sources into an argument as well as how to correlate and compare them to each other greatly improved throughout this assignment. Nowhere is this better shown than in the third paragraphs of both my second draft as well as my final draft. The differences between how both of these paragraphs are differently used in order to construct the same stance while even using the same two sources exemplify how my skills once it came to synthesis and source comprehension greatly improved over time. As revised at the writing center, I concluded that the paragraph on the second draft was far too generic, as it did somewhat synthesize the sources and compare their different data collection methods, however, it failed at connecting both of these sources to the bigger picture and argument made. The second version of this paragraph is far more coherent, as it conveys the idea of both sources while also mentioning how the different data relates to the bigger picture as evidenced by the following sentence: “ In conclusion, these two sources demonstrate how assimilation has a positive effect on the wage of immigrants, but it is not the sole factor once it comes to defining how a person is discriminated against in the workplace salary-wise.”

Finally, the last skill improved throughout this year was my application of citation conventions. During my researched essay, I had to learn how to properly credit the works used by me in my writing. This felt as a fairly simple process once it came to the work cited page, as all of my citations closely followed the required MLA format, and with the exception of one, were all very complete and contained all of the information possible about the publication of the texts. For example, “Manuel, Ron Carmichael, et al. “Race and ethnic group differences in socioeconomic status: black Caribbeans, African Americans and Non-Hispanic Whites in the United States.” The Western Journal of Black Studies, vol. 36, no. 3, fall 2012, pp. 228+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A308599688/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=33b36177. Accessed 28 Mar. 2023.” (De Leon). This exemplifies my ability to cite scholarly text separately on a work cited page. However, despite this, I still feel very unconfident in my capability to cite work within text, as I feel as if some of my quotes and paraphrases were not properly cited in the given MLA format.