Andrew Cody Yates
English 111
Dr. Brandon
October 23, 2012
My
Self Evaluation
As a student it is my goal to absorb, and to be able to
demonstrate the lessons I have learned. The purpose of me writing this
evaluation is to reflect on myself as a student. Also it is my purpose to see
what I have truly learned and to find areas for me to improve. By the end of
this evaluation I hope to discover more about myself as your student, and I
hope to continue to improve.
When I look back on the semester so far the lesson that pops
out to me the most is the rhetorical triangle. I feel as if I have learned more
about rhetorical knowledge more than I have anything this semester. Ever since
learning the triangle I always try to apply ethos, pathos or logos to whatever I
am reading or writing. Before this semester I honestly probably could not have
told you about any kind of rhetorical knowledge except for a rhetorical
question, and all I knew about that was it was a question you were not supposed
to answer.
I
think the reason I remember rhetorical knowledge the most is that this is what
you have focused on the most. I also feel as if this is the lesson we have
reinforced the most because we have written a lot of notes on this topic, and
we have been working on our rhetorical analysis for around a month now (or so
it seems). I can tell you off the top of my head that ethos deals with
reputation. I also can tell you that logos can be used to described logic or
hard facts. Finally I can tell you pathos is used to describe human emotion. I
even remember you telling us that Pathos is the root word for pathetic.
The
writing process is the next thing that I feel we have covered a lot in class. I
already had a good base of knowledge on the writing process before I was in this
class because my English teachers in high school drilled these steps into my
head. The way you have taught it to me though is semi different than the way I
learned it in high school. In high school we were never taught different ways
to publish our writing the only way we knew was to type it, print it and turn
it into my teacher. Now I know how to print it, blog it and how to share if for
my peers on my Gmail. Also I never had a different audience with my papers before,
but now you have given me a broader audience for my writing.
Despite
having learned these tools for success though I feel as if I do not use them
enough. I do not use every single step of the writing process. I do not like to
use the planning step I have tried to use it before, and even on this
evaluation. I just feel like for me it just wastes my time. I first like to
free write a couple sentences up to a paragraph then when I go to do my final
copy I use this as a guide line and completely re-write the whole entire paper.
When I do this I feel like I flow better as writer. Sometimes though it does
not reflect in my grade and I feel like I can and need to improve on this.
I feel we have had a pretty good base of learning on all
of our goals on the sheet. The only one to me I feel like I do not have a good
base on is critical thinking. I cannot really think of anything that has to do
with critical thinking except Kai Zen, and even then I am not too sure if this is
part of critical thinking. I do not know if this is because we have not covered
it too much this semester or if I did not good notes. Regardless though, I feel
that I should know more about critical thinking.
Like I said before though I do know about Kai Zen, and
what it incorporates seems like it would be a critical thinking method. The
goal of Kai Zen is to reach your long term goals by first starting from where
you are presently at. Kai Zen uses an analogy that says you start by picking the
fruit that is closest to you. Then once you have reached that fruit you move
forward by picking the next closest fruit until you reach the top. Which
ultimately means that with Kai Zen you start by achieving what you can then you
work your way up step by step until you reach your goal.
The oral communication lesson we had in class was an
extremely helpful lesson to me. I already felt like I was a pretty good communicator
before this class. What you taught me though helped me a lot. I did not know
how much body language really matters in oral communication. That lesson you
showed us about the way to look around the class room to make it seem like your
making eye contact with everyone was cool. In the beginning of the semester I
always thought you were staring at me, and it kind of gave me a creepy feeling.
I was surprised at the fact of how many
digital technologies that we learned and used in this class. Going into the
semester I figured it would be the same old English class, but I was pleasantly
surprised. I like the fact that we infuse English with modern technology like YouTube,
blogger, etc. It makes class more
engaging and entertaining. I had never had a blog before this class I had never
even read a blog. This class has opened my eyes to more technology on the
internet that is actually useful.
Now
that you have shown me blogger I have used it quite often. I made a blog about
how much I and the rest of the baseball world hate the Yankees. I also have had
a blog discussion about this with my classmate Alyssa. This class has opened my
eyes and shown me how much I actually enjoy writing.
In
conclusion, I believe that I have learned a good amount in this class. I also
feel that up to this point I have been fairly successful. I have a slight
problem though I do not do the readings. This is the main area in this class
that I need to improve on. In all I enjoy this class and I know that I am going
to stay in the class for the remainder of the semester. I am looking forward to
the rest of the semester.
