Cody Yates English 111 Evaluation

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.