Self Assessment

Based on my writing development in taking this course I can conclude that I have demonstrated growth in various aspects of my writing. In addition in reviewing my writing I did not only discover that I have improved in certain aspects in my writing but I also discovered areas in my writing that still require improvement. When revising my writing I discovered one one of the course learning outcomes which was, the ability to locate research sources. To elaborate in my first paper for this course which was the Source Based Essay I included information referring to the topic of racial discrimination from sources such as   magazines,newspaper,etc. After revising the paper as well as the assignment I discovered that I used subtitles/subheadings for each source to allow the reader to understand that I am moving on to discuss a different source and placed them in bold as well.. In doing so it made the format of my Source Based Essay clearer and easier to understand and read. Nevertheless, in this essay the work cited section and citing sources in MLA was incorrect due to the fact that I would only place the link of the site from which I got my information from. Nonetheless as the course went on this improved and I learned the correct format of MLA and in reference to my Critical Analysis as well as my Historical Overview and Biographical summary, each of these papers contain a work cited page with the correct MLA format of my sources of information.

As the course progressed, in the middle of the semester I began developing strategies for not only my research papers but for overall writing as well. To demonstrate in reference to the discussion board when reading and writing about excerpts such as Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson and also the excerpt White Fragility I would review the prompt to see what I needed to require in my writing. Once completed I would read the excerpts and not only take notes but write out quotes or lines I would include in my writing to make my argument or perspective on the  topic solid and clearer for the reader. Lastly what I would do is read my classmates writing to get their perspective on the excerpt before developing my writing on the discussion post.

Although the course has helped me with MLA formatting and developing strategies for writing there are still areas in my writing that I have not yet been able to progress or improve in. To elaborate my thesis statement for my Critical Analysis paper  which states, “ The thesis statement that I developed directly from my proposal states that Nelson Mandela’s leadership traits, the Trait Approach and Transformational Leadership that he inherited and improved throughout his life time, in addition to credible reputation he built, his ability to look forward to the future and his grit and determination were all essential aspects that allowed the leader Nelson Mandela to play an important part in reconstructing South Africa from a country under the influence of apartheid into a county under the influence of pluralistic democracy.” Although I submitted this thesis statement in my Critical Analysis paper it still needed improvements such as preventing the statement from being a run on sentence. Simply making this one run on sentence into two solid sentences would have been a major improvement to my thesis statement. 

Nonetheless the positive aspect to my thesis statement is that it demonstrated a clear understanding of the rhetorical situation of purpose and audience. This is due to the fact that the thesis statement went straight to the point the Critical Analysis paper would cover which clarifies its purpose. In addition the fact the thesis statement contained a limited amount of words and but still was understandable and clearly engaged the audience or reader of the Critical Analysis paper.