One of the course learning outcomes that helped me with the outcome was developing strategies for reading, drafting, revising, and editing. This learning outcome was very critical because it shaped the way I am able to write. This is because I was able to collaborate with my peers and fix the mistakes that have been made in my essay as well as look at other essays and identify mistakes or things that I acknowledged. I was able to achieve a better understanding of what I am supposed to write about. The multiple revisions of the essay basically allowed me to stick to a specific topic and maintain the thesis that I chose. I greatly improved my reading skills as well. This is because, for the Exploratory essay I had to choose multiple sources and read the sources to make sure it relates to my thesis. The achievement in reading allowed me to basically be able to interpret the text that I am going to be using as well as what information would be most vital.
A second course learning outcome that I was able to achieve was locating research sources in the library databases. My thesis was a bit more complicated because it did not have lots of valuable articles dedicated to the topic. This was seen as being a difficult point in the process of my essay writing. However, I was able to think of a much broader idea which also related to the topic that I was discussing. The database was difficult at first however, the increased thirst for information helped me understand the database much easier, allowing for a quicker search of articles and journals. The CUNY database has a large amount of journals and articles and it may seem intimidating to be able to find a supporting article. But, besides being intimidating, the advanced search options allowed for a much easier access and a much more concentrated search for the topic you may need to support.
A third learning objective was explore and analyze in their own and others’ writing a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. Throughout the semester we read multiple articles on which we had to identify the authors tone, purpose and much more. By doing these rhetorical analysis, it became much easier to identify and fully understand what an article is talking about. As done in the rhetorical critical analysis. As readers, we were asked to basically analyze the article and identify key factors of it in our own words. some of these factors being purpose, medium, audience, and tone, etc. These factors helped me to better understand articles presented to me because I am basically questioning myself as to what each article is talking about. This greatly improves my understanding in reading and rhetorical situations.
