Kerneil Melius
FIQWS
15 Dec 20, 2021
Self -Reflection Essay
“THERE is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs.” This quote would be a great representation of my journey throughout this course because all the skills I acquired were obtained by taking it one step at a time. For my first semester in college I can really say that I learned a lot from this course when it comes to my literacy skills and development and most importantly this course shed light on a key topic that not many people focus on which is language drimmination. I was able to learn about different accents and how people from different backgrounds faced discrimmation because of their accents in the workplace and in the real world.
To begin with, the most meaningful assignment I would say I did this semester would have to be the Language Narrative Analysis Essay because it allowed me to think about the important moments in my life that impacted my literacy skills and I was also able to learn about the key moments that impacted a couple of my classmates. The goal of this assignment was to allow students “to reflect on and share important events in their past that helped shape their speaking, reading and writing practices”. This assignment was impactful to me because I was able to reflect on moments in my life that I did not view as important at the time of them occurring but because of this assignment I was able to realize the importance of them and cherish them even more. Another important aspect of this assignment consisted of having the opportunity to read and learn about some of the moments in a couple of my classmates’ lives that influenced their literacy skills.
Throughout this course I was able to recognize the role language plays in the world around us because I was introduced to different situations and challenges that people faced based on their language and accent. The most common situation I believed would be when students with accents are made fun of in school because of the way they speak and as a result these students become ashamed of their native tongue and eventually abandon it. Another aspect we focused on was language discrimantion that was faced without the workplace. Where people were being denied jobs because they had an accent and didn’t speak, and didn’t live up to the standard English ideology.
Furthermore this semester I was introduced to a variety of genres and rhetorical situations, I was able to develop different strategies from some of the authors we read about and even some of the Ted Talk speakers. Effective strategies for example we learned about Safwat Saleem, throughout his Ted talk he spoke about his language journey and to keep his audience engaged he told jokes and spoke about relatable topics. Through the rhetorical precis I was able to find the author’s purpose of the text, and the relationship between the writer and the audience. I also learned how to identify when authors use Pathos, ethos and logs. My revising skills were improved by completing peer reviews and by going over feedback I received and editing my work accordingly.
Another objective I was able to work on in this semester was engaging in collaborative and social aspects of the writing process. I was able to work on this concept through group work in class discussing topics and working together to construct the right answer, peer review, going over my classmates work and for any mistakes and checking to see if they fulfill the objective of the assignment, lastly I was able to work on my social skills through the group facilitation project. My group and I came up with a presentation to teach the class about an article we read. When the time of the presentation came around I was nervous about speaking in front of the class and especially when I first got up in front of the room I felt it even more but after I started presenting all the nervousness went away. This project was a great learning experience and I was able to work on my presentation skills.
Lastly, the final few objectives I worked on this semester was first learning how to create a digital portfolio with the help and guidance of professor Molly that is able to reach a large range of people. Learning how to develop a digital website is very important because you can use these skills to make websites, blogs, write books and reach a wide range of audiences. Towards the end of this course I was also able to learn how to research different sources and tools to improve my work. The ability to research sources to a very specific point and limit your search results is very effective. Overall this course did a great job because I was able to practice different systematic applications of conventions through different citations websites and learning the proper formatting for those citations.
In conclusion I would say that this semester was very successful and I can honestly say that I learned a lot about language and literacy. The assignments and essays we worked really did a good job teaching us about the course objectives and each video and article played a role in helping identify the power of language throughout the world. This course introduced me to situations and topics that I didn’t pay much attention to before and I am very grateful for that because now I realize that they truly are very important even though it’s not talked about much.
Works Citation page:
Melius, Kerneil. “Language Narrative Analysis Essay”.Language Narratative Analysis-Kerneil Melius – Google Docs, accessed 15 December 2021.
Melius, Kerneil. “The Workplace and The Judicial System”.The Workplace and The Judicial System – Google Slides, accessed 15 December 2021.
