Course Goals: Composition 2

GOAL 1: I used a multi-stage, recursive, and social process for my writing and took into consideration feedback from my instructor, classmates, and other readers

I did this by using current events and forming an opinion them. Though difficult at first for me to understand, I learned how to incorporate feedback into my work more efficiently. This is important because when it is said that writing is a social process as well, that can also include peer reviews as well as teacher corrections. Taking constructive criticism on my work and being able to fix it based on that is what helped me reach my goal. Those are basically the stages that I used when fixing or revising a paper.  It is important to get outside opinions and help because people will view your work differently than yourself. Other readers can catch anything from punctuation errors to structural errors. My improvement in this area can be seen in my Visual Rewrite “The Crimes Against Our People!”.

GOAL 2: I read source materials closely and analyzed them critically to learn how and why texts create meaning.

Carefully reading and analyzing your sources is important because you want to make sure you have accurate and relevant information in your work. You also want to make sure that the information you use supports the position you take in the paper. A person’s text can create meaning in many different ways. The words you use can mean different things to people as well as the tone you use when writing. I met this goal by taking a little bit more time than usual to read through my sources. In my “Bibliography Assignment”, I had to use sources carefully to understand what i was using the for. Once I thoroughly understood them, I was able to relay the information in my own words, in my own work.

 GOAL 3: I wrote with a particular audience in mind, allowing my purpose to shape the language and methods I used not just to communicate information but to persuade readers. 

I reached this goal by remembering who was supposed to be reading my work. Having work on the blog means that anyone can see it but for the most part I wrote for the professor. I had to keep in mind what kind of information would sway my professor’s opinion to my point of view. This also kind of goes back to number two. By understanding what is in your source material, you can better relate to your audience. It will be easier to k now would should be left out of the work and what should be included. Now this doesn’t mean leave out facts or fabricate anything but there is certain information that may not be needed. I worked on this a lot in my causal rewrite assignment, “Discrepancy of Our Health”.

GOAL 4: I demonstrated my information literacy by synthesizing my own experience with new insights and information from a range of outside sources to produce new material.

As an example, I will us my final paper. I chose to write about multivitamins. The debate is whether or not they are useful. Multivitamins is in the category of health. Health and fitness is a topic that I have always been interested in and wanted to learn more about. However, there is a lot I already know and I incorporated that knowledge in a many of my works. Not just for the topic of multivitamins but for works like the moving image. I had a personal experience with racial profiling so it was a topic I could easily talk about with knowledge. So with what I already know along with the information from the sources, I was able to put my own feel onto the assignment. This is evident in my “Visual Rewrite” assignment because I experienced the problem personally.

GOAL 5: My writing is ethical. Writing about meaningful topics, I have engaged responsibly with them and represented my ideas and the ideas of others honestly, fairly, and logically.

I reached the goal of writing ethically by choosing topics I felt were relevant. Writing about something you don’t understand or are not interested in is quite difficult in my opinion. I represented the ideas of other people honestly by not changing words or the meanings of those words. Others ideas mostly refers to sources that I have found and used to influence my own work. When I needed to cite, I cited correctly. These quotes come from articles that gave me more insight and information on the topic of multivitamins. Even though I got information from these sources, I also voiced my ideas and opinions within my work. This is important for the reader to understand what side you support if any. The work I found most meaningful is my research paper, “Multivitamins – Useful or Harmful?”.