Core Value 1. My work demonstrates that I used a variety of social and interactive practices that involve recursive stages of exploration, discovery, conceptualization, and development.

Research is something that I initially had trouble with this semester.  The topic I was writing about, hand gestures, was very broad and I had trouble identifying which sources would be useful because there were so many of them.  This problem was lessened to some degree when I narrowed my topic down to a more specific claim, that trade over a language barrier increases the use of hand gestures.  The main issue after that was finding articles that I actually had access to.  I was able to solve this problem after a discussion with my professor who told me that if I didn’t have access to an article on google scholar, I could go to the site for the Rowan Library and search for the same article there.  In most cases I found that the Rowan Library had access to the article and I was able to read it. 

Core Value 2. My work demonstrates that I read critically, and that I placed texts into conversation with one another to create meaning by synthesizing ideas from various discourse communities. 

My reading of sources this semester was not nearly as critical as I would have liked it to be.  I often found myself skimming through articles looking for information I believed to be relevant.  I would have read more critically if I had better managed my time by setting aside large portions of it to read through large amounts of information, then critically analyzing what it is saying.  Despite my failure to critically read sources, I do have confidence in my ability to do so, as I was more than capable of critically analyzing the professor’s lectures, which I found to be something of a fun game, I am particularly proud of when I voiced disagreement with one of the professor’s conclusions on the nature of thinking while reading.  I also critically analyzed how the professor set us up to disagree with a video he presented to us at the beginning of class.

Core Value 3. My work demonstrates that I rhetorically analyzed the purpose, audience, and contexts of my own writing and other texts and visual arguments.

I did not do particularly well with this value.  When I was writing I was mostly concerned with getting the paper completed than actually analyzing my rhetoric.  In other words, my purpose was completion or having something to turn in rather than a well thought out argument.  As stated in my thoughts on core value two, I did much better with my notes than my primary writing assignments.  This is because the professor set up the expectations of the notes very early on in the semester and I was able to write my notes to that expectation using what he had provided us with as well as reading the notes of students who were frequently receiving good grades on their notes.  I found that the professor liked notes that attempted to identify a core theme of the lecture, and If I was unable to come up with a core theme then all I would have to do was identify what part I didn’t understand and ask a question about it.

Core Value 4: My work demonstrates that I have met the expectations of academic writing by locating, evaluating, and incorporating illustrations and evidence to support my own ideas and interpretations.

I was good at locating evidence for my claim.  For my main topic I needed to find examples of trade between people over a language barrier, and I needed to see if the people involved used hand gestures to cross that barrier.  There were of course historical accounts of people communicating across such barriers but they were rarely focused specifically on the use of hand gestures.  So I had to turn to more modern examples.  I found that there were some studies in the medical field that focused on doctor patient communication, these studies mentioned the use of hand gestures and I was even able to find one that focused on their use.  Where I struggled was with the evaluation and incorporation of these texts.  I believe this mostly comes down to time management and a failure to follow a process.

Core Value 5. My work demonstrates that I respect my ethical responsibility to represent complex ideas fairly and to the sources of my information with appropriate citation. 

During my writing I never tried to pass off any idea or information from a source as my own.  In my bibliography I even included sources that I never found a use for on the off chance that they may have in some way influenced me.  That being said, my citations were poor. In my first draft of my research paper my reference section was more of a clumsy bibliography rather than a proper reference section.  When writing my research paper, I found a lot of information on the use of hand gestures in hospitals, however I also found that in a medical environment where clear communication between doctor and patient could mean the difference between life and death, that hand gestures alone were not sufficient and that interpreters were necessary.  I made sure to clarify that I was not advocating for the use of hand gestures as a primary means of communication in hospitals, I was simply citing them as examples of one of the ways people attempt to use hand gestures to combat a language barrier.