Ying Xin Jiang

Professor Poe

FIQWS Writing

December 21, 2018

Self Assessment: Course Learning Outcomes

My FIQWS classes were apart of my journey in elevating my reading and writing skills and being able to implement these new techniques into various branches of literature. These include my first major assignment, which was my literary narrative, in addition to my poetic analysis, annotated bibliography, and lastly, my final research paper. In order to accomplish and do well on these assignments, I needed to do various tasks, some differ from assignment to assignment, but in most cases, they do share similar processes but differ in purpose. I learned to appeal to the audience by understanding the audience, and I was taught this through the guide of rhetorical devices as well as research. These assignments forced me to use different techniques in order to correlate it to what best fits my end goal. In terms of my literary narrative and my poetic analysis, I tend to focus on the pathos or the emotional side of the human psyche, which I decided was best to do after I went through various examples supplied by the Norton chapters and other reading recommendations. My processes for the annotated bibliography and research paper, on the other hand, was different. I needed to focus on facts and sources in order to correctly develop my claims, which I used as my foundation to eventually create my research essay.

The starting process of the creation of the literary narrative essay mainly composed of trying to brainstorm ideas in which I am able to use my experience with the literature I chose, to make my audience understand and relate to the struggle I had in this period of my life.  I specifically chose the first person perspective because it allows me to describe my emotions more vividly, which is essential for the story I was to tell because I was trying to make the audience reminisce with me about the feelings we had during our early childhoods. The example literary narrative “Coming into Language” really inspired me with its visual detail, and it made me pay more attention to the setting and environment. Therefore, I decided to incorporate sensory imagery that makes the reader feel more involved with the situation since they are able to visualize the surrounds. During my second drafting phase, I decided through the advice that I had on my peer review and the teacher review, to incorporate more of the book into the paper. I really struggled with this aspect of my essay because it was hard to add more details without going over the word limit. This issue mostly stems from the fact that I am not able to decide what chunks of the story to leave out because everything needs to be fleshed out in order to create the full visual and feeling. As a result, I wasn’t able to take my peer’s advice to the fullest extent. I did sprinkle bits and pieces of the book here and there, but I found that it was difficult to mesh the synopsis of the book with my experience without making it feel forced and awkward. All in all, I should have planned all the single events I want to use during my drafting phase in order to be organized and avoid this mistake in the future.

My next work was the poetic analysis paper, in which we had to write three poems and analyze them. In the drafting phase of my poems, I would choose from the various types of forms I can use. I eventually decided to do one freestyle, a haiku, and a concrete poem. I didn’t do any sort of outline or planning for the poems besides the practice I had during the two free writing journals in the class, where we had to write a poem based off a historical event. I decided to use one of the poems as a base for my concrete poem where I made the poem into the shape of the sun, making a visual reference to the Japanese flag. The form for the concrete poem was quite difficult, and I couldn’t manage to create a shape that resembles a circle. After some research on the internet, I discovered that I can play around with the spacing of the poems. What I learned during my process of writing a haiku, is that despite the fact that it is very short, it is still as difficult as other poems. I realized that I had to be precise in the way I chose words because there is a limited amount of syllables I am able to use. However, this made me pay attention to the etymology of the words and the power it brings to the word due to it’s multiple links to other words. Throughout all of my poems, I maintained the usage of imagery because I believed that visualizing the parallel between the theme of the poem and the connection it has to the symbolism of the image, evokes the emotions of the reader.

For my final research paper, I faced many difficulties when it came to organization, explaining my primary source, and making my thesis statement clear to my audience. The primary source I used was very unforgiving when it came to explaining the synopsis, especially since it isn’t split into multiple parts like other sources. I still made the synopsis a bit short because I didn’t want to spend too much time on it. I eventually realized during the peer review, that this made it very difficult for some of my peers to follow along with the points I made. One of my peer review partners also stated that my thesis was in my conclusion when it was actually in my second paragraph. I think this is due to the organization of my essay. To explain, during the drafting phase, I decided to make my introduction longer than normal, to accommodate for the in-depth synopsis and background information of my primary source. Consequently, I think that made my thesis unclear. As a result, I decided after some advice from my professor, to rearrange one of my sources that was used later in my essay, so that I can use it in my introduction. I actually made this switch for two reasons, the first reason is that I thought that the quote would translate into the thesis really well because my thesis needed a definition in order to hold any sort of ground.  Additionally, I didn’t state the credentials of the author of the sources I used and I realized, after some feedback, that it made my points uncredible. The sources themselves were pretty difficult to find, mostly because my topic is very specific. I found that the CCNY library database search made this process so much easier because it can reach across many different scholarly sources. Overall, I am quite happy with how the research paper turned out, I especially my counter-argument because I feel my use of statistical evidence from

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