Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Alexander Carpenter
ENC 1101
Self-Assessment
Preface:
Throughout the entirety of ENC 1101 I believe I have improved significantly in respect to
all the learning outcomes for the course. However, some learning outcomes I am more proficient
in than others, and my coursework over the course of the semester reflects this claim. Before
being enrolled in this course, my aptitude for writing was sufficient in terms of being able to
write cohesively, yet this does not mean at all that my writing was at all perfect, or I could not
improve further. Rather than changing the conventions I use when I write, this course has
provided a wide range of tools and perspectives I can use to enhance the way I write by drawing
focus away from how to write and more focus toward what I want to write about and how to best
dramatically over the course of the semester. This ability is most evident in my final paper for
this course. In my final paper, I had the opportunity to fully discuss and reflect upon two of my
previous writings and how my process changed based upon the context of the assignments.
While this paper clearly reflects this learning goal, my overall understanding of how writing
Carpenter 2
processes change is a skill that has been developing since the beginning of the course. Prior to
being enrolled in ENC 1101, my understanding of this concept was limited to the extent of only
being acutely aware of the implications context can have to a writing process. I was aware that a
history scholar would prepare a historical analysis in a different manner than a scientist would
eventually understood that context in this sense can be much more complex than I originally
thought. While I understand this learning goal to a much more significant extent, I still think
there is more I could learn about context and its influence on ones writing practices.
because of taking this course. Before taking ENC 1101, I was not aware of what qualified as a
rhetorical situation let alone what it meant. However, this lack of comprehension was quickly
remedied. After reading Keith Grant-Davies article: Rhetorical Situations and Their
Constituents, I immediately became aware of the widely applicable nature of rhetorical situations
and how they are shaped by factors such as the rhetor, audience, exigence, discourse, and
constraints. With that understanding I began applying this concept to other situations in and
outside the classroom setting, thus raising my level of awareness for detecting and evaluating
context on the other hand has been a concept that I understood prior to taking this course. Its
importance nonetheless has been communicated to me to the extent of influencing how I write
and revise my work based on the context of what is being discussed, may it be an analysis of a
changed.
Carpenter 3
While my ability to read complex texts has improved, there is still a great amount I could
still learn to become even more articulate in reading these types of texts. The shift in my
proficiency with complex texts has been a gradual process that has taken place over the entire
duration of being enrolled in ENC 1101. Where this shift is most discernable are the changes in
my ability to speak about a complex subject matter in an average assignment at different points
in the course. In the first assignment of the course, which was to read and interpret Nancy
Sommers article: I Stand Here Writing, I had great difficulty in articulating my thoughts about
the piece because I was not capable of interpreting all of the complex ideas that were addressed.
Instead of focusing solely on the ideas presented in Sommers work, I could only relate parts of
her ideas to concepts I already understood from taking previous courses. Contrastingly, in later
assignments such as when I was assigned to read and interpret James Porters concept of
Intertextuality I was much more capable of understanding this concept and was able to
communicate and discuss my understanding with my peers. Despite my increased capacity for
reading complex texts, I do not consider myself entirely fluent in being able to interpret complex
texts in a proficient manner. It still takes time and in most cases rereading works enable for me to
fully understand complex subject matters that are presented. Therefore, I trust there is still a
higher capacity for me to read complex texts which will come with more experience in reading
Discerning between these aspects of discourse and how they interact with each other has
become a viable skill for me. My ability to implement my understanding of the nature of
discourse came to floriation in my final product of Paper 2 in this course. In this paper I had the
Carpenter 4
opportunity to analyze a specific discourse community in depth, studying how the community
functions and communicates. Due to my fascination with video-games, I decided to study the
Leviathan raid community from the video-game Destiny 2 as my discourse. When researching
this community, I acted as a member for the sake of critically analyzing the community from the
perspective of a member. Consequently, I had to learn the communitys conventions and its
surrounding lexis enable to effectively communicate with other members of the community. For
further analysis, I also studied this community through the lens of Donna Kain and Elizabeth
Wardles Activity Theory to better understand how this discourse community operates as a
manner over the course of writing a paper has dramatically risen my awareness of these
discourse relationships to the extent of being capable of identifying these relationships with any
Conventionally, a writing course such as this would have focused on basic subjects such
as expanding vocabulary and eliminating common errors such as comma-splices. Inversely, this
course has reinvented my understanding of writing and the influences that have affected the way
that I write. I greatly value this newfound understanding and believe that it has significantly
impacted the way I write. No longer do I look at a rubric and try to force my writing into that
frame, instead I look at the broad scope of what I want my paper to accomplish and shape my
writing around the message I want to communicate and contribute to the discourse that is my
intended audience. I believe in a greater scope there is still much more I can learn and discover
about my writing, however I can say with confidence that my ability and understanding as a