Accomplished Goals

Taking the course FIQWS: Language and Literacy taught me many valuable concepts that improved my skills as a reader, writer, and thinker. Language was a topic that I had not paid much attention to until I got to that class. It was an idea that stood at the back of my head and not much thought was put into. However, that completely changed and I am now more knowledgeable of various things having to do with language such as accents and language discrimination. Learning about these topics was very interesting and I got to explore diverse ways of thinking and different points of view. Language is not as simple as some people may think it is. There is so much to learn and I believe I now have a good understanding of it. Throughout the four phases, we did many readings, worksheets, groupwork, and essays that were crucial to for me to achieve the Course Learning Outcomes. It was a learning process, but I strongly feel that I achieved those goals through various ways.

The first Course Learning Outcome I believe I achieved is to “Recognize the role of language attitudes and standards in empowering, oppressing, and hierarchizing and their users.” The way I achieved this was by doing the readings in the course reading packet. There were many stories that opened my eyes on the discrimination in the world towards what people consider “inferior” languages and how SAE is idolized. Many authors shared their personal experience and how that affected them. For example, Amy Tan shares her mother’s story and the struggles she went through since she didn’t speak SAE. In addition, Geneva Smitherman expresses her feelings about being put into a speech therapy class for not speaking White American English. There were many language attitudes addressed and seen throughout the readings. This helped me write the Researched Critical Analysis Essay. Comprehending these attitudes made me focus on one that I considered very negative and that is that “broken” English is seen as inferior and it shouldn’t be spoken. I’m glad to have written about this because this is something that I have strong opinions on. The second Course Learning Goal I achieved is to “Explore and analyze in their own and other’s writing a variety of genres and rhetorical situations.” The readings helped me see a variety of genres such as essays, articles, and memoires. For example, “Everyone Has an Accent” by Walt Wolfram is an article that is sectioned by headings. Knowing these genres was useful because the essays we had to write could have been done in any format. Additionally, the readings helped me understand the rhetorical strategies used and I was able to incorporate that into my essays as well. In one of Lippi Green’s essays called “African-American English: From The Hood to the Amen Corner,” her intended audience is African Americans and the topic the text is responding to is racism along with the Black Youth. Understanding the rhetorical situations was the basis for writing my essays. For instance in my Phase 3 essay I had a target audience and specific purpose. I chose Emma Thompson as my audience and this was new for me because I had never focused on one specific person as an audience. I demonstrated my purpose throughout the whole essay and that was that slang is not what she perceives it to be so she shouldn’t have made that negative statement.

“Develop strategies for reading, drafting, revising, and editing” was another one of the Course Learning Objectives I achieved. One of the ways I did this was by writing drafts for every one of my essays. I treated the drafts as if they were the final essay I would hand in. Furthermore, I accomplished this goal by writing notes along the margins of the readings. In the picture below, I took annotations which helped me understand the main rhetorical strategies such as audience,purpose, and evidence of “Everyone Has an Accent.”

I revised and edited my own work as well as going to the writing center, where they helped me correct grammar issues. The professors were a big help and made me recognize my mistakes and how to avoid them. The fourth Course Learning Objective is to “Practice systematic application of citation conventions.” I believe I achieved this because I dedicated a lot of time to the Works Cited page as well as making sure I used proper in-text citations. Referring back to the class notes on how to cite as well as looking up other questions online helped me compose good essays by citing my sources correctly. I revised my Works Cited page for my Phase 3 essay since I had some mistakes, but now I know what to do and what not to do. Some things I learned was to not number the sources and to alphabetize them. Another goal I accomplished is to “Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations.” This was one of the most important goals I believe I achieved because using rhetorical strategies was new to me. Once I learned what they were and how authors used them, I was able to incorporate it in all three of my essays for the semester. Using these strategies definitely made my essays stronger and of more value. Two ways I accomplished this goal was through “Charting a Text” worksheets and the “Rhetorical Situation” worksheets which are seen below.

Par.	Saying	Doing
Page 40 Par.3	“When I saw poetry written in Tex-Mex for the first time, a feeling of pure joy flashed through me. I felt like we really existed as a people.”	The author stresses the idea of the importance she felt when a piece of writing was written in her language. Anzaldùa expresses her feeling of happiness because her culture was being displayed in poetry.
Page 41 Par. 1	“When watching Mexican movies, I felt a sense of homecoming as well as alienation.”	Anzaldùa examines how she felt when watching movies about her culture. She felt as if wanting to return home and embrace her heritage. However, she wants to step back from it as well.
Page 41 Par.	“Pancho Villa’s song, “La cucaracha,” is the most famous one.	Anzaldùa analyzes all the great artists and musicians that come from Mexico. She supports this by giving specific examples of famous songs that are heard worldwide.

Citation: Add the correct MLA or APA bibliographic entry for this text. If you’re not sure how to do this, check out Easybib.com or https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/.

Gloria, Anzaldùa. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.”Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 1987.

 

Author: Who is the author of this text?  Look him/her up. What are his/her professional credentials? Please gather and list a full overview of the author’s credentials.

The author of this text is Gloria Anzaldùa. She was a Chicana poet, writer, and feminist theorist. She speaks and writes about issues dealing with feminism, lesbian and Chicana issues, autobiographical, and pioneer in code-switching. Anzaldùa worked as a school teacher and also as a migrant worker for a year in Arkansas. First, she taught in a bilingual preschool program and later on in a Special Education program for handicapped students. Anzaldùa received her B.A. in English, Art, and Secondary Education form Pan American University.

 

Text: What can you find out about the publication? Look it up and explain what it is and what it aims to do. Describe the genre (the type, form, style, structure, tone) of the text. Typical genres include essays, narratives, newspaper articles, peer-reviewed academic articles, blogs, op-ed articles, etc.

This text is an excerpt from “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.” The text is written in an essay format with dialogue, quotes from other people, and italics for the words or sentences written in Spanish. Throughout the text, the author uses personal experience as well.

 

Context: What topic/conversation is this text responding to? Is it related to certain groups or debates? What year is the text published? Historically, what events might have influenced the writing of this text? What perspectives or worldviews is the author responding to, if any?

The topic the text is responding to is embracement of culture. The groups it is related to are immigrants because, like in the author’s situation, there are people who want to forget or leave behind their background. However, this isn’t what should be done because where we come from shapes our identity. The year the text was published was in 1987. Historically, the cultural revolution in the 1980s and the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986 might have influenced the writing of this text. The Immigration Reform and Control Act allowed millions of illegal immigrants to apply for legal status. This played a major role with conflicts and doubts on heritage.

 

Constantly doing these worksheets broke everything down in terms of what the author was doing, who was their audience, their purpose, the author’s credentials, publication information, and how the author supported their claim. These things were helpful to know because it gave me a better understanding of what was going on in the story and informed me about the author. Two other strategies I became more knowledgeable about was summarizing and synthesizing. In class, we practiced differentiating between the two concepts with various texts. Also, we practiced writing precis’ that served as good templates for summaries. Below is a précis I wrote for one of the readings.

Wolfram Précis

The Researched Exploratory Essay mainly consisted of summarizing and synthesizing so it was significant to know what they were and how to use them.

The sixth Course Learning Objective I achieved is to “Develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.” The way I was able to fulfill this goal was by peer review and the discussion board. Peer review was very beneficial because sharing your work with one or two people gives you their thoughts on what is good or what could be improved. There were specific worksheets handed out in class as well that had certain questions for my classmates, including me, to review before handing back the essay read.

This sheet shows Sonia’s comments on my Researched Critical Analysis Essay. It was important that she understood the focus of my essay and agreed that I met all the requirements. The discussion board was another social aspect in which we all participated and shared our thoughts on certain Ted talks, videos, and memes. We were also asked to respond to a peers response. This helped in seeing how ideas correlate or not. I enjoyed doing this because I got to see the point of views of people that don’t really participate in class. Additionally, achieving this goal was also done when there was a circle formed in the class and certain groups sat to discuss particular questions put up on the board by playing the role of a specific author. This was a good way for the class to interact and at the same time know more about certain authors through the ideas they portray in their writings.

The seventh Course Learning Goal is to “Understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences.” One of the ways I achieved this was by using visual aids as part of my sources for the last two essays. I used videos and this is a source of technology. I preferred videos rather images because I feel like they are more effective when trying to get your points across. I included a link to a video in my Phase 2 Exploratory Essay. I feel like this was a good addition since the reader can just click on it and see the video for themselves. The discussion board was another use of digital technology. One of the advantages of this was having people express themselves better rather than speaking aloud in class. The last Course Learning Objective I achieved was to “Locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives on the internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, and bias.” The Researched Critical Analysis Essay and the Researched Exploratory Essay both required sources to be used and I was able to find suitable sources for my topics by using the CCNY library database. Having gone to the library a few times where Ms. Dominguez informed us on many things such as using key words when searching and about peer reviewed articles was essential. Being able to tell the difference between a peer reviewed article and one that is not is significant because they are more reliable. Also, I chose articles that were not so biased because I needed support as well as some counter arguments for the Phase 2 and 3 essays.

In conclusion, I achieved all eight of the Learning Course Objectives. It took some time to accomplish them, but I can proudly say I was able to do so. I am glad to have taken this course because I learned many new things. In addition, I can use the knowledge I learned further on in future classes. I can use the strategies and skills I acquired and apply them to upcoming essays or to understand readings. I feel that achieving the Course learning Goals made me a better student overall. I am satisfied with all the material we did throughout the semester because it really helped me improve my writing and expanded my knowledge on language. I now have useful information on language and literacy that I didn’t have before taking this class, which is great.