Personal Connections:

I also had to experience the same thing as you, with the rubrics limiting the way I wrote. However, at the same time I feel that the rubrics were important because they prevented you from going on a tangent unnecessarily as you always had to look out for if you were going against any of the criteria on the rubric. When you were talking about the fact that there weren’t any such limitations in this semester, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I really liked this semester so far in terms of writing because you were free. Although there were certain aspects that you had to explore in the different essays that pertained to their assignment criteria, you were left to your own devices on how you would go about meeting those criteria, which enhanced the sense of freedom that was found in English 11000. Moreover, throughout your essay, you mention that you found it especially helpful in getting feedback from the professor and other peers, which I also agree with. Receiving feedback from them definitely assisted me in seeing potential improvements for my essays and also allowed me to identify which ideas needed additional clarification.

Things you did well:

I really liked your overall structure. It was great that you started with an introduction that allowed you to express your feelings about English 11000 and writing in general. I also appreciate that you ordered your body paragraphs in terms of phases and that in each of the body paragraphs you explained what you did in each essay. It was also intriguing that you mentioned some challenges that you faced when writing your researched essay as well as how you overcame those challenges. I would also like to applaud the tone that you used throughout your essay, which I felt to be very conversational. The conversational tone allowed me to feel as if you were speaking directly to me, which allowed me and your essay to connect on a more personal level, and this caused me to understand/ accept the ideas that you shared more easily. The effect of the structure of your essay was also similar in that it allowed me to understand your ideas more easily.

Potential improvements you can make:

In terms of improvements, I would say to directly quote some of the learning objectives that you met since it is a requirement of the self-assessment essay. Since you divided your body paragraphs into different phases/ essays, you can mention which essays allowed you to meet which objectives in each paragraph. For instance, if the research essay allowed you to “locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias,” (this is a learning objective) you would mention that objective in the paragraph in which you talked about the researched essay. If you have time, you should also talk about which learning objectives you didn’t meet and state the reasons as to why. Although you did talk about the feedback that the professor gave you in terms of adding longer sentences and including more experiences, I feel that it would be better to mention more feedback that you received, not only from the professor, but also from your peers. Moreover, in the paragraph in which you talk about the rhetorical analysis essay, you mention that Kingston utilized a specific tone and also that she felt a certain way when she spoke. I would advise you to be more specific and talk about the exact tone that she used as well as stating her exact feeling. You also mention later that you interpreted certain literary devices, but you don’t exactly say what those literary devices are. Accordingly, if you state the name of the literary devices, your essay would be more precise. Other than these improvements, your essay is heading in the right direction!!

Documents that you can include in your portfolio:

As you only mention the three major essays, in the portfolio you can include other documents as well. This can be your journals, comments/ feedback from your peers, initial drafts of your essays, any annotations of readings, or any other sort of writing that you may have done for this class. Although there is a wide range of things you can include, make sure to connect each of those documents to your self assessment essay in your portfolio. As long as you can connect the documents to any part of your self-assessment essay, you will be fine.