In reading a student's self assessment, I realized how representative it is of many students, and how much of what I was saying to might benefit other students. The student in question was kind enough to agree my sharing her assessment with my comments here. Find the combination below. My comments are in red.
Professor Brandon,
This is my second self assessment to you. I could not retrieve my first due to computer error, so I please ask for your understanding that this one unfortunately does not have the thought and time in it that my first did. I would like to start my assessment by going over the techniques and ideas that I have learned in this class. The first and most important after this unfortunate incident would have to be the use and benefits of using gmail and google docs. Gmail has proven to be the most sufficient and user friendly email available to students of a distant learning course. The amount of information that is able to be stored and retrieved is wonderful and very helpful. Google docs has also proven to be a wise choice for the storage and formatting of writings and presentations. I have found it fairly easy to use, and the options of things to do (i.e the different formats, power point, ways of sharing) seem to be endless, i find a new tool every time I use. Another general trick I have learned from this class and your writings, is to read EVERYTHING. I have always been a skimmer. I can usually read through an entire page on only a handful of sentences and key words. Your documents have proven my method of reading to be highly ineffective. In the length of my college work and my career in life, I'm sure I will thank you for this eye-opener, eventually. [You will. Just as there are different kinds of writing to accomplish different things--memos, emails, poetry, novels, newspaper ads, etc.; and, you pick which method to use based on your audience, your goal, and your message, there are different ways of reading. Skimming works well in many circumstances, but there are times when you've got to milk a text for every bit of information and nuance. Knowing how to read actively and intensively will help you in college and in your profession, as most college texts are written for intensive reading as are most professional journals.] As far as course material goes, I have had that which stumped me and that which interested me. With our first two reading assignments on ethos, pathos, and logos, I found myself reading the material two or three times. I also found myself reading over my notes during almost all my writings on rhetorical situations. These components were very new to me, and I had my difficulty in understanding and differentiating them. I feel I know how to read a situation, as far as if its from a factual point of view or an emotional point of view, but learning how to break them down was much different. I often found myself caught between whether something was ethos or pathos, or both. These two, in my point of view, seem very connected in a way, and not until after much reading and practice, was I able to get a better understanding of the differences. [Often, the various appeals are interconnected. For instance, emotions (pathos) and how you are made to feel about an author plays a large role in the credibility (ethos) they have. How one presents ideas and the quality of the ideas you present (logos) also has much to do with how much credibility (ethos) an audience is willing to give to you.] I will say though, I feel with each rhetorical situation I write about, breaking it down into components and analyzing the messages gets a little easier, which I guess is a step in the right direction. [AND, this is how you are supposed to learn, that is, one step at a time, learning a little bit more about how to apply new knowledge and new skills with each step.] I have also become a little more confident in my writings with my other courses, and have learned to not only perceive what I write from my point of view but that of my audiences' (usually the professor) point of view as well. [Just remember, while I will give you a grade, and because of this, I am an important audience in the rhetorical situation of this course, you are learning to write for real audiences, and writing a successful message for a real audience is very different than writing one for teachers.] Next, I believe, came the critiques of our classmates writings. I am not a person who criticizes much or very well. I feel I don't have the room to criticize if I am unsure of the information myself. I found this assignment somewhat out of character for me, but with the reading of others opinions, I blended [is this the precise word you want?] in to the idea. The forming and group work I have actually grown to love. I always considered myself to be one who works better alone, but I found it has been nice to have a group of my peers to turn to in quest for help and in general to even out the workload. Our final assignments have been in proofreading, and this without a doubt I have enjoyed, and probably learned the greatest from. I have always been one to rely on spell check and nothing else. However, with the different techniques you gave us I find myself proofreading everything. I have tried all of them and found my favorite, and most effective for me, to be reading backwards through the sentences. I was amazed with the first paper I proof read this way, and the amount of mistakes I found. I have also come to rely on the reading aloud method. I don't read to others, but to myself, which I find to be very useful, not only for proofing but also to train my ears with visual recognition on the proper text and usage in writing. [Students who respond well to reading out loud often see even more if they get the text read to them. For this, you can use a text to speech program or get someone to read your writing back. The advantage of a text to speech program is that you can have it with you anywhere, and with earphones, no one will know you are proofreading. Here's a link to many free, online text to speech converters: http://www.laits.utexas.edu/hebrew/personal/tts/table.html.] Being half way through this course, I feel comfortable in my learning's but far from safe, which in my eyes is gonna make be a better learner in the long run.
When it comes to assessing myself on how I am doing in your class, I tend to be a little more hazy. I enjoy your class because not everything is sealed and stamped with an A,B,C,D, or F, but at the same time, I dislike your method because nothing is sealed and stamped with a grade. I understand the work we do in this class is all a work in progress but I am a student who learns by knowing what I am excelling in and what I need vast improvement in, and I don't get that in your class. I am confident in myself that I have put every effort into understanding and executing all the different techniques and readings that you have given to us. However, I feel snowed sometimes with trying to grasp a new technique and put it into action all in a weeks time. [In part, this is a product of the course design. In order to free students from worrying about grades and to get the idea that one must revise to produce a successful text, I do away with grades, which allow a students to stop worrying if their work is good enough to stop revising. Without a grade, the limiting factor in learning to polish and revise is how a student feels about the quality of their work. Since one of the things I'm charged with teaching is the chore of teaching students to learn to judge the quality of their own communication and to revise it to the goals they have for a message, giving a grade actually subverts the learning outcomes students need to learn. Complicating all this is how students prior to college are trained to look at the teacher/student relationship, namely, as one where the teacher is the ultimate authority. In fact, the institution is set up to promote this view. However, one of my other jobs is to teach students to look to themselves as author(ity)s, when it comes to their own writing, not at the professor. All this learning comes at the cost to the student of the reassurance which comes from being able to be reassured that all is well. All in all, I've found it a trade off with which I can live. Then again, I'm not the student worried about their grade. To reassure you, return to what I said in the syllabus. I am what is known in the trade as an easy grader. Struggle with the ideas. Don't try to just get by or to force the learning into as little time as possible, do the work and--as you have in this assessment--show me you have learned, and you will get a high grade; because, when all is said in done, I'm in the business to promote your learning, not to judge your learning harshly.] I feel a personal best of my writing at this point. I believe my writings have been well written and contained thorough information, evidence, and opinion. My downfall is I tend to always question whether the information, evidence, and opinion I am providing is right. [Learning to trust and have confidence in your voice as a writer and judgment as a professional is one of the hardest lessons of lift, must less your freshman year.] I have trouble asking questions and admitting my doubts about assignments, but I have gotten to realize that asking questions and putting my doubts out there is probably the best way to pass this class. [You are right.] So, in that respect, I am going to try to put my thoughts and fears out in the open more in hopes of coming to a comfortable understanding of our assignments and weekly readings. I believe I stated in my introduction that English and writing has never been the subject I excel in, and I thought with taking this class I could prove myself wrong and hopefully surprise myself, but I don't feel as if I have done that so far. I have taken my learning in this class with me to my other classes and used them it [learning is something called a "mass noun," like a herd of cows. We treat mass nouns as if they were singular, even though they refer to a group or mass. It's one of the quirks of English. In any event, since the pronoun must agree with the noun to which it refers, "them" doesn't go with "learning." "It" does.] quite well. This little step helps me to know that I am succeeding somewhat from this course. In overview, I feel I stand in middle ground at this point and that is not where I am comfortable being; so it's up to me to change that, and that's what I hope to do from this point on.
--As always, write with questions.
Steve
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