Christopher Lara

Writing for the Humanities

Self Assessment Essay

While taking Writing for the Humanities I learned many things about literature. This course has improved my writing and comprehension skills when it comes to visual essays, opinion editorials, and critical analysis essays. This course has helped me with organization in essays, improving on elaborating on details, and understanding writing better. My professor Shamecca Harris had allowed a for more freedom based papers in which I was allowed to choose my own topic, conduct my own research, and analysis in many of the assignments given to us. As a result, it has helped me develop my own personality in writing and has helped me develop better writing skills.

In the beginning of the course I felt comfortable with my writing skills due to the fact that I took college writing classes prior to this class. I felt like I was a strong writing individual but I hoped that this class would help improve the skills I already had. I felt prepared from the moment my professor put our writing skills to the test on the first day. Professor Harris insisted we always draft a paper before we hand in our final as another form of writing technique. Before this course, I would sit and write my essay with no plan and attempt to just go with the flow. But now, since I have gotten so used to the drafting process, I do it all the time with my writing assignments. A first draft is helpful in the fact that, I can review my writing and edit any mistakes or augment my vocabulary. This helped me elaborate more on specific details I included in my essays instead of stating a detail and moving on to the next point. During this class I learned what macro edits were and how to apply them to my essays. Another sort of technique that helped a lot during this class was peer review. Peer review is when you sit in a group where your peers take turns reading your draft and providing comments or advice. For example, while writing the first draft of my opinion editorial, I titled it “Shut up and Play!”, which what I thought was short and simple. However, when my peers read it they believed it was unclear. So after their comments they helped change the title of essay to “Shut Up and Play! How America Censors American Athletes” which helped my title be more attention grabbing and clear. Using this helped tremendously with the organization of my paragraphs.

Overall, this course has helped me excel in writing and improve my skills so that they meet the requirements of being college level. This class has helped me with organization, drafting, peer reviews, and how to linger on ideas that I include in my essays.