My Learning Outcome!

To what extent have I achieved the course learning outcomes this semester? In this semester, I have learned how literacy and language can come into play with rhetorical analysis, but within that, I also have gotten to learn through all the phases how language can play a crucial part in someone's identity that I never once thought of, most common theme in this semester is surrounded by language and literacy. The reading that helped me understand this was Mother Tounge by Amy Tan because the purpose of mother tongue was the way we speak can drastically affect how people perceive us and how important it is to respect different cultures and the way people speak, which led us to the assignment with telling our own story how language affected ourself growing up. Some people feel important when they use 'proper' language, but others who speak differently might feel less valued. So, opinions about language can make some people confident and respected, while others feel left out, and that is what you get out of the mother tongue and how attitudes towards linguistic standards empower and oppress language users. In my cover letter, I quote “From the learning outcome, the assignment that better helped me with this project would be the letter to Amy Tan and how we examine how attitudes towards linguistic standards empower and oppress language users. In Amy Tan's reading, she talks about how proper language can either hold back or give someone confidence, so this helped my reading because I related.”

Throughout these phases, we used Ethos, Pathos, and Logos to best determine how to persuade or how to make writing more effective. In the peer review when interviewing Nadir he demonstrates Pathos and Ethos when explaining how his family being ashamed of him affected his relationship with him for not knowing the language and then giving the readers insight on how to better learn your language using credibility from his experiences that best helped him. Through this phase it made me understand that it isn't impossible to learn a language just because we aren’t raised knowing the language, it’s about connecting with your culture and learning more about who you are. Considering this we have learned that language is a big part of our life because people will treat you differently based on how fluent you are in a certain language and I feel that the most important thing I got out of this phase.
 
Writing strategies also came into play when planning for how to read, write a first draft, work together with others, make changes, and review and correct my work, My thinking process in this phase at first “Why do we even need to pair review if we can just get it done faster by ourself?” When having someone go over my work I saw significant changes that completely went over my eyes and I realized instead of jumping into the work right away, feedback from others and brainstorming would better benefit someone's writing. Within that, it helped my writing better demonstrate important writing techniques and words to make my writing strong and convincing. I learned how important ethos, pathos, and logos are in writing, and it made me better understand why it is important to go through these rhetorical devices when writing papers it helped me when we would do peer reviews in class to each other papers looking for these three rhetorical devices because it helped me understand more of how it works and how it can be incorporated in our writings, so I think this was my favorite lesson of out of all the phases. In the research essay I state “Research has shown that while bilingual children may initially demonstrate a smaller vocabulary in each language compared to monolingual children, their overall vocabulary size remains comparable.” This is a common misconception because people tend to think both languages will clash, but children who speak two languages may have a smaller vocabulary in each language at first, their overall vocabulary is similar to that of children who speak just one language, but within that they are gaining two languages instead of smaller vocabulary in one.” In this statement, I tell the audience what researchers state which is ethos using credibility to make my reason why being bilingual is important.

The resources I utilized for my research paper were thoughtfully balanced, I used both serious, academic sources and more casual ones for my research paper. This mix helped me get a well-rounded view of the topic and understand the information better. I've learned when looking up evidence scholarly sources are like super-smart papers written by experts for other experts and non-scholarly sources are for everyone else for example magazines, websites, and newspapers. I realized I lacked in this area. Although I put an equal amount of sources I could’ve added an extra non-scholarly source because my audience who is reading it is my classmates and they are more an audience that are not experts yet at least, so that part I was lacking in. The non-scholary evidence I mostly used for the rebuttal which I think is very biased because I use expert quotes or multi-media to prove why being bilingual is better, but I could’ve used scholarly for the rebuttal as well. In my research paper, the nonscholarly quotes state “Also, having gone to University and worked in English, I learned a lot of scientific and industry-specific terms in English and don’t know their French equivalents. That leads me to forget words and I sometimes use anglicisms. It makes it difficult to talk to my parents about my job or the things I do.” I have learned the importance of scholarly and non-scholarly sources I used to think both were the same, but in the process, I learned that it is both are important in different factors, but I learned more about language and how it plays a role in my life and how language is something that we shouldn’t ignore because just like in mother tongue, the research essay and the peer review it showed how important it is and impacts everyone life in different ways, but connects us all.  Overall, yes I have achieved most of the learning outcomes, but I also learned and achieved the importance of language and literacy in our everyday lives, especially with our mother tongue and our narratives that best-demonstrated strengths and weaknesses and how we can better improve our language through all the phases of this assignment. Overall I can say I achieved most of the learning outcomes, but have learned how valuable language plays a role not in just an english class, but in everyones everyday life!