English 1010
Self-Assessment
Writing a paper has never been one of the strongest points in my life. One of the papers that I really struggled with was the Rhetorical Analysis. One of my stronger papers, and ones that I really enjoyed were the Annotated Bibliography and the Exploration (research) Project. This class has helped me improve my writing skills and has helped me to get in the habit of making a rough draft, checking it, making corrections, and rewriting an improved paper.
In the rhetorical analysis we had to find an article on food. I chose "Not All Industrial Food Is Evil" by Mark Bittman. I chose this article because it caught my eye. We always hear that industrial food is evil and I was interested in knowing what his opinion was and why he thought not all was evil and what industrial food he thought fit in the category of "not evil". The easiest part of this paper was identifying the ethos, pathos, and logos that Bittman talks about throughout the article. The hardest part for me was to put them into the essay and me wanting to summarize what it was talking about instead of being direct and talking about the ethos, pathos, and logos that were found in the paper.
The IEP (Issue Exploration Project), we chose a subject in the topic of food. Such as an issue or something that is interesting to you. I chose to research the different kinds of food in the world and why certain countries ate what they did. Learning of different cultures and learning about different things in a country besides ours, has always been a fascinating topic for me. As I researched what each region or country ate, most ate what we did while others ate things that I have never heard of before, some sounded interesting while others made me wonder who came up with the idea to eat it. Most countries ate the food recourses that they had around them. For example, if they lived by water their diet normally consisted of fish. I was very interested in the assignment and enjoyed it very much. The hardest part for me was finding sources and books online, so I used your regular ole books at the library. Before we started writing the research paper, we wrote an Annotated Bibliography. It has the sources that I thought would be helpful and as I read through my recourses I wrote down why that book would help me to write my essay. It was also a brief summary of the recourse. It wasn't too hard to write down the summary and to put the source in MLA format, the hardest part was finding the source and where to get enough information to help me write a paper on my topic.
Another interesting paper that we had to write were the Notebook Assignments. We had to listen to ten different podcasts and answer questions found on assignment sheet. Some of the podcasts that I looked up had an interesting title, but wasn't a topic I was necessarily into. Other of the podcasts that I listened to were fun and upbeat and I enjoyed listening to them and what the host(s) had to say. I gravitated more towards the ones that weren't on serious topics, but rather topics that were just fun and didn't have a point to them. One of them talks about Halloween candy and the hosts talk about some of the candy that they had as a kid, what kind of traditions they had, and their costumes. Another ones talks about different restaurants in Japan and what makes them unique. Another interesting podcast that I listened to, talked about the difference between chocolate and carob, the similarities and differences. Carob is used in baking and is not the best just plain. The only similarities of the two is the color of it.
The podcast assignment was fun to do. I did mine of family food traditions that I have in my family ever since the time that I could remember as a little girl. I chose this topic because for me, it is easy to talk about my crazy family and in my family, we have many traditions that I love. The challenge of this topic for me was trying to have enough time, recording, and trying to say the right thing on the recording and not having to start over and over again and to say the right thing. Another challenge was slowing down and making sure I didn't rush through the information and those listening could understand. You can listen to my podcast here:
In the rhetorical analysis we had to find an article on food. I chose "Not All Industrial Food Is Evil" by Mark Bittman. I chose this article because it caught my eye. We always hear that industrial food is evil and I was interested in knowing what his opinion was and why he thought not all was evil and what industrial food he thought fit in the category of "not evil". The easiest part of this paper was identifying the ethos, pathos, and logos that Bittman talks about throughout the article. The hardest part for me was to put them into the essay and me wanting to summarize what it was talking about instead of being direct and talking about the ethos, pathos, and logos that were found in the paper.
The IEP (Issue Exploration Project), we chose a subject in the topic of food. Such as an issue or something that is interesting to you. I chose to research the different kinds of food in the world and why certain countries ate what they did. Learning of different cultures and learning about different things in a country besides ours, has always been a fascinating topic for me. As I researched what each region or country ate, most ate what we did while others ate things that I have never heard of before, some sounded interesting while others made me wonder who came up with the idea to eat it. Most countries ate the food recourses that they had around them. For example, if they lived by water their diet normally consisted of fish. I was very interested in the assignment and enjoyed it very much. The hardest part for me was finding sources and books online, so I used your regular ole books at the library. Before we started writing the research paper, we wrote an Annotated Bibliography. It has the sources that I thought would be helpful and as I read through my recourses I wrote down why that book would help me to write my essay. It was also a brief summary of the recourse. It wasn't too hard to write down the summary and to put the source in MLA format, the hardest part was finding the source and where to get enough information to help me write a paper on my topic.
Another interesting paper that we had to write were the Notebook Assignments. We had to listen to ten different podcasts and answer questions found on assignment sheet. Some of the podcasts that I looked up had an interesting title, but wasn't a topic I was necessarily into. Other of the podcasts that I listened to were fun and upbeat and I enjoyed listening to them and what the host(s) had to say. I gravitated more towards the ones that weren't on serious topics, but rather topics that were just fun and didn't have a point to them. One of them talks about Halloween candy and the hosts talk about some of the candy that they had as a kid, what kind of traditions they had, and their costumes. Another ones talks about different restaurants in Japan and what makes them unique. Another interesting podcast that I listened to, talked about the difference between chocolate and carob, the similarities and differences. Carob is used in baking and is not the best just plain. The only similarities of the two is the color of it.
The podcast assignment was fun to do. I did mine of family food traditions that I have in my family ever since the time that I could remember as a little girl. I chose this topic because for me, it is easy to talk about my crazy family and in my family, we have many traditions that I love. The challenge of this topic for me was trying to have enough time, recording, and trying to say the right thing on the recording and not having to start over and over again and to say the right thing. Another challenge was slowing down and making sure I didn't rush through the information and those listening could understand. You can listen to my podcast here: