Growth

This class was a good learning experience for me because I improved a lot on my writing and developed skills I never had before. I enjoyed every assignment in this class and there wasn’t a single assignment that was boring. There were three total essays in this class excluding this one and each one was very helpful in different areas of my writing skills. The first essay was the language and literacy narrative essay where we had to write about an experience in life that helped us improve our language and literacy. The second essay was the exploratory essay in which we had to choose children’s book authors and find information about them and write about them. The third essay was the research critical analysis essay. We had to do research on the author’s writing and critically analyze their writing. All these essays were very interesting to write and the assignments seemed very clear from the get-go. I messed up a bit on the second essay because I didn’t fully understand the assignment which is a mistake on my part but the feedback I was given cleared it up and I was able to revise and better my essay. 

This first essay was the “Language and Literacy Narrative” essay which was a very interesting essay because we had to go back to a moment in our lives and see where we improve our language and literacy skills. I chose to talk about a particular class in 11th grade where my teacher gave me a lot of of work but it was all effective to improve my language and literacy skills. The class definitely pushed my limits because I would sit down on a computer for 6-7 hours on Saturdays or Sundays just typing away. I didn’t enjoy it during the time but after I finished that class, there was a noticeable improvement in my writing. The course learning outcome applied to this essay is “Compose texts that integrate the student’s stance and summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argument”. The reason why I feel like this outcome was significant in my essay is because I had to go deeper into the period in my life and analyze how I improved. I had to basically relive that experience and go through past assignments to understand why exactly I improved and basically relive that experience to explain what I thought made me improve so much.

The second essay was the “Exploratory Essay” in which I had to do an author study on a children’s book writer. The author I chose was Dav Pilkey because he stood out most to me when I was doing research on different children’s book authors. For this essay, we had to do a study on Dav Pilkey’s work and life without including any analysis or opinions. I would say it was quite hard not to include that because there was so much opportunity for me to do so but I refrained from doing it. I had a few things here and there that had my own personal opinion in it even though it was very brief but the feedback from Professor Buno made me notice it and I changed it and saved it for my next essay. Dav Pilkey has a very interesting life, the way Dav Pilkey describes it himself sounds like a cartoon show. He would sit in his room for hours and draw and the ideas he came up with on the spot were amazing. Dav Pilkey thought of the superhero “Captain Underpants” when his teacher said the word underpants and he decided to create a character that only wears underpants, is fat, bald, and wears a red cape. This character is now an iconic character among children’s books. A course learning outcome I did well in for this essay is making strategies for reading, drafting, revising, and editing. I had to make sure I get the reading done by a certain time so I would read the books on the train. When I finished reading, I wrote my essay which was extensive but I would say it was easy. Then when it came to revising and editing, I feel like I made the most progress in my work because I understood what you wanted out of this essay more with the feedback you gave me. I did more research and Dav Pickley and I was able to make that connection between Dav Pickley’s life and his books.

The third essay was the “Researched Critical Analysis Essay”. I had to use what I wrote in my exploratory essay to help me analyze Dav Pilkey’s writing style and why he was such an amazing and successful author. I analyze how his life as a child correlated to his writing. I looked at many techniques he used in order to keep the child consistently engaged in his book. Dav Pilkey is just a mastermind when it comes to writing books for children. The two learning outcomes I achieved during this essay were “Explore and analyze in their own and others’ writing a variety of genres and rhetorical situations” and “Locate research sources in the library’s databases or archives and on the internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias”. For the first learning outcome, the reason why I thought I achieved this outcome was because I took my personal analysis of Dav Pilkey’s writing and broke it down to see the strategies and techniques he used for his writing. For the second learning outcome, I used the CCNY library to do my research and I found many sources that helped me, and they were all very creditable. One of the sources was peer-reviewed and the other two were interviews with Dav Pilkey himself so all these sources are very credible and helpful towards my essay.

Overall, I really enjoyed this class. It helped a lot in my writing and research skills which I really appreciate. All the assignments that were given were very helpful and enjoyable. We were also given plenty enough time to actually finish the assignment which I was grateful for. This is definitely a memorable class.