Week1: Self-Assessment-Where I'm starting

The order of following answers is same as the order of questions that are posted on Canvas:

I am a female, daughter, a student, a friend of the whole society, my parents, professors or UCI, and my friends. I am also a person who likes to eat dessert and wear a suit even though no occasions to ask me to do that. (Though I think all these that I described above are merely social identities and social definitions giving to me, as one individual, these cannot in deed introduce me who I am.)

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Cv-6TtBEmAkjzIKCoDCz7S5RCHidF6CNV8nMHsR-nfM/edit#slide=id.p

I believe that the identity as a writer and as a communicator cannot be talked separately since when I am a writer, I am also a communicator, just like what the professor claims in Canvas Home Page, " being a good reader and writer is really just part of being a good communicator.” This means that when I am writing an article/passage which usually has the audience, I am actually communicating with my audience through words of my written passage with my arguments and supportive evidence or information to let my audience accept what I believe and what I convey. Just like what I am doing now.

The problem or issue that I struggle is about structural management of my passage and assumptions that I make when I write the passage. The former issue means that it is hard for me to make strong connections between several paragraphs with my main point. Among most of the time, relationships of structures between are merely strongly relevant, but not direct and tough connections. Such weak disconnections, though seemingly not worth mentioning, actually make my main point of my passage to become vague at last. The later issue, which is about the assumption, means that I make many assumptions when I write passage. For example, last quarter, my AE 20C asked me to write a short fictitious passage. What I should do when I was writing that passage was introducing or indicating relationships between characters at the beginning of the passage. However, what I did was that until the end of the passage, I did not indicate relationships of characters clearly. Accordingly, at that time, I assumed that my target audience was able to know relationships between relationships. Such assumptions finally confused the instructor (and finally gave me a middle level of grade).

Nonetheless, when I write the passage, I know the main goal is usually giving premises with evidence including facts, numbers, quotes, examples and analogies, concluding and arguing for my statements. I excel in write and state these elements separately in an explicit way, but I do not excel in giving rationale process from premises to conclusions which is also namely the reasoning process.

I merely got 70 out of 100 in Grammar Diagnostic Test. I mainly have problems at punctuation questions, independent clause questions and subject-verb agreement questions; for example, where I should add a comma or semicolon within sentences, which a group of several words can be identified as an independent clause, and decide whether there should be a “s (or es)” after a verb according to the subject of the sentence or not.

The syllabus of the course gives me not only basic and required rules of this Writing 39A course, but also necessary ways to be educated successfully by myself, my fellow classmates and instructor’s guidance, such as blueprints of 5 required works. There is also vital rule or a basic line that I should follow, respecting the instructor in varied ways. The course objective can be divided into to sides, like two sides of the same coin. One of sides of this coin (i.e. this course) is that through close reading that would be provided by the instructor, elaborate editing and eloquent writing, figuring out and understanding how our perceptions on gender standards and rules are affected, modeled, restricted by the media, especially by Disney films and their characters. Another side of this coin is that figuring out ways from writing initially with errors and plain observations through practicing to finally get smooth and comprehensive analyses. The grade contract means a lot to me since it makes the course objectives, ways to work, and the mind-set towards this course to become more clear and reasonable; for example, I learn from self-assessment and mistakes, not wholly from the instructor’s guidance, expanding and altering the thinking and represent such thinking progression on passage with great effort.