The course learning outcomes are an accurate representation of the things I should have accomplished and grew upon throughout the four phases of this class. These learning outcomes in correlation with my own progress and advancement as a writer/thinker is quite heavily shown throughout my three writing assignments in phases one, two, and three. I feel as though the course learning outcomes one through nine are divided evenly throughout all three assignments and took a huge part in allowing myself to become a better writer and thinker in my writing process. 

Throughout my WLLN final paper, the first learning outcome is the main one that I see really fits into it. This first paper was very in tune with our own language development throughout our lives. Taking a specific moment in our life that we believe had a significant impact on our language and literacies takes a huge part in allowing us to recognize language attitudes and standards. The first learning outcome is to “Recognize the role of language attitudes and standards in empowering, oppressing, and hierarchizing languages and their users, and be open to communicating across different languages and cultures.” This learning outcome was not only met through my own writing, but majorly through class time and the spoken narrative that we conducted throughout our classes. Within my own essay, I spoke a lot about hispanics and their ability to learn and become fluent in their own language, and I tied this to the entirety of all people and their abilities to do the same as well. I stated that “This expectation for people of hispanic culture should not be so readily put onto us. The fact that you may or may not have spanish heritage does not coincide with one’s ability to speak multiple languages. Everyone has a different learning curve and ability to store and hold information such as different languages all together within their mind.” The fact that I was able to speak about how hispanics are highly expected to know their own language ties towards how they’re categorized in this way. I even spoke about the type of oppression we see towards hispanic people, especially from other hispanics when they are unable to speak the language. “… Once I say Puerto Rico it kind of just hits them like “Oh okay, that makes sense.” The stereotype that revolves around Puerto Ricans not being able to speak their own language is very apparent and genuinely fits many Puerto Ricans. This of course including myself…” This statement furthers this idea as well. Besides my own writing, the spoken narrative that we conducted throughout class gave us the ability to listen to everyone’s story and their own experiences with language. This advanced my openness to communicate across different languages and cultures. 

Course learning outcomes two and four took a huge part in my second writing assignment. In analyzing a writing piece through rhetorical analysis and being able to understand how and why the author is presenting the specific information that they did was very new to me. I’ve never really taken the time to fully understand everything behind a writer’s intentions in their own work, but throughout this assignment I was able to expand upon that and grow throughout my rhetorical analysis. Course learning outcome number two is to “Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations.” Within this course, we had the option of choosing from a variety of different readings to base our essay around. This took a huge part in allowing us to read and analyze a variety of different genres and rhetorical situations that the authors used in order to go about introducing and backing up their claims and arguments. “Repetition of words deems fit in instilling a specific idea into one’s mind. This is exactly what Lozada-Olivia does with her excessive use of the word ‘my’.” This quote from my rhetorical analysis essay is just one of many examples of my understanding and ability to recognize the rhetorical strategies Lozada-Olivia was using throughout her writing. Course learning outcome number four also went hand in hand with this as well. “Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations,” is essentially the same as what I did throughout the entirety of my assignment. By the end of this assignment I was able to do all of these things that I never really paid much attention to in the past. 

With the introduction of our researched essay, I wasn’t exactly too ecstatic about it. I’ve never personally written a research essay at the length of what we were doing in phase three. I couldn’t find sources for the life of me, and genuinely struggled for a long time in finding relevant sources to tie back to my topic and claim I was trying to present. However, this assignment I could say impacted me the most within this course, and even held a huge part in achieving the majority of the course learning outcomes. Course learning outcome number seven “Locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias,” gave me the absolute most trouble. However, throughout phase three, It was one of the learning outcomes that I strived the most in, and was able to overcome and grow in the highest way possible. I was able to locate seven valuable sources that I tied towards my writing, and learned how to navigate not only the CCNY libraries databases, but the internet in general to find scholarly peer-reviewed articles as well. In the end, I think I did an amazing job with my sources, all of which can be found in my citations page. When tying all of these sources to my own writing, it was very important to utilize things such as critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation. These allowed me to figure out what exactly the article was trying to say as well as the information they were providing to their audience. Taking multiple of these sources and utilizing synthesis for the majority was one of the main factors in this researched essay. Being able to show how they were connected and portrayed the same ideas as to what I was arguing towards in my own writing was very important. All of this contributed to me being able to achieve the seventh course learning outcome “Compose texts that integrate your stance with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation.” As I also mentioned previously, all of my sources can be found within my citations page. Using proper citation is very important throughout a research essay seeing that plagiarizing would very evidently not be too great on my part. However, as mentioned, this was the first time I ever did a research paper like this with a citations page included at the end. So I had to utilize websites that helped me to cite all of my sources at the end of my paper. The course learning outcomes number nine, “Practice systematic application of citation conventions,” was achieved throughout this process.

Besides all of my individual writing pieces and homeworks helping me to achieve all of the course learning outcomes, there were two that were achieved throughout the entirety of all my writing. These were course learning outcomes number three and five. Outcome number three, “Develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing,” held a huge part in every single phase assignment throughout the course. Everytime that we started writing drafts for our assignments, we would always upload them to a class shared google drive where we would be able to look over others’ work and help them to revise and edit. We would do this multiple times for every assignment, and it gave all of us a good opportunity to improve our revision and editing skills as well as help others to better their writing and improve upon our own at the same time. Collaboration with other students isn’t something I was used to at first because the majority of my past assignments in high school consisted of simply writing an essay that I believed was very well written, and then turning it in. Throwing in the aspect of peer collaboration with revision and editing skills was genuinely very good, and it helped a lot with the conclusion of all three of my assignments. Much the same as outcome number three, outcome number five “Engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes,” is just about the same thing. It has a lot to do with my newfound ability of being able to properly collaborate as well as socialize with others in order to improve both of our writing standards. Going into breakout rooms during our zoom calls played a huge part in this. I remember specifically for the WLLN in phase one, I got paired with someone who had almost the same type of story as me, and it was great to talk about and try and help one another in providing more ideas and making our writing better than it originally was. This in turn would of course improve our writing processes and allow us to see the way that we are writing from a different point of view. 

Throughout the nine total course learning outcomes, I believe it’s fair to say that all of them were achieved throughout the three major phase assignments. Although they were spread out amongst the assignments for the most part, they all come into full effect in the end. In terms of becoming a better writer and thinker, I most definitely advanced myself in countless ways. Whether it’s through my ability to collaborate and peer review, recognize and use rhetorical strategies in my writing, locating research sources and utilize different writing strategies, or even improve my use of citations, all of the course learning outcomes played a huge part in allowing me to become a better writer.