Horner 1102 Blog

Upon enrolling in ENC 1102 with Professor Longhany I sort of knew what to expect since I started my english program here at the University of Central Florida. After receiving the syllabus for the class I was able to see exactly what I should learn in this class and see what I should know by the end of the term. There were five main course outcomes that I should walk out the door with. Those five outcomes are: 1) the relationship between rhetorical situation, discourse communities, genre and inquiry 2) and inquiry based research process 3) use complex texts and incorporate texts to generate and support my work 4) produce persuasive arguments to use academically and finally 5) strategies of revising, editing and proofreading my writing. Throughout this class I was able to show my progress of accomplishing these outcomes through in class activities and also by the work that was presented throughout the term and finally my research paper. Below I will show how I accomplished each outcome and use specific evidence to prove it.

Outcome 1

In this outcome I needed to demonstrate the relationship between rhetorical situation, genre and discourse community. An example of this would be my research paper. My paper on same sex marriage relates only to a certain discourse community primarily but could relate to almost anyone. I was able to show that I understood discourse community by using certain laws and rules about same sex marriage, the specific lexis of the community (same sex marriage, domestic partnership, homosexual, heterosexual). These certain words and the way I wrote my research paper were strategically pitched to that specific discourse community because that is who it was intended for. I was also able to help my fellow students with the work of this since I had a really easy time understanding these words (genre, discourse community etc..) from ENC 1101 with Professor Stack.

Outcome 2

This outcome was involved with the research process and I was able to prove this outcome by showing how I did my research project and the types of research done. Primary and secondary research was key in my paper. The primary research I used was from the UCF Library or found on its website. I used this material (about eight sources) to aide me in writing most of my paper. The secondary research I used was creating a survey of my own to also help aide me in my writing but giving me a first hand view of data and the experience of doing my own research compared the years of high school where finding it in books and online. In my final research article you can see the work I did in figures 1.1-1.7, with the actual results and pictures posted in the paper. I was able to weave my primary and secondary research into my paper and use examples from both to help prove my point of why same sex marriage is evolving.

Outcome 3

In this outcome it involved accomplishing me using multiple kids of evidence and also synthesizing texts. I accomplished this by formatting my papers and writing correctly using the MLA format. I would always follow the layout of MLA by using the Owl Perdue website and always checking to make sure my sources were formatted correctly. This was a category I had some trouble on with writing intertextually. Its something that I need to work in but that will eventually come in time.

Outcome 4

This outcome is involved in accomplishing persuasive arguments that matter academically. This argument I had in my research paper was not something that I only needed to care about but something that needed to make sense to others and something that could be used academically. I chose same sex marriage because it is something that is ongoing and something that matters to a large majority to people in the country wether it effects them personally or someone in their family. My research paper could be taken as a persuasive argument because I am trying to convince people to agree and support same sex marriage because one it effects me and two its something that effects tens of thousands of people here in this country and around the world. Im trying to persuade the people because in the end they are the ones who vote in this country and are the people who can make the change.

Outcome 5

This outcome involved me accomplishing strategies of proofreading revising and editing which I think I did accomplish. Every paper that I wrote I would usually take a couple days on if I had the time but in that sense I am more talking about the research paper since that had the most revising and editing. The small little papers throughout the term did not require much editing since I had only a small amount of time (usually 2-3 days) to write them. The research paper on the other hand I would revise almost every week by adding or taking out fluff words, unneeded sentences, and whatever else didn’t need or needed to be in the paper. Before turning in any paper I would always read it aloud to check for errors. Also with some of the papers I would have my roommate, family member or most of the time the student next to me in class read it over and have them check for mistakes. This I feel in my opinion was the easiest outcome for me to accomplish since I am the type of person who hates to make mistakes and I am someone who is very neat and clean and thats how I like to present my work.

Overall this class has been a learning experience. There nothing that I did not like. Even though the writing got tiresome sometimes I feel like it has helped me accomplish these five outcomes. The peer editing was something that I really liked, the TED videos were not helpful to me but in a better way really interested me in the research they actually did, and finally the couple weeks off we had for conferences throughout the term was amazing. I am glad to say that I am done with English in my academic life here at UCF and plan to use the things I learned in 1101 and this 1102 in my future classes, the rest of my academic career and finally in the workforce.