Self-Evaluation after taking college writing 112 class - Essay Example

Post 112 I feel proud and confident of myself, as a after taking the College Writing 112 These feelings are not based on any sense of myself as a competitive writing professional, but are based upon personal reflection and understanding of my progress and my capability. I do not claim to be the kind of writer from whose fingertips thoughts flow, mysteriously self-generated and in grammatically correct form. As an international student, I often use incorrect idiom and accidentally create words which are not part of the English language.

Yet, even Joseph Heller has said, “Every writer I know has trouble writing”, and James Michener has said, “I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter (The Quote Garden). An area of both strength and weakness is being bilingual. The Whorf-Sapir hypothesis suggests that language shapes thought (Swoyer). Writing comes from thoughts, specifically, and generally within the context of a specific cultural worldview. Therefore, I believe that being bilingual and bicultural are strengths in that I draw from more than one system of thought and my writing can show more critical flexibility.

In fact my papers demonstrate exceptional critical thinking skills, whether presenting both sides of a controversy, embryonic stem cell research, or considering the roles of racial profiling and international political aggression on the shaping of terrorists. This advantage of being bilingual and bicultural certainly compensates for the disadvantage of being grammatically-challenged in English. My introductory and concluding sentences are strong. Examples are my introduction to the Stem Cell paper, “An uncountable number of people have died of diseases that cannot be cured by our current technology” and my conclusion to the Free Speech paper, “ I have learned from my essay that people’s thinking can be different from what I think but I should let them speak freely because how I feel doesn’t matter but what is right or wrong does.

” I use a wide range of references to frame the arguments in my papers, especially evident in the Racial Profiling paper. I noticed a weakness, in reviewing the Free Speech paper, in how I became distracted in the problems of pregnant Korean women, rather than keeping my argument focused on free speech. From reviewing my writing experiences in this course, I see that I have learned the importance of review and re-writing. Most importantly, I have sharpened my critical thinking, communication and citation skills, and I recognize that this is of critical importance in university and in my chosen field of Business, a field in which review, critical thinking, communication and referencing can make or break a project and invite or discourage investment.

Works Cited Swoyer, Chris. Relativism, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010), Edward N. Zalter (ed.), 21 October 2010. 12. Web. May 2011 . The Quote Garden. Quotations About Writing. 9 May 2011. Web. 12 May 2011 .