Victoria Perez-Zarzecka

ELA 110 

Reflections on ELA 110

Taking ELA 110 has allowed me to reflect on the important aspects of language and literacy. The way we view and standardize language reveals a lot about our society. That is, whether we choose to celebrate or judge this portion of identity. In addition, the writing prompts that were assigned to us in the class were constructed in a way that would allow us students to integrate our voices with our stories. These assignments included the Language and Literacy Narrative, which opened us up to the importance and beauty of mother tongues. The Partner Profile required us to interview and encapsulate our partner’s experience with language. Our Research Essays, which encouraged the questions and topics that we chose to advocate for. Together, these assignments helped build the skills and tools that we learned throughout the semester.

The attitudes we have towards language and linguistics can honor or neglect one’s native tongue. The view our society has towards “proper” English can be skewed to benefit only a small group of English speakers. In fact, the lens that we looked through in class proved that most of us would benefit from being true to our mother tongue and embracing it. This was especially apparent in our diverse classroom, which brought up different yet similar stories in the experiences we had up to the point, in writing and speaking English

I appreciated reading and looking at different genres and styles of writing. Many of the readings we looked at shared the common theme of the author’s experience and relationship with language. However, the main difference was they were all captured in a different form. We analyzed essays, poems, ted-talks, and accordingly located the strategies that each author used to further enhance their message. It was eye-opening to see the patterns that appeared in the texts we looked at. The methods authors used to engage their target audience helped me as a writer to become aware of who and what I’m writing for.

In the class, we used different forms of revisions and editing for the goal of improving our writing. We were introduced to peer review, writing formulas, and substitute vocabulary. I appreciated the worksheets that were given to us since they summarized the main points Professor Lobell made in class and could be used to reference back to. 

In our assignments, we were taught to use rhetorical strategies to engage the audience and strengthen our message. We had to consciously extract rhetorical strategies and terms from the works we looked at and through that became experts at identifying where pathos, logos, and ethos were used. Each day we’d look at a new piece of media and fully dive into analyzing and contextualizing it. We learned to ask certain questions, such as the background of the author, the context of the writing, and what were the strategies used within. In these lessons and conversations taken in the classroom, the repetitiveness and consistency of identifying these rhetorical strategies were what helped me to fully become comfortable with my knowledge of the different rhetorical strategies that authors use. 

We learned how to navigate and take advantage of the CCNY Library and archives as well as Google Scholar. Both of these tools were used to locate trustworthy and credible writing to further support our claims. Learning how to properly implement these resources in our writing not only helped us in our given assignments but will also help us in our future CCNY classes. 

The lessons we learned in the class all helped me become a stronger, more articulate, writer and reader. The class pushed me out of the too-familiar lens of standardized English and asked us to reflect on the different dialects in the English language and the importance of its presence to us. I will continue to use the tools and teachings I took from this class and will practice them to make my writing be authentic to me.