Abby Harach 

Professor Borcoman

English 102 

5/22/26 

                                                                 Self Assesment 

Throughout the semester, I have realized the importance of continuity with creative writing, print/ digital technology, as well as the need for “diversity” within every writing style within a specific context.  

From writing for myself in the beginning of class, to introducing my culture in a display of visual representation, my goals have been oriented toward presenting myself the best I can through writing and digital display to captivate my both intended audience, and a version of my self within my writing. 

My time throughout the second semester of freshman year (2025-2026) has mainly been about recognizing and understanding how to implement key research sources, how to find them, how to cite them, as well as realizing key rhetorical terms and strategies used within literary/ linguistic projects. 

I have been able to use the CCNY digital library to help with outside sources like “JSTOR” or other academically credited sites to continue my curiosity and help the goals of my work. 

I noticed that my strengths come in the form of developing a solid and straight forward thesis/ goal of what my writing is supposed to be aimed toward and focused on, as well as my implementation of outside sources that support my writing. 

Some weaknesses have been my overall structure of my writing and overall flow of writing, this includes the implementation of transitions, cohesive idea sectioning and connecting, and simplicity when connecting two or more ideas within a single paper. 

Strategies such as summary, analysis, synthesis, and argumentation are all used to get a specific point across to the reader in a given context. And within every one of these strategies, I have been able to incorporate multiple from written work to media. From the process of learning these essential strategies, I found that collaboration and revision are two key parts of all. Whenever we were given the chance to get into groups for revision, I always found feedback from my peers to be very useful, especially to gain any sense of critique from a set of fresh perspectives.

I believe that my skills in creative writing are a little bit stronger than my academic writing due to the somewhat lack of consistency in my structure in terms of visual presentation (paragraph structure) but within works like my cultural profile, subculture essay, and brainstorm worksheets for my cultural works,  I found the observation aspect to be helpful in terms of condensing my ideas into a cohesive thesis, with a much better formulated essay structure than what I would normally write. 

The incorporation of the importance of a visual agenda increased my engagement into my own writing rather than just simply “writing stuff down” for a grade. ( Writing about engagement with my own surroundings has helped the way I write to my intended audience.) 

In terms of technicality, I see myself aiming to get better at citations, clarity and concision (both writing style and sentence structure), as well as sentence fluency. 

Although literary work is a key aspect of all of my work done throughout this semester, there is also the addition of integrating visual and technological aspects on top of your writing. Some examples involve my visual component (video) of my cultural experiment, where I used music and images to accentuate the main idea of my overall essay. This component in my English 102 class is just another aspect of how my development within the literary world advanced. The incorporation of visual works with writing is that it gives a wider and more open outlook on your initial aim and perspective. 

As someone who has been fascinated with music integration in writing, typical linguistic standards can sometimes oppress language users. The “ideal” writing format is usually taught in the teen years of education to integrate a solid structure that is believed that everyone must go by within academic writing, but that only makes everyone’s voice sound the same and gives a disadvantage to non-native speakers to share their own voice within the literary arts. There are times where it is necessary to implement a set structure for writing, but in most cases, there should also be leniency when writing about something from an individual perspective or perspective of another to enhance the reader’s understanding of the main purpose of the writing. 

In my time this semester, I came to understand the implementation of discipline/ structure with leniency within my writing. Using phrases I normally would deem as “not academic” while also continuing to progress in my citation skills and other necessary strategies. 

AI Transparency Statement:

I did not use any AI in my writing.