Retrospective Essay

In this course, the goals are to help students learn to improve themselves. There are several areas where the efforts are concentrated, such as helping students to increase their abilty to think critically, which is essential in today’s world. Students also need to enhance their communication skills, both reading and writing. Reading comprehension needs to be improved. Writing skills, including basic grammar and mechanics as well as clarity and organization, need to be developed so that the students can learn to communicate successfully on a more sophisticated level. Peer evaluation is another skill which students can learn so that they can spend time helping each other and will be able to improve their own skills through this process. As they learn more sophisticated writing skills, research and proper documentation techniques will also be necessary. Lastly, social responsibility is important. Not just so students do not plagerize, but the concept of being valuable citizens in all areas of their lives, helping to make education practical as a life application.
In order to make sure that I was prepared as a student in this course, my semester began with obtaining the necessities such as the course guidelines and syllabus, text, functioning email accounts, and ensuring that I had access to ACE. Communication is important, and it is necessary that I received all important correspondence from the teacher and that all methods of communication were working for success in the course.
My writing and communication skills were also checked and developed thoughout the course. This began with ensuring I knew how to properly quote and document sources. I also had to demonstrate proper summarization techniques and demonstrate that I know how to use sources without plagerism.
I also had to be able to read and summarize literature through the use of short stories. There was practice correctly responding to literature as well as writing a thesis and keeping a grammar log. I also was able to practice my peer editing and revision skills for my own writing. I learned about different types of heuristics and the different kinds of essays.