Matthew Elliott

Mrs. Julia Remsik Larsen

English 120 086
May 1, 2015
Reflective Argument
Over the past several weeks, I have been taking an English class at the University of New
Mexico. The class is English 120 or Composition III which was taught by Mrs. Larsen. For her
class we had three major writing assignments or MWAs. Within each MWA we had two low
stakes assignments or LSAs that were used to create the final MWA. Throughout each
assignment we had student learning objectives (SLOs) that we had to incorporate within each
assignment, these SLOs were created In order to ensure that the purpose of the course is
fulfilled. For this reflective argument I am going to analyze and reflect on the given SLOs and
show you just how I achieved them in my writings.
For LSA1 we had to write an I believe statement about a certain topic that we thought
should be addressed to the public. For this LSA we had to incorporate SLO A which says,
"analyze, compose, and reflect on arguments in a variety of genres, considering the strategies,
claims, evidence, and various mediums and technologies that are appropriate to the rhetorical
situation. Or In simpler terms, utilize the various genres of writing to compose, analyze, and
reflect on rhetorical situations through appropriate mediums. I accomplished this SLO in MWA
2, using a movie trailer to prove and disprove rhetorical strategies. I also used the cover letters
that we type to analyze assignments as a way to reflect on what was being said in the given
MWA or LSA, as the first assignments where we wrote about what we believed in and what we
were are arguing against.

For SLO J it says, Analyze and describe the writing and research conventions of an
academic field in order to understand the different ways of creating and communicating
knowledge. Or in other words, Using statistically significant data, solid unbiased thesis, cited
sources, procedure, methods, effective arguments, and abstaining from the use of logical fallacies
to create a medium to communicate and share knowledge. This SLO was applied to basically all
of our assignments for the semester. We used this SLO in the library day that we were given in
order to gather research for sequence 1, the use of ethos, pathos and logos to show the rhetorical
devices used in order to persuade our audience, and the citations we had to create in order to give
credit to the author.
The next SLO that I will be analyzing is SLO C. In my own words SLO C says,
Using a large array of tool at our disposal to write stronger, clearer and more effective pieces.
In todays society, technology is basically everywhere we look and is being used in pretty much
anyway in order to make our lives much easier. This is a very true fact when it comes to this
class. Before I started taking this class I had never used Google Docs. Google Docs is a program
that allows several individuals to access and work on an assignment at the same time and can be
accessed from any computer. Using this program really helped with making sure that everyone
was getting their share of the works done as well as helping each other out with the assignment.
As a class we used Google Docs in order to do peer reviews for our LSAs and our MWAs. This
was very helpful because it gave everyone a chance to have someone else proof read their paper
and give their thoughts about it and possibly fix things in their paper that they may have not seen
or realized. For me this was very helpful, reading the comments from my other classmates
helped me realize that I may have repeated something to many times or even made a mistake in
grammar or punctuation.

The next outcome that I will be analyzing is SLO D which states improve
your fluency in the dialect of Standardized Written American English at the level of the sentence,
paragraph, and document. Or can also be stated as starting from the sentence and working all
the way up to the whole document, improve your fluency by writing in the dialect of Standard
Written American English. This SLO ties in with SLO C quite a bit because with the
technology that we have at our fingertips today, we are able to make sure that we are talking and
writing in the appropriate dialect. We used technology several times over the course of the
semester. Some ways that we did this was by making peer reviews, doing revisions and making
the appropriate changes, as well as using different rhetorical analysis techniques to make sure
that you are not using any fallacies in our writing.
The one SLO I feel that I made the least amount of progress towards would have to be
SLO E. SLO E states analyze and describe the value of incorporating various languages,
dialects, and registers in your own and others texts. The reason I feel that I made the least
progress in this SLO is because in our MWAs, I never had a great opportunity to accomplish this
outcome. I could have possibly done this in MWA2. Instead of choosing and American Movie, I
could have chosen a foreign film but that would have made the assignment much harder than it
needed to be. Although, I guess you could say that I touched a little bit on this SLO in MWA3 for
our urban legend. We chose the legend of the Loch Ness Monster for our MWA3. This legend is
based in Scotland and because of this it forced us to read in the dialect of the Scottish. But
overall, I know that I can improve on all the SLOs because you can never be a perfect writer.
Writing has no definitive answer, so even if you think that you wrote the best paper of your life,
someone else may not feel the same way.

Lastly I am going to talk about my progress for SLO F, which says, evaluate your
development as a writer over the course of the semester and describe how composing in multiple
genres and mediums using various technologies can be applied in other contexts to advance your
goals. I feel like I have made the most progress in this SLO over all of the other SLOs because
this one pretty much ties in all of the outcomes together. I feel like I have made a tremendous
amount of progress over this semester because this class has allowed me to write and compose in
multiple genres. Because of this, my writing and grammar skills have improved greatly. With this
being said, I cannot help but think of a famous quote from Thomas Edison which says, If we all
did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves. With the
knowledge and skills I have because of this class, I now have the confidence I need to know that
I am writing and composing in the correct way.