Drawing on your experiences this semester, compose a written assessment of your learning experience for the course. In your learning letter, reflect on your work this semester. What have you learned about studying literature, about literary genres, about specific authors? What have you learned about writing and revising? What have you learned about antiheroes and how they compare and contrast to heroes and villains?
Examine themes from the class and specifically from your intellectual journey this semester. Explain how your thinking about reading, writing, and revising has evolved and look at those areas where you’re still not sure what to think. Address what you’re interested in continuing to learn about and what kinds of growth you would like to see. Set some goals for yourself for your future academic and/or life pursuits – they don’t have to be specifically related to future English courses.
Address specifically which class concepts or moments you found the most powerful or significant to your learning and why. Use at least 3 specific examples (quotations even!) from your major writing projects, your weekly reflections, and/or your contributions to Facebook discussions and peer review work. You may also quote from the course readings. Cite all quotations (use MLA in-text formatting for citing course texts; for your own work, simply make clear where the quotation comes from in a signal phrase; for Facebook posts, cite the author of the post (your classmate’s names) in a parenthetical in-text citation). Reflect on your learning and participation this semester and honestly evaluate your successes and what you would do differently.
This is not about your grade; the learning letter is an honest evaluation of your work and a chance for you to look back with a critical eye. The best learning happens when we openly evaluate ourselves and reflect on our progress. While you will be graded on your REFLECTION (in other words, don’t just summarize what we did) in the assessment, your grade will not be negatively affected if your assessment says you need to work harder in an area. Nor will your grade be affected positively if you say that you’re doing everything great. This is not a “trick question” assignment. This self-assessment is a tool for your growth and learning, not a trap through which I ask you to condemn yourself.
Semester Readings (I need only two literally texts from the following)
• Sappho "He looks to me to be in heaven", "Honestly, I wish I were dead", and "Like the Sweet Apple"
• Euripides’ The Medea (in its entirety)
• Sophocles’ Oedipus the King
• The Thousand and One Nights: The Tale of Sympathy