Writing was not one of my most favorite things to do when I was was younger, but I did enjoy reading. I actually did enjoy writing when I was was younger, but I was not good at it. Two people have impacted and shaped my attitude towards writing in both a positive and negative way, and I enjoyed reading at a young age because it helped me escape from the real world. In my junior year of high school I took AP English with my teacher Mrs. White. I was not very comfortable taking an AP course in a subject I do not enjoy, but I was told to try it. Mrs. White made class interesting and easy to understand because of her motivational attitude. I had second thoughts of the course in the beginning, but she convinced me that I was capable of passing …show more content…
I took English 101 online, which may have not been the best choice for myself. I was originally in English 091 in my first semester, but my diagnostic writing sample allowed me to advance to English 101. Since I did not pass my English 101 class last semester, I had to retake English 091. I felt like I did not learn anything last semester in my English class because my professor did not teach me anything in my opinion. I was given assignments to do every week, which I did turn in, but I did not fully understand the instructions. My professor was also very discouraging that I should continue taking the course. He said, “I have serious concerns about your ability to successfully complete this course,” which upset me, but I know he did not mean to be unkind. Also, I did not get to meet with him for one-on-one help on my essays, but I did email him questions frequently. Personally, I think one of the biggest problems was that I was not learning face to face, which made me confused on assignments because I could never ask questions and have it answered immediately. So in this process, I was always confused as to what to do on every assignment. When looking over my rough drafts, my professor also did not give me detailed comments as to what I exactly do wrong on my passage. I was always told that I did not follow instructions once again, but I was expecting comments on how my essay was written, or if the information was detailed rather than the same comment as the last essay. These comments did not help me advance in writing my essay because I did not know what to improve on, so I depended on the comments from the peer review to help fix my essays. Although taking the class caused a negative impact on me regarding writing, I did learn that taking online courses is not really for me. It helped me learn that in the future I should not enroll for online courses, and stay with taking courses in
I took the previous course at a junior college, and my instructor wasn’t as qualified and didn’t identify exactly what she wanted in the writing assignment. I would go to her office hours and ask her what I needed to do on my essays to improve my letter grade, and she would do the revisions and say my paper was “great” and still give me a “C” on the assignment. Unlike, ENGL 1302 when I went to office hours my instructor always explained what I needed to improve on and advise me towards pages in the St. Martin’s Handbook as instructions to follow. My instructor was always helpful and patient at answering all questions I had towards a particular assignment. The University Writing Center also helped me with some weaknesses found throughout my literature review and word choice.
One thing that I learned from this course is to follow directions. In the first assignment, we were told to write a personal story of what shaped you as a whole. At first, I had a difficult time thinking of a topic to write about, but after viewing other students’ essays, I finally understand what the professor was asking for, and I came up with an idea of writing how I got my cats and wanted to become a veterinarian. Writing this type of essay was difficult because I am not good at expressing myself. Therefore, I always did a bad job in describing my feelings, my thoughts, and etc. Since English is my second language, I know I have a lot of mistakes with my writing. Thus, I went to the Writing Center to ask for professional help. The tutors are very nice and willing to give you academic advices. After going to the writing center, the essay turned out to be my favorite essay that I have even written. However, the assignment was not asking to tell the story, the main theme is to write what shaped you as a whole. As a result, I got a poor grade and realized that this college level course was not the same as a high school writing course. In high school, I was only satisfied in completing the essay and receiving an A. What really ...
During my first semester of college, I felt like this course overshadowed all the others. I faced many challenges, gained better habits, and even increased the value of myself as a scholar. Not only did my professor provide her students with the course material she built a confidence inside of us that will allow us to be able to tackle any task, especially pertaining to any written compositions. The things that I have learned from this course could and will be applied to any and everything I do from here on out, whether that writing an essay or even taking a test. Again, the journey was long, but I will be forever grateful for the things that I, and all of my peers have gained from this
Taking English 101 at the University of Alabama was definitely a challenge. There were many instances when I struggled to get my assignments done well and on time, but on the other hand, there were also moments when I was not worried about my assignments. I intend on enrolling in more UA Early College classes while in high school, and after graduating, I plan on attending the University of Alabama. Taking English 101 will help me throughout the rest of high school, and I will have a head start when beginning college in a couple of years. I intend on majoring in Music Education and minoring in Spanish when I go to college at UA. I will be required to take an abundance of classes throughout those years, and taking English 101 now has prepared
This class made me face the repeated mistakes of laziness in my techniques, and created an importance to write what really needs to be said and nothing less. I had a very tough and intelligent teacher for my class in which he would not let laziness or anything but perfect slide. At first I was frustrated and lost, but after relearning how to write properly with actually needed content, I understand and appreciate his teaching. My teacher never forgot to call out any “fillers” I used out of bad habit and carelessness, in doing so changed the quality of the content that I write. Also pointing out the bad structure and overall messiness of my ideas and how they relate to one another, I gained valuable lessons on technique. I now write with purpose and intent with every sentence and within the structure of my papers, as well as spend more time understanding what I am really trying to say and prove. Without taking that AP English course and learning through my teacher that I once thought was too hard on his students, I wouldn’t be prepared for college or life in general. My knowledge now, that what you write should always be necessary to your point and how you write matters, I have reformed skills that will influence my resumes, college education, and even my career. I couldn’t be more grateful for what I learned and changed in that class and that I
To be completely honest, this year has been nothing short of a disaster. Partially due to this class, which it is my fault for taking the class in the first place when I was obviously not qualified to take an AP Literature class. It started out fun, but became more and more stressful as the year went on. My mental capacity has reached its limit, and my physical health isn 't in the best condition either due to the late nights I have spent on homework. However, despite it all, I have learned a great deal from this class. Not only from the curriculum, but I have also learned some of my own limitations and realized some faults that I need to mend. This class tested my patience and my temper, which I had only discovered
In the course of this semester of writing, I grew more than I ever had in my ability to write well. I remember on the first day of class several other students were talking about how hard this writing professor is. I was a bit worried and even thought about switching to an easy professor for a guarantee A so I can get a 4.0. Now, I am grateful that I chose to decide to work hard for a 4.0 instead. Even though I may not get it, I am still glad I stayed because for once, I learned and became a better writer. I can see that my knowledge of conventions definitely improved from last semester. I really loved the feedback for my assignments, since it allows me to realize what I need to improve on and what I should keep doing. Unlike the previous semester, the writing professor only told us our grade on the very first assignment after two months. There were no feedback on how I could improve either, so I had no idea if I was having trouble with anything. Prior to this course, I always had trouble writing sentences and organizing them in such a way that flows and delivers my idea well. I also rarely outline or plan out how I will write a paper too, and even when I did, it was very vague. Out of the five learning outcomes, I grew the most in rhetoric knowledge and writing process from the reading responses and 4 assignment.
When I first heard that I had to take English 110, I was frightened. I had Doctor McDonald my first term at CBU for Introductory to English. This lady deposited English fears in me that had me never wanting to take English or see anything with the word English in it. Every paper I wrote my first term for her class was never good enough, it either had punctuation errors, grammar errors, didn’t make sense or the story was boring to her. This woman crushed everything in me that wanted to one day pursue being a writer. When I completed her class, I was depressed and stressed to the max, pleasing her was like trying to please my family. I got extremely sick, and after week 6 I was about ready to give up. Professor Rivera my orientation teacher, and my advisor Mrs. Erica continued to encourage me.
Learning many skills and techniques from different professors, I believe that I have obtained skills that are beneficial to school, studies, and life. Two semesters of English in college has prepared me more than my four years of English in high school; I have become more confident in both reading and writing. As an immigrant, English became my second language. Although I had a hard and long time adopting the new language, I managed to learn it after a few years. However, I still had room for improvement as a writer and reader. English 1A, my first real English class, gave me a lot on my plate. I was unaware of my professor’s requirements when it came to writing tasks and skills. After a full course with my professor, I have improved drastically with one technique that I acknowledged in her class. Her technique was to criticize a student’s essay harshly and give out below average grades. Thus, she raises awareness to her students that they need to improve if they want a decent grade. Students were given a chance to revise their essays to receive a higher grade. Based on the informative feedbacks left by the professor, a majority of the students were able to identify their mistakes, and revamp their essays into a masterpiece. Due to the low scores and crude comments, students often feel aggravated and tend to ignore it after. However, the feedbacks are useful and continue to give me an opportunity to learn and improve myself as a writer in the future.
Sadly I was presented with the same situation as on the other side of the Atlantic ocean. Yes, the professors were significantly kinder and much more helpful; they had office hours and actually pointed out components of my writings that they thought were adequate. However, the three paragraph long essay prompts with very specific requirements and expectations were the same as in high school. Lacking regular writing practice because the vast majority of my classes were scientific, any class that I took with a writing component destroyed my moral. I took Endocrinology, Organic Chemistry, Physics and received near perfect scores consistently, surely I could tackle the most basic Sociology and Comparative Literature classes. However, this was not the case, the few classes with a writing component I was required to endure were the ones that made me call my mother at two in the morning in tears. This did not occur because these classes were particularly difficult. I was just upset that once again, as in high school, I was not given any freedom to write about what I enjoyed. Once again, I memorized connections made in lectures, adapted them to the required format, submitted multiple drafts to my professors until they told me exactly what I needed to do to get an A. The
In this insight, I scored an 8 for Part A, and a 0 for Part B, which meant that I was especially engaged in my favorite class and especially disengaged in my least favorite class. While I expected these results, it was shocking to me that I really made no effort to study on a regular basis and put little to no effort into this class. In taking this assessment, I realized that it is not just the professor’s fault or the subject matter’s fault for disliking the class. Rather, you are also accountable for your actions in the course of the class, whether it be studying or putting in the effort. You also have the ability to improve your situation by forcing yourself to become accountable and more
I had heard from several students of how demanding and writing intensive the Research and Ethics class was and my peers advised me that if I could take that class by itself, to do so. Personally, I know that writing has always been a struggle for me and it has never been an area where I excelled with ease. Although being aware in my lack of writing abilities, it has never stopped me from succeeding in past academic endeavors. My confidence in this class was strong at the beginning of the semester; I have passed my other classes, so I know I have the work ethic and abilities of a graduate level student. I expected constructive criticism knowing that this was going to be a difficult class for me, but to hear that my work was less than satisfactory and not the work of the graduate level hit me harder than past academic writing experiences.
Furthermore, the teacher got fired for a lot of students and teachers file complements. I was happy to hear that because I didn’t want other students that are thinking about signing up for the class go through what I had to go through in that class. Overall, my study plan helped me a lot and I decided to not let the same situation happen to me in
Looking back to the beginning of my first semester and going to this class for the first time wasn’t what I think now about the class. In the beginning I didn’t think we would learn that much since we meet just two times a week. Now that we are done with the class I think that I have taken a lot away from it. It was probably the most helpful class to help with the transition to college, to figure out how everything works. My peer mentors really helped and their advice is really good because they have been in our shoes.
In a nutshell, what I thought or expected from this class before attending was ultimately trumped by the skills and information I obtained in the course. I have thoroughly enjoyed every day of class and can truly say that my only regret in your course is that it has to end. I know that not all courses will go as this one has, I know that not all professors will teach their courses the way you have. However, I can still dream can’t I?