As a second language learner, English is the one of the most difficult subject for me to learn. As a young girl, I was taught the phonics and the alphabet. As each year passed, I learned to put those letters together to make words, sentences, and finally paragraphs into essays. My English increases every year, and each year my English grows without understanding. When I arrived in English 908, my whole new perspective changed. I realized there is more to writing than just putting words on the paper. I have accomplished a variety of goals I once thought were unattainable. This English 908 class has really allowed me to expand my essay structure and the ways of thinking in writing.
The first lesson I learned, are from the essay professor Mahoney let us read in the class called the “Silk parachute.” Professor Mahoney taught me the structures and how to use the concrete details to make my ideas be clear and supported. For example, in my descripted essay describing my mother, I learn to use the concrete details to avoiding generalities so that a reader can have a better visualiztion in my descripted essay such as, instead of saying "My mother is a nice and strong woman," I can say, " My mother who brought me up with her whole kindly heart and she is the kind of persistent woman with strong willpower who had to face the toughest challenges in life." This concrete detail creates a vivid image in the reader's mind to help increase interest in the essay.
During my English 908 class, I learned to use a lot of new vocabulary on my essay because professor Mahoney helped the students including myself learn to memorize new vocabulary and how to use them correctly. By memorizing new vocabulary help me to express complex ideas and keep me from ...
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...mmar issues are not an easy thing to fix whenever I’m writes an essay. I would always have grammar issues throughout my essays. Professor Mahoney often give me feedback how I should improved my grammar by reading out loud to myself. By doing this, it helps me a lot in terms of realizing my grammar issues. Also, it makes me realize what is missing and what I need to add in that sentence in order to have an understandable sentence. It may be simple, but it does help me a lot in my own way. Therefore, my understanding of grammar issue is not fully fixed, but it is still improving daily.
As the term comes to an end, I think that this semester has been a great journey for me so far because I have learned a lot, including the fact that I still have a lot to learn. I hope to continue improving my writing skills as a student so that I can be successful in my future career.
I was scared to start my first semester at CSUN, because I left my Calabasas bubble, and I had to start fresh. I was scared to take English because I did not know if at Calabasas my English teachers prepared me ,well enough. I was scared that I would not be successful in a college English class. Luckily, English 114A was an eye opener because it made me understand that I am writer, and I that I know how to write. English 114A allowed me to see writing to be a creative process. It was amazing to explore different styles of writing from writing to an author or simply writing an analysis on a silly South Park episode. English 114A, slowly made me love writing again. In English 114A I ...
The first essay given in this course was about our whole composing process. This essay was hard to write about and I remember having several grammar mistakes. Sitting down and writing my process on paper,
My sixteen week class in English 111. I was really nervous about this class. Because English has never been my strong point. This class has hard, but fun all at the same time. I learn a lot from this class. Meanwhile,the first day of class you handed a paper with a question on it. “The first thing I want to say to you who are students is that you must not think of being here to receive an education; instead, you will do much better to think of being here to claim one.” Even though putting my all in what I have learned, claiming my education with hard work because using the skills of the meal plan, as we write to different audiences and learning to be a Critically thinker as I start becoming a critically-Literate Citizenship.
I feel as though this class has helped me become a more polished and professional writer. When I first entered English 110, I was extremely unsure and lacked confidence in my writing. I believe that this point can be partly attributed to the fact that I had always had my instructors holding my hand and helping me through the writing process in high school. My senior English teacher always reminded us that college would be much more challenging than her class was and then she would go on to tell us stories of professors who gave out zeros for tiny oversights within a paper. This combined with general apprehension about college life left me terrified. I had always been a strong writer in high school; I know how to form an argument and support
English 101 is one of the most common college courses in the world. When I enrolled in the class, I was bothered that I would have spend forty hours in a freshman writing class; along with at least another forty hours throughout the semester writing for the class. What surprised me, was that when I began writing my essays I was not annoyed or bothered; I actually enjoyed the assignments. Most importantly, throughout the course of the semester, I have become a better writer and have ultimately met the course goals of English 101.
The examples used in the essay are the main contributions to the message. Without examples or really without a fine overall story the text simply can't be interesting. Even a very awkward structure and complex words can make a for a good and easy read if the story can enthrall the reader. The story and the examples given are the most important variables in a personal
Weak skills that I began the class with have become strong and my strong skills have become stronger. Having the opportunity to write a variety of different essay styles has challenged me greatly to improve my writing techniques. Each essay I was required to write brought its own struggles for me. I had to draw on the information that was presented through the class as well as look to the textbook for guidance. To ensure I did well on each essay I thought about my topic, researched the topic, then began to outline what I wanted to write about. Finally, I would write the essay and submit a rough draft. English 102 has given me the skills and training I need to move on to other classes next semester that will require writing essays. I now have a confidence in my writing abilities that this class has given
...forget to use articles now and then, I can see that it has improved since the beginning of the semester. I just have to keep practicing exercises and write more so that it becomes automatic. On the contrary, I was consistent with staying focused on my argument and being organized so the reader could follow along easily. I will continue to follow the writing process and put my ideas together before I start writing to write the best I can. I will also be sure to follow a timeline for writing a paper so I would not have to deal with cramming everything in a few days, or even one day. Since I will not have any writing classes in the next two years, to improve my writing I recently subscribed to the economist. I plan to read and summarize their articles to practice my writing, reading, and comprehension skills, at the same this would help prepare me to take the MCAT too.
I learned from my peers that I am a better writer than I thought I was and that increased my confidence in my writing ability. This didn’t just teach me about myself; I learned how to write several different types of papers. I improved throughout the semester as I learned how to analyze for rhetorical appeals, research an issue, and evaluate a topic. I am glad that I was able to learn a lot from this class, as well as read my peers work. It was intriguing to see how others write and what topic are important to them. Lastly, I was proud of all my work that I accomplished in this
Over the course of this semester I learned a lot about myself as a writer. This English 101 class has really allowed me to expand my essay structure and ways of thinking. This was my first college writing course and it has given me much more freedom when writing because in high school I felt limited and like what we were writing was not very important. In high school I would write essays to just to fulfill the required word or page count and to a degree I still feel like this but maybe that is why I am an engineering major but in this course I actually was able to express my ideas and for the first time really test the limits of my writing capabilities. I really enjoyed being able to incorporate my voice more in my essays and I believe that I developed my own personal style a bit from this. At the beginning of the semester my writing was quite choppy and there was plenty of room for improvement in the overall flow of my essays. Now, I use several different tactics such as outlining to create better connections between paragraphs. I believe I was able to move beyond many of the high school ways of writing and make general improvements to my essays.
As a first year college student this course has taught me many core aspects to writing and critical thinking. Writing has not been one my strongest points in education, but I feel this course has helped me make strides in writing in many ways. This course has enlightened me on various aspects of writing and has taught me many different ways of writing quality essays. A few things that this course has taught me is how construct an acceptable thesis statement, how to prove my points in body paragraphs, and how to properly cite sources. Although I have learned an immense deal of writing skills within this course there some things I feel I can improve upon, such as, introductions and properly heading papers.
The transition between high school writing and college writing marked a difficult time for me. In high school, I never had the motivation required to develop my writing skills and writing essays was not my forte. I would express my jumbled thoughts on a paper and turn them in for a decent grade. Upon coming into English 1101 with this lax mindset, I immediately encountered many weaknesses in my writing, struggling with constructing an essay with a proper direction, style and grammar. As I began reviewing my problems, I started understanding these issues and eventually learned to improve upon them. From my portfolio, I hope to demonstrate my improvement upon these weaknesses in English 1101.
In summary, I had an enjoyable time in my first college English class. I pushed myself as diligently as I could and learned much more than I thought I would. In addition to, my strengths grew stronger and my weaknesses improved as well. I acknowledge I still have some techniques and skills to work on; however, I am willing to put the time in and cannot wait to take English in the future. Writing is an everlasting skill that will be an enormous asset to me; in addition to my future classes, and my career as
This semester was my very first semester as a college student. Being the first, it was probably the semester I would learn the most in. I learned the expectations for writing that I will have to live up to for the next four years of my college career. Though my high school teachers were usually demanding because I was in the Honors English section throughout high school, writing in college has still ?raised the bar? for me. Also, in high school, we would have weeks to pick a topic, create a thesis, outline the paper, write the paper, and then revise the paper. In college, the time restraints are not quite as lenient. I?ve had to learn to manage my time and be more productive with what free moments I have. Strangely enough, I?ve found the college English experience to be much more rewarding and enjoyable than in high school.
During the course of this semester; the variety of writing styles and essays assigned to me in my communication skills class encouraged the development of my writing skills, as well as provided me with more self-assurance in my abilities. My writing, research, and presentation abilities enhanced through practice, determination, and the understanding I gained during this course. With every single writing assignment, I learned new innovative approaches and skills, which enhanced my abilities to improve my thoughts logically, enabling me to write more clearly, and to organize my papers more effectively. At the beginning of this semester; despite the fact that I already knew the terminology MAP: message, audience, purpose; I never really understood the significance of MAP. For this reason, my writing lacked clarity, organization, and my writings appeared less focused on the topics. As a result my research papers and essays did not flow as smoothly from one passage to the next. Furthermore, I was unaccustomed with the precise procedures used when writing an essay. For instance, my previous classes before college, although requiring a reference page, did not require me to include proper citations in my writings. After evaluating the quality of my writing toward the end of the semester, I recognized vast improvements in several areas of my writing. By concentrating on the beginning stages of my writings, I could distinguish ahead of time my audience and my message. As a result, my essays are clear, and I remain on topic. In addition to that using transition phrases efficiently also helps my writing to flow smoothly. The proper use of transitions makes my writings easy to follow from one topic to the next. I also learned that pre-writing...