At the beginning of this course I set a goal. I have never been really good at English and I had not taken any English course in two years. I consider this facts set my goal to get a B in this course. It has been a semester already and this course is ends. Looking back at the entire semester, I realize I was too naïve. I failed to achieve the grade I wanted in this class.
I failed to achieve the grade I wanted for this class because MLA formatting was too complicated. On the very first day of this course was the first I ever heard of MLA formatting. I would later have to use MLA formatting to write every single essay, summary and draft. It was complicated because I had no previous knowledge of it from high school. In high school, no format was specified for writing an essay, all I had to do when given an essay question was write two or three pages to answer the question. I had to look through the MLA formatting requirements every time I started a new essay. I would have to adjust the line space, the font and add page numbers every time. The most difficult was the citation. I could not properly cite a source until
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Since English is my second language, I ended up making grammatical errors that counted off points from all my essays. Due to my limited vocabulary I could not effectively explain my points. I ended up writing vague thesis. And when the thesis is vague the trend of the entire essay becomes unclear. I used word incorrectly in my essays. I read a lot of novels and see different unfamiliar words in them, however, I do not check their meanings. While writing my essays, some of this words popped into my head and I use them without checking their meanings. I also rescind my essays to just three pages maximum because I could only write that much. I ended up producing essays that would meet college-level writing
Throughout this semester we have had to write many types of essays. Although this is a college English class there is still room for improvement. I made much improvement during the semester of the class. I was able to identify my weaknesses. I learned how to make improvements to the areas I was having problems in. Although each essay we did was different I was able to begin with one essay and throughout the semester turn it into two other essays. I was able to change my style of writing to fit the type of audience I was working with. I will continue to work on my writing and keep improving it.
Throughout the semester i only learned few new things but i did improve and solidify my skill of writing. Before my first year of college my skills have always undermined by other high school english teachers and with that came disappointing grades. I am writing this paper as a reflection of the semester and the progress i have made as a writer. I now understand many things that my high school teachers have done a poor job demonstrating and i am grateful that i decided to take my own route in my education instead of their syllabus. I entered the semester with anxiety that i would perform as i did before but i clearly outdid my own expectations by receiving top grades on my essays.
Going into this course, I felt that the reading and writing skills I learned in high school were very beneficial in preparing me for an English college course. In high school, I was enrolled in GATE and AP English courses. In these classes, I was assigned several readings and was taught to actively read by doing annotations. I was to summarize the writer 's main points, to write down my own opinions, or to connect it to any personal experiences. These annotations helped me understand the writer 's message better because I was able to break down the things the writer said and only focused on the important points. Then, I was also able to form my own opinion on that topic by deciding whether I agreed or disagreed with the author’s opinion. Moreover, I used evidence from the text to support my argument.
My RIP companion essay was a complete mess with no structure in the first draft. I believe it was because I had procrastinated to complete both the first drafts for the RIP project and essay. I finished my RIP project then moved on to my companion essay, and the transition was vastly different because in the RIP project I was writing for a different audience than in the companion essay, which was an academic audience. In addition, I forgot that we had been given a prompt with specific instructions and guidelines for the companion essay, which gave the structure for the essay. My professor, Delany-Ullman also points out that “For most essays, you should NOT include your textual evidence in your topic sentence. Your topic sentence should make
Coming into this experience, I questioned where I would find my place in the Senate. In 2014 I came here as a page and was able to witness daily floor action, but I never had the opportunity to be a part of day to day office business. I knew I would be at the bottom of the totem pole as an intern, but I wanted to feel as if I was making an impact on Senator Reid’s last year in office. In an office as large as Harry Reid’s it is hard to feel as if you are making an impact. I had the misconception that I would be working closely with him; however, thus far I have only spoken with the Senator one time. Within the first week I readjusted my expectations to try and find my role within the office. I was still doubting the impact I would make here this summer. With the Senator retiring, the office is tending to run particularly slow. When available, work was handed down to us by the Legislative Correspondents. Work primarily consisted of covering hearings, attending briefings, and doing research. When given the opportunity, I have worked as hard as possible to complete tasks to my best ability in hopes of getting more work in the future. As I may
I signed up for English 131 because I enjoy writing and figured it would be a fun and informative course in which I could learn writing strategies to help me in my college career and beyond. I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty good writer, as I took AP English classes in high school and it has always been a subject I’ve naturally gravitated towards. This course exceeded my expectations as to what I could learn in ten weeks. I feel that my writings skills have developed in all aspects, and I can take the skills I have learned and applied them to other courses and my future career. It’s an extremely good feeling after finishing an assignment, reading it over, and feeling very proud of how I was able to develop my thoughts and resources into something that has the potential to make a lasting impact on its readers.
However, this class has shown me how much I should have paid attention to my high school, since my teacher was a lazy grader, I didn’t try as hard and it has certainly came back to haunt me. It was a little bit of a difficult adjustment. I went through high school writing what I know now were unstructured, horrible essay, and received outstanding grades on all of them. In this class I found it twice as hard to write
Over the course of my undergraduate career, I had many opportunities to participate in a wide variety of activities. During my freshman year, I volunteered as a tutor at the Door, a drop-in center in SoHo for disadvantaged teens and young adults. As a tutor, I worked with students preparing to enter GED programs or those already enrolled in GED programs, to solidify their academic skills and help them earn their high school equivalency. Growing up in a fairly affluent suburban town, I rarely witnessed the effects of inequity. As a tutor, however, I worked with young adults several years older than myself who had faced substantial challenges that prevented them from receiving a high school diploma. As I worked with my tutees, I learned more about the circumstances they experienced, and was humbled by their honesty and their resilience. I taught students who had extreme difficulty with simple mathematical operations, but unfailingly came to tutoring each week to keep working. I taught students who were determined to push past their earlier failures to go to college, and eventually, go on to graduate school. Perhaps most vividly, I remember a tutee who was a recent African immigrant, who at our first meeting told me that he wanted to write a novel. Having the privilege to witness the extent of human
We should strive for perfection in all walks of life, but if we are to be successful on life`s journey we must hold these truths to be self-evident: that error(s) are a must in growth and perfection is impossible. Throughout this fall semester in Writing 101, I have grown as a more confident writer. I have learned to overcome the fear and hindrance of inadequately transcribing my true thoughts to paper- selfishly working to please the reader and not my idea(s). Sharing my perspective, without fixed add-ins, is what makes me unique as a writer. I feel this can lead to constructive debates and can act as a learning tool for uninformed readers, but if the writing tampers the room for debate and learning is lessened. As a writer, I pride myself on the ability to pay close attention to detail; however, it was not easy for me to become a more confident writer. Although I praise the work of my first essay, Common Readings, because it
I am a 2016 graduate of Byron Nelson High School. Life here at Collin is a great experience. I am here because I play at a Baseball Academy in McKinney. I plan on majoring in Kinesiology and receiving my degree from either the University of Oklahoma or Texas Christian University, wherever my baseball career takes me.
The time passed so quickly, this semester is almost done. After this semester of study, the goals I have made the most progress is the course Objective 1: “Reading texts from a variety of disciplines in a variety of genres”. Before when the teacher asks to read some articles I will just read it once and get over it. So I often times forget the detail of the story. And have to reread the reading all over again. I don’t like to read something over and over again, because that will make me get bored. For example, my history class is requiring a lot reading, and all the reading about history is boring and long. So I only read it once, because in my opinion spending a lot time in reading about this boring history book is horrible. Unfortunately, we are having a quiz on it, I start to recall, and I have some blur memory about the book. So I take out the book, and start to read, but is all too late for it. I have a bad grade on it, I will forever remember this lesson. If I read more in-deep and carefully, I might not get a bad grade on my history quiz. In order to correct my reading process, I decided to use sticky notes and
Overall, I believe that this course has enhanced my writing. Previously, I never added an element of first person in my formal essays. I believe it was because in high school there was a bad connotation with it, but now I’ve learned that adding my own opinion enhances my essay and makes it more interesting and elaborate. I think it’s really useful to incorporate my own opinion throughout my essay to make it more personable and relatable. I’ve also found that the They Say, I Say book has helped me a lot in terms of structuring and formatting my thesis statements and topic sentences. This has majorly improved my writing and has allowed me to be more clear and concise with my ideas. Before, I always struggled with writing my thesis and topic sentences
In the early years of my life, I had never once thought that an individual would have an impending circumstance that would lead them to be unable normally process life’s simple problems. This idea changed from early on in my third-grade year to where I would bring home a constant string of Ds and Fs in my occasional assessments which would eventually turn into my grades. Little did I know, this complication would land myself into multiple summers where I spent most of my time in classrooms rather than the pool. It was not long after that where I finally discovered I have a math learning disability. From what I have learned through my own impacting endeavors, I fully understood that amid any and all disabilities a person may carry, they have
I am currently an English 160 student who is hoping to move on to the next course, which is English 161. I understand the requirements for English 161. It require students to explore a topic in some depth and conduct independent research related to that topic. Conducting research allows students to learn what it is like to participate in academic culture, posing questions about important issues and developing an argument in response to what others have said. It expected students to learn the most valuable skill in college, which is critical thinking. Students have to be able to read challenging readings. Although I still have problems with English, I think I’m qualified to move on.
Much like Benjamin Franklin believed, I feel that a person should take advantage of the time the person has in life with activities a person wants to do or needs to do. A person should not spend much time on activities the person does not want to do. Life is way too short to concern oneself with work or other activities one wants nothing to do with all the time. When possible, I try to forget about my responsibility and just let go of the ‘things’ that do not matter to me. I think a person should try to occupy oneself with something productive, worthwhile, or necessary at all times. Even though a person’s life is left up to a person to live, I cannot imagine thinking that I owe my time to society through working a job that I simply despise. I am a compassionate person, but I do not owe anyone anything regarding my time.