Within the weeks 7 through till 12 I have had many seminars on study skills and the skills for success, some of which including skills to help me with reading skills and also to help me with my essay writing. These seminars help me to gain a stronger understanding of the skills that I need to improve on and the skills that I feel relatively okay with. It also allows me to think about some skills that I wouldn 't usually think about.
Firstly there was the essay writing session with 10 of my peers and I was learning about different techniques on how to write an essay and also what a “good essay” includes. As well as this I was learning about plagiarism in essays and what is and isn 't classed as plagiarism. Personally I feel my essay writing skills are alright but not it isn 't what I 'm best at and is normally what lets me down when doing German exams as I have to write an essay as part of the exam. Although my essay writing isn 't great, I feel I 'm reasonably good at writing German in general for example when I’ve had to do little writing tasks in my lessons I am normally quite good at them. What lets me down most when writing is definitely the content. I find it difficult
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Firstly I thought of the main key words that related to the topic in English and then translated the ones I could into German but used a dictionary for the ones I couldn’t, then reading the text I was able to check off the words I had predicted would appear. I feel this task was useful because knowing some key words made the text more understandable when I was reading it and it also allowed me to expand my vocabulary with new key words that I didn 't know. I feel reading tasks help me most by improving my vocabulary as I 'm learning new words and also by making me think about not just understanding every single word and more just the idea it is trying to get
Writing essays was never my forte, it just never came easy to me like it would to others. Since other subjects came easy to me and I had to focus more than others on writing, I had a negative attitude toward the process as a whole. During this summer semester, I was able to grow as a writer, and gain a more positive attitude toward how I write and a better feel for writing in college. Writing a paper is a process in which there are many different stages. In high school I would never write outlines or any sort of pre planning work. Other struggles I encountered in my writing were my theses, and framing quotes.
In result I 'm a slow learner in my director 's eyes. English and writing classes have always been interesting to me I like to write but I have the worst time staying focus. Of course in sixth grade writhing was made up of mostly free writes on given prompts and english consisted of knowing how to spell and knowing where to put periods capital letters and commas. As English and writing got harder English began to become less about free writes. In a free write you can almost just let your brain fall onto the paper. As you get higher in grade levels english papers change, teachers often assign papers were we have to research or read something. Then understand the information we have crammed in our heads just to we write a shorter version without using the same words as the original text. For some this is easy. Being able to already have ideas and just make them your own words. For myself this is extremely difficult. In high school I can say that I got away with plagiarism a few times my freshman and sophomore years for research papers about elections, historians, books, current event. Over the summer I took english
I did not have a firm writing philosophy before this semester, but I to some degree I understood the importance writing can have on a situation. Now I understand that writing has two outcomes: gaining support or losing support. When writing an essay it is best if the writing is as specific as possible. This way the audience is hopefully not left with a confused opinion about the topic. Since the beginning of the semester I have put a conscious effort to change my writing style. Instead of the box format that is learned in high school I try to use a more graceful approach while still being organized. Also, I evaluate the credibility of a source before I use the information to support my thesis and understand the roles of using ethos, pathos, and logos. My assignments are now written with more developed thought by elaborating on ideas in the body paragraphs. By participating in the assignments throughout the semester I have accomplished, to different extents, the objectives for the English Composition 101 course. My writing has improved in multiple areas such as knowing who my audience is, and how writing drafts and making revisions help me evaluate the effectiveness of my essay. I am also aware that academic writing differs from day-to-day writing because for academic writing I need to present the most credible evidence in an organized format. Furthermore, I now can effectively evaluate my writing to know where I can improve.
When I read “Proficiency” by Shannon Nichols I really felt for her. I understood and resonated with her story perfectly, especially when she stated “After I failed the test the first time, I began to hate writing and I started to doubt myself. I doubted my ability and the ideas I wrote about.” (83). After I failed my writing assignment I was so embarrassed and didn’t want to write again but obviously, I had to. I always doubt the things I am going to say or which order I am going to organize the essay in. I try so hard to make sure all my sentences are cohesive and all my ideas connect to each other and the main concept but sometimes it just seems that when I keep messing with one little sentence or paragraph I just makes things worse.
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
Throughout this semester, I was able to learn many writing skill and was able to develop as a writer. When I found out that I was scheduled to be in English Composition I, I was very nervous as I have always felt that writing was one of the skills that I needed to improve on. Although I usually received good grades on my essays, I did not like writing them since it would always take me more than five hours to write a one page essay. If I wanted a good grade in English Composition I, I knew that I was definitely going to have to improve on my grammars. The main skills that we learned in this class were writing a clear thesis statement, paragraph structures, and sensory details. Through this class, I was able to attain more knowledge in these areas and gain confidence in my writing skills. The areas that I have improved on over the course of the semester are staying in the same tense, using
This semester I had the pleasure to be in Mrs. Smith’s kindergarten class at Normal Park Museum Magnet School. For the last four months I was able to observe and do a guided reading lesson. During this time I was able to reflect over what I have learn from Teacher Reading and connect it to what I have seen happen in my classroom during Guided Reading, writing, and reading. During Professional Development School I had the opportunity to see many different reading levels and see how my teacher taught her many different reading levels.
Writing for me has always been a difficult task, mainly because I have never been good with words or how to begin writing my thoughts on paper. Writing essays have been one of my biggest horrors as a student. High school, English class prepared me for the basic editing of my essays, for example, spelling, font errors and basic grammar. This semester, I realized that the writing process requires more than just editing. I can certainly say that I have improved as a writer a great deal. English 102 was absolutely different from my other English classes; we actually focused on different types of writing style with the same topic uniquely. All assignments got me to think outside of the box and develop critical thinking skills. Furthermore, was
Students will use prior knowledge of story structure and identifying climactic events within the text to identify why something happens and what it is a result of.
Once in elementary school, I saw other children know how to read a lot faster and better than I did. I remember going to the library and students be on a higher level books than I was. We always had to read aloud in class, I soon became embarrassed when trying to pronounce a word and students giggled, stared, and corrected me. Entering middle school, I become more interested in daunting novels such as Wait till Helen Comes, the Doll in the Garden, and Michigan Thrillers. I loved reading to myself because I felt comfortable, but I remember being made fun of in junior high because I stuttered while trying to read audibly. I lost all my interest in reading and since then I could never get hooked on book in order to read it all the way through.
My first writing weakness was deciding what to write about. I had to read the essay topic over and over again to understand what it was asking for. I would worry that I wouldn’t understand the topic correctly. While writing the essay I was scared to get out of topic and write about something else I wasn’t supposed to write about. Another thing that would happen to me was that suddenly my mind would go blank and wouldn’t be able to think about what else I could write about. The essay I liked writing the most this semester was the second essay. I enjoyed making my own planet and how my alien had a quest with all the commercials I saw on the TV. The hardest essay I wrote this semester was the fourth and last essay. I got confused when I was writing the body paragraphs. This writing weakness impacted my life by showing me that I have trouble thinking about how I could write my essays. I think I should start reading books and maybe I could get a few ideas out of those books.
... for teachers to choose materials that will hook students and motivate them to engage in their own learning. Teachers should provide multiple learning opportunities in which stu¬dents can experience success and can begin to build confidence in their ability to read, write, and think at higher level. By connecting strategies for learning, such as searching, compre¬hending, interpreting, composing, and teaching content knowledge, students are given the opportunity to succeed in their education. These elements include: fundamental skills such as phonemic awareness, phonemic decoding, and other word analysis skills that support word reading accuracy; text reading fluency; strategies for building vocabulary; strategies for understanding and using the specific textual features that distinguish different genres; and self-regulated use of reading comprehension strategies.
In this course, I have learned that reading, writing, and thinking are the critical literacy skills that each student must develop trough out his/her education journey. Before starting this course, I had general information about the importance of literacy in education settings. I have learned that low literacy skills have a lifetime impact on students and students with low literacy skills have higher chances of dropping out of school. I understand that as a college counselor, I must work with ELA teachers to increase our high school graduation rate and increase students’ college and career readiness level.
The section I read was Chapter 13. This chapter was a study of an Urdu community school in England. The author was focused on analyzing children ages 5-7 who were learning literacy. The children were British-Pakistani and they all attended a mainstream English school that hosted the Urdu community school. The main goal was to see what kinds of effects learning literacy in multiple languages might have. The chapter provided many interesting insights on what kinds of important advantages may come from early bilingual readers learning to read in multiple languages at a time.
When evaluating my progress as a critical reader and thinker, I have dramatically changed since the beginning of the year. At the start of the year, I was convinced that I was already a good critical reader and thinker; however, I only had a solid foundation and much to improve upon. In high school, I wrote numerous research papers and participated in my debate club. I was comfortable arguing and debating with people because it excited me. The only problem, I was debating over issues from an ethical and moral stance rather based on research and facts. Having to learn how to make arguments based on research was a huge challenge for me. This semester I was challenged to think, view, and articulate evidence and issues differently than I have in