Effective Language Reflection

Ever since I can remember, I’ve struggled with writing. It just wasn’t something that came natural to me and always resulted in a very uncomfortable process. Throughout this class, I have become more comfortable with writing and its components. Though, this is only writing 101, my skill level has increased immensely. Before starting this course, writing was uncomfortable and confusing, but towards the end, my knowledge has expanded and I can more comfortably take on the majority of writing assignments.

Throughout the course of English composition 101 I had participated and worked on many different assignments that lead to better understanding and enhance of skills I had already learned in while in high school as well as the learning of new techniques and process in which to imbedded into my writing to make it better. Some of the assignments and in-class activities that lead to this included the several essays I wrote, presentations, actively-reading assignments, and in-class lectures. These assignments and in-class activities led me to better understand how to compare essays, use and develop a writing process that work efficiently for myself, better organize essays, learning to use grammar and punctuation better, identify creatable sources to use in papers, to read critically through another person work, and citing sources using MLA format. Although I had already learned the basics of many of these learning objectives throughout my high school education this course helped better enhance these skills and better prefect my writing for the future courses and careers.

English Comp 1 was an eye opening experience. The course was emotionally and physically draining, but I strongly believe it prepared me for Comp 2. Learning and improving are a few of the rewards I received through hard work and dedication during the course. Throughout English comp 1, I discovered my biggest weakness. I improved some of my various difficulties, and I achieved a rewarding high point.

The toilsome component this semester was transitioning from being a high school level writer to a college-level writer. However, English 10 has by far been my best experience in writing. By taking this course I have retrieved many helpful elements, that will help me become a successful writer throughout college. In high school, essays often gave me stress and anxiety, however, when taking English 10, I was able to learn to enjoy the process of writing purposefully and mindfully. Even though, I have taken advanced placement English courses in high school and have taken a practice run of college level English over the summer with Professor Brenda Venezia, I was still able to retrieve a lot more from this course. To showcase my progress in

What have I learned in English 102? When I began this class, I had not taken a formal English class in over thirty years. I understood sentence structure and essay writing to a point. To elaborate my understanding was based on story telling rather than research and factual commentary. Of course, rhetorical review and research was foreign to me. I had a loose understanding but had never practiced or been in a position to apply these skills. Or at least that is what I thought. Since beginning this course, I have found it both challenging and enlightening. I feel that my skills have developed over the last few weeks and a greater understanding of what it takes to identify and understand complicated subjects has progressed. Not just that I can read difficult scholarly text, but that I can focus on what they are trying to say, their argument, and then develop my own counter argument in support of or against the authors statements. It is more than just saying I concur or I do not agree with you. It is stating how my point of view differs and supporting my statements logically and directly with facts, not just conjecture. Within the following paragraphs I will discuss, in more detail, the specific areas where I feel I have matured and how I intend to apply this new-found knowledge to my future writing as well as reading materials to assess their value.

Intern met with resident K. Brown for the purpose of addressing her personal concerns and speaking with her about her community service hours. Kiara informed me that she completed her community service hours for the previous week. Intern asked her to verify the days she completes CS hours, and she stated Sundays and Wednesdays. Resident did express her frustrations by saying that she used to mess up with her CS hours, but she is really trying to do better. Intern advised her that another resident completes hers during that time, so she will have to do CS hours on Mondays and Thursdays or Mondays and Fridays. Intern also explained to her the importance of doing CS hours. It was explained that not only is this a requirement of the program,

Before taking this class I never liked my English classes more specifically writing essays for them. I didn’t understand much of how to use strategies while writing essays and focuses little on learning it. By taking this class and using the strategies that I was provided with it made taking this class easy and enjoyable while writing analytical essays. I was willing to put in the effort and do my part in order to get a good grade in this English class and it worked. I feel that my performance in an English class has improved significantly.

English has always scared me a little because I have never been super confident in my writing abilities, however this year I am looking optimistic. By the end of this english course, my goal is to be more confident in my writing abilities. Also, I hope to not only become a better reader, but to comprehend what read. Sometimes when I read, I will not fully grasp what the author is trying to say, or I will not understand what the moral of the story is, so I would love to work on comprehension skills this year. Another area that needs improvement is knowing where to put commas. I realize that commas are placed to continue a sentence without having it turn into a run on, however I will usually place commas in the wrong spot, or I will not add them

students in relation to teaching and learning. First, I discovered their love and need of hands-on experiences. Every day that my students participated in a learning experiment, every student was involved and excited to see the results of the experiment. They constantly wanted to be the, “lucky volunteer”, and in their culminating project, I had students name their favorite part of the entire unit, and all 22 students mentioned one of the six experiments they participated in. Second, I discovered the power of student directed learning. Half way through the unit I began placing students who showed great understanding of the topics with students who had more difficulty understanding the topics of the unit. On these days, based on the conversations I observed between students, the students really enjoyed this opportunity of, “being the teacher” and their classmates enjoyed the experience of learning from a classmate. According to Adam Fletcher, an author with a focus in K-12 literature, states, “When students prepare to teach other students, learning suddenly involves active thinking about material, analysis and selection of main ideas, and processing the concepts into one’s own thoughts and words” (2016). Third, I discovered who they are as learners and what best suites them as individuals. Based on the formal and informal formative assessments the students took throughout the unit,

Throughout Honors English II, I not only became a more advanced reader, I also became a more experienced writer. All throughout the semester, I learned to analyze works of literature and look for themes in the novels I read, which also helped me to become a more thoughtful writer. I also greatly improved my vocabulary throughout the semester, which helped me achieve more advanced writing and reading skills. Overall, by using new writing techniques and new vocabulary, I was able to build on my previous reading and writing skills, and I hope to see a continuation of advancement in my reading and writing abilities in the years to come.

High school was a major transition when it came to my literary skills. I took the most challenging english courses throughout each year of my high school career. During my sophomore year a new program was introduced, AP Capstone Academy. The introduction of this program allowed our high school to finally be recognized as a magnet school in our county. There were two classes that must be taken to continue enrollment in this program, they were AP Seminar and AP Research. Though I found it a drag to add on a writing class on top of my english class I was not looking forward to it my sophomore year, but little did I know how much it would help prepare me for academic writing in the future. During my junior year I took AP Seminar. This class involved a lot of reading and learning how to breakdown

The Writing II course has been my most interesting and rewarding class. Even though I could not complete the class, the course is not over for me. Before taking the class, I acknowledge I have much room to grow in writing, but I did not know where to start. Writing has always been unclear to me in many areas, and this class helped me to unblemished my understanding. In this class, I have acknowledged my weakest areas in writing, but my most astonished ambiguity was determiner noun and vocabulary. I did not know I was using determiner incorrectly and vocabulary span is so important in academic writing. The English Simplied book is an easy and an excellent learning tool that was used in this course. It covers all areas in determiners.

This first semester at the University of Akron has flown by. I learned many new writing concepts that helped me become a better writer. English composition was a required class that I had to take in order to get my degree. Although this class was required I still wanted to take this class to become more knowledgeable about writing. Coming into English Composition I was worried about all of the papers and the workload that I would have to complete. I knew that I was going to have to write a lot more than I previously had in highschool, but I was unsure of just how much. The works that I decided to include in my portfolio comprise of my Literacy Narrative, Image Analysis Paper, and essay titled Mayas Hardships based on Maya’s experiences in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. I selected these works because I felt that they are the ones that require the most improvement to them. The papers i've chosen show how far I’ve came In English Composition.

As a kid in high school I considered my least favorite subject to be English. I was never a very good reader or writer so my specific set of skills, or lack thereof, never really translated to very good grades. I would do enough to get by, but I never really attempted to get any better. I even went so far as to take my senior year of English in summer school in an attempt to get it out of the way early and not have to deal with the headache in my final year. After I finished high school I took a four year break from school so I admittedly got even worse. When I finally decided college is where I needed to be I decided to start showing maximum effort in my studies and knew that would eventually mean English composition. Throughout this

In Mrs.Yu’s class I have acquired multiple tips and tricks to write more appealing essays. To make our essays better, our class has learn daily words to improve our vocabulary skills. In addition to learning new words, our class would create a sentence using the word helps us understand the word better to allow use to use them in our own sentences. Some examples of these words include, irresolute, consecrate, escarpment, monolithic, incandescent, and much more. Although our class spend numerous hours perfecting our essays, Mrs.Yu had us research and discover interesting facts about William Shakespeare. To begin our Shakespeare research, I wrote a biography on Shakespeare with the help of my index cards packed with useful information. Soon