English Class Reflection

First off, I want to thank you for making this year and my first honors English experience fun for me! Though this year was challenging for me, it has also been extremely knowledgeable. From my freshman year to sophomore year, I can definitely notice the difference in my writing and reading. I can definitely see how much I have grown, and I am sure you could see these improvements too. Last year, I was in regular English and jumping from regular to honors was a huge step for me, which at first, I was not fully comfortable with. But as I got to know this year’s class and of course you, Mrs. Walker, I felt like I belonged here, in an honors English class. Throughout this year, I have learnt and improved at my skills of properly annotating texts, writing a proper claim, analyzing author’s style, and also analyzing rhetorical situations.

As the semester was coming to a beginning I honestly thought I was ready for this course. I say this because senior year high school I took an advanced placement English class. I also, say I was ready to start this course because I have had practice with English and writing essays during my summer before beginning Fall year. I would get good grades on my essays both my AP English class and my Summer English class. So with that being said I thought I was going to do good in this course. As I began this course and saw that we were only going to be doing three essays and a portfolio for the whole year, I thought I was so ready for the semester. I thought this class was going to be one of my easiest class. As assignments were coming up I thought

When I began working in this class I was fearful that it would be a waste of my time. In high school, I took two AP English classes: administration at my school cancelled the first one in the middle of the year and I did not excell in the second. However, because of my educational background I am used to being challeneged and I did not see this course doing that for me. I never characterized myself as a great writer but I was already very familiar with the skills being reviewed so I did not believe that this course would add much value to my writing skills.

Throughout the English 111 class, my writing ability has grown to meet all of the course outcomes. In this class I was required to analyze fictional texts and make complex claims that matter in an academic contexts and revise them in order to make grammatical sense. For the 1.0 sequence I focused on Night, by Elie Wiesel and Sarah’s Key, written by Tatiana de Rosnay. Short papers 1.1 and 1.2, focused on each book respectively while major paper 1.3 allowed me to back my claim with both of the texts allowing for a larger exchange of ideas. Within the 2.0 sequence I focused mainly on the Poisonwood Bible, penned by Barbra Kingsolver. The short paper I have chosen to focus on for this sequence was 2.2; in which I had to write a letter to a character

In this assignment I address the pivotal moment in my development as a writer and how this event is changing me. I reflected on college English class at Azusa Pacific University that I am currently taking. Initially In this essay I will be discussing my driver for this class and explore how English course is a fundamental skill in my nursing career.

Before I enrolled in English 101 my ability to write specific types of papers (argumentative, rhetoric, narrative, etc) were mediocre at best. However, from reading The Norton Field Guide to Writing and They Say, I Say I gained a deeper understanding on how to better argue a point or write a narrative with a clear theme. Moreover, from my time of being in English 101 I have improved tremendously in the given areas: Rhetoric, Technology, Research, and Collaboration.

Ever since I was a child, I never really enjoyed the subject of English. Aside from me considering the subject to be boring my vocabulary always seemed to be lacking compared to my peers, and the time I spent on reading passages and answering questions about those passages was much longer than my classmates’. However, my literacy skills started to slowly develop, and I ended up appreciating English in my junior and senior years of high school.

Since the beginning of this semester, English 101 has helped me realize both my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. One weakness that I have realized about myself is my tendency to not fully plan out my essays before I start writing the rough drafts. This is one thing that English 101 has helped me to improve, by creating well-planned out outlines before starting to write. A strength that I have is writing strong commentary that supports the provided quote and shows why the quote is relevant to the essay’s overall thesis.

I have several expectations for success in English 101, from my teacher, from my classmates, and from myself. In this course I expect my teacher, Mrs. Carroll, to demonstrate how to properly compose interviews, essays, and research papers. I also hope to learn how to write the papers in the correct formats. Additionally, I expect my classmates to be courteous, to avoid being disruptive, and to be respectful. Furthermore, I expect myself to strive for greatness, to never give up, and to improve daily. I expect many different things from many individuals, but I realize that is the only way to be successful in life and in English 101.

As a writer, I am quite sure of myself. I feel that English 101 was a large step in improving and building my skills. Writing is a particular strength of mine, although I struggle when it comes to open-ended prompts. While I can effectively construct an argument, I would consider myself still inexperienced with the writing process. Throughout high school, there were few writing assignments and what I did write was formulaic and lacking substance; giving original ideas or organizing beyond the five paragraph essay is still fresh to me. My teachers would tell us students what to write during a “class discussion” of the literature and afterwards send us to work. Writing outside the basic five-paragraph essay was taboo; each attempt had been met

Throughout my academic carrer, I have had a history of struggling with English classes. I was excited to take English 101 because I believed it would most effectively teach me the basics of successful writing and communication. In high school, I developed mediocre writing skills and struggled with reading comprehension so I knew these topics would pose a problem in any English class I take. Despite the fact that I was in AP Language in high school, I learned very little and did not improve my writing and communication skills as much as I would have liked. In English 101 , I would like to change that and enhance my time management skills, grammar skills, and overall writing ability.

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.

A couple of class activities that encouraged me to feel confident about learning were getting in groups, one on one conferences, and whole class discussions. Getting in

In English 101, I mastered getting to the point of getting to my essays with less disappointment with force; I learned the significant use of scratch paper. For example, I wasn’t always use to writing my essays on scratch paper; however, keeping in mind that the scratch paper was a nondurable tool as I finished my paper, because I knew they would be thrown away. Also, the professor required us to submit our scratch paper along with our essays. With this procedure, I was forced to rewrite my essays. He felt that the scratch paper would be a help to us as we continually to learn how to effectively write our essays.