MLA Class Reflection

Writing may come naturally for some people, but for me, it does not. This class will be challenging- as it is a college course- but that does not mean that I am not going to try my best to receive an A, and meet all of the expectations this semester. Even with it not coming naturally, I do know tasks that improve my writing, like being able to analyze the purpose, audience, and rhetorical strategies used by other writers (syllabus 2). In my AP Language class I took last year the concept of being able to come up with those three things was heavily stressed; therefore, we did multiple practice worksheets and wrote essays where we would have to come up with those things. On page 3 in the guidebook, it says that we should know how to write and

When this class started at the beginning of this semester I was not sure I would learn a lot. The main objectives of this class were fairly simple. There were five main objectives to use and know. They are the following:

With the anxiety flowing throughout my body, I knew the time was near of facing my English 1301 class. Being told that I needed to improve my writing during my grade school days, I knew that I didn’t feel at ease going into a college level English class. But, with this in mind I had to pull myself together to encounter the challenges that I will face. However, having the privilege of having an amazing professor I believe my writing skills improved, also I was able to find my confidence.

It’s hard to imagine that just ten short months ago I was sitting in a classroom building a spaghetti tower with no idea what a rhetorical analysis essay was or what the word anaphora meant. Now, just a couple of months later, I have read and analyzed six different novels, learned to write an argument, synthesis, and rhetorical analysis essay, expanded my lexicon of literary terms, and sat through a three hour AP exam. This class has not only given me the skills to master the AP exam, but it has also given me knowledge to succeed in future English courses and in life. Through this course, I have experienced unparalleled growth in my reading comprehension and writing abilities.

The classes that have been observed and that will be analyzed in this essay are the English Honors and AP English courses which took place at Cerritos High School during the second semester of the academic year 2015/2016. This analysis will focus on the instructor of said classes, David Hind, and on their curriculum, specifically on how the assessment of the students’ learning took place.

Welcome back my friends to the blog that never ends. I’m so glad you could attend. Read along! Read along! There in this class is some prose that’s pretty crass. Be careful as you pass. Read along! Read along! Wow! How disappointed Emerson, Lake and Palmer must be in this sophomoric attempt at humor. Certainly, a painful finale to wonderful class. Admittedly, I have struggled to produce original and interesting content for these blogs. It wasn’t always so. In the autumn of 73, I experienced no such struggle. Ideas burst forth freely and often to form exquisite prose delighting my English professors. Indeed, the fact that I now struggle was a compelling argument to register for this class.

This year was to be my fourth year in a row attending MLA. I spoke in 2006, interviewed for jobs in 2007, spoke and interviewed in 2008, and had hoped to speak and interview for jobs this year as well. When the job interviews did not materialize, I made the difficult decision to not attend the convention given the financial realities of being an adjunct faculty member. I regretted not having the chance to speak—especially on a panel titled “Today’s Teachers, Today’s Students: Economics”—but the panel chair volunteered to deliver my paper in absentia.

At 11:15 on Monday, August 17, 2015, my first official college class, English 1101, began. In general, I had no idea what college classes would be like let alone how college English would be. Even though this class taught me a great deal in one semester, it took a large amount of time and effort to make the adjustment from high school. The simplistic writing style of high school was put to rest the moment the first college English class began. As a result, I learned quickly that college writing is complex and less systematic than high school writing. Five paragraph essays with three strict body paragraphs were no longer the norm for writing. Even though my professor helped guide my writing, I was no longer coddled through the whole writing

Gordon B. Hinckley’s words ring true through my mind as I enter this school year: “Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds.” Entering into this AP Language and Composition class marks the beginning of my challenging school year. However, I will treat my assignments as I do my garden. Carefully, I will water the seeds of information that have been planted in my brain. As I remove the aspects of writing and reading that prove to be unbeneficial to me, it will be as if I am picking weeds. Desiring for my writing skills to blossom, I will work to be the best student I can be.

This year, AP English 3 has been my favorite class because of the wide variety of topics that we covered and the essay writing skills that we learned. By providing a large educational basis to students' writing, this class expands the learner's ability to communicate in a profesional, educational manner, a skill with which they will use for the rest of their life. As well as scoring eights (on a nine-point scale) on several English papers, the skills that I have grown and nurtured throughout the semester have helped me score fives or sixes on my AP US History essays (on a six-point scale). Through learning how to go in-depth and synthesize a topic, AP English 3 has taught me how to consistently score high grades on AP essays, as well as communicate

Upon acceptance to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, I knew not the circumstances to come my way: I did not understand what adversities would appear to me unsuspectingly. Furthermore, I faced these adversities and I had confidence they would inspire growth. Adversity in college also presented itself in this English course by challenging my identity as a writer in the same way that UAB has challenged my identity as a person and student. When enrolling to UAB, I knew how to write a thesis statement and how to use MLA, but this course helped me develop and hone my skills in an honest setting. This course taught me how to make two-prong thesis statements in a conflicting viewpoint paper and focused on

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

As a freshman at Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI, I took the writing class WTNG 102 Section 31, taught by Professor Ramey. All undergraduate students must receive at least a 70 as a final grade in the class prior to being enrolled in Critical Writing, WTNG 200 or 220. Entering college, I was most worried about taking Expository Writing because writing has never been one of my strengths. I have always struggled with writing transitions, and have made endless grammatical mistakes, including comma splices and tense changes. I hoped that Expository Writing would help me with these writing mistakes. Another thing that I hoped that WTNG 102 would do for my writing is that it would… Over the semester, I wrote a total of four papers with three different learning objectives and specific understandings. The first paper, “The Real Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet” shows my understanding of rhetorical knowledge. The second paper, “What is a Discourse Community?” shows my understanding of discourse community knowledge. The third paper, “Genre Analysis” shows my understanding of genre knowledge. Through these three papers, I have achieved the learning outcomes in rhetorical knowledge, discourse community knowledge, and genre knowledge.

For a student to be successful in college English, they need to understand there is an intimate relationship between reading and writing. One skill reinforces the other. Competent readers make competent writers. The challenge is universal: How do we transition students from high school to college English? I would like to say I have the answer, but the answer changes with each class and every semester. There isn’t one set model, and I understand that my model will constantly evolve and reflect my student’s needs.

I have learned many things throughout the course of the term, including such things as: how to write an essay and how to improve on essays that I have already written, how to locate and composite better research through the use of numerous resources found at the campus library, the internet, and the “Common Sense” textbook, how to cite research, examples, and quotations properly within the contents of my research paper as well as document it accurately according to MLA standards. Through the exploration of the “Subjects and Strategies” textbook, I have learned nine different methods used when writing an effective essay and how the different writing styles affect the overall theme and tone of the essay when used properly. This past