Personal Narrative: Reading And Writing Class

It has been a while since we last spoke in Boston. I hope all is well in America. I have just about had enough of China and am excited on coming home in a few weeks.

When I read a book, I step into a world careening with creative stories, elaborate settings, and earnest characters that worm their way through our hearts of thousands. Other times, I open a book to find myself in someone else’s words, or challenge my limits. There's no denying the power and beauty of literature, but understanding, analyzing, and creating so much power is no easy task. It’s why I'm so eager to join this class. I want to learn further with the best class possible, Advanced Sophomore English. I well understand the difficulty and effort that goes into the challenges of an advanced curriculum/placement, especially the motivation and risks you need as well. Throughout my life, I’ve had firsthand experience/learned many essential skills. In 6th grade, I lead a team of friends to win 1st place in Device Performance in the 2013 Tech Challenge hosted in San Jose Tech Museum where over 600 teams pitted against each other from across the Bay Area. That following year, I was the only selected student to attend Tech Trek, a camp hosted in many universities like Stanford and Sonoma State university dedicated to promoting the math and science field to young students. In 8th grade, I was awarded an English Department Award by my English teacher for my outstanding performance in leadership, writing, reading, discussion, presenting, and more. And most recently, I was not only accepted into our

While not a hugely transformative venture, I have found this semester to be a good vehicle for making my writing more accurate to its intended purpose. Prior to taking this class I did have some experience in professional writing for a few of the jobs I've had in the past, but this class organized those thoughts, gave them name, and pointed out where and how to pursue them. Its been an enlightening experience and provided me with tools I hope to use the rest of my life.

Think back to that first magical moment where someone bought the story alive for you as a child. I can remember the first time my mother read to me a bedtime story before bed. That magical moment happened for me when she started to read and all of a sudden it was like the characters literally lifted off the page. The story almost became like a movie that she had let me watch that night before I went to bed. A magician is what she was to be able to make a book come to life right before my eyes. I couldn’t wait until I possessed the same magical powers. However, how surprised I was to find out that my journey to read would not be so smooth or quick as I thought. While

How do you feel learning to speak second language? How about writing? I am not just talking about writing alphabet or words, I am talking about writing a combination of words with proper punctuation, grammar, spelling, and many more with full flavor of English proficiency. Although, I was resettled to the US year after finishing my high school, I never had attended the college. Choosing COTC was my first steps to put myself in learning process. The semester was challenging for me because I was going everything new in my life. With full support from teachers and family member I was able overcome it. There are several writing skills that I learned in my previous English 91 class: from organizing idea, rough draft, brainstorming, choosing topic

I've loved writing since I was a young child, especially creative writing. It allows me to express myself, and it seems almost magical to be able to create things simply by writing down a few symbols and twenty-six letters in various ways. I've written many fictional stories of various genres over the years. Unfortunately, while I have done a lot of creative writing, I haven't done as much academic writing. I would like this class to help me become the kind of student who earns A's on her papers by assisting me in becoming more efficient in the overall writing process.

The Advanced Writing Workshop is an incredible opportunity for me to grow as a writer and a scholar. The small seminar format of the class will give me the opportunity to more deeply explore content than would otherwise be possible in a large lecture format class. At Long Island School for the Gifted which I attended for 4th through 8th Grade, all of the classes were small. Thus, I have had the opportunity to learn in seminar-style classes previously, and found them to be very well-suited to my learning style. Although I am not a bad writer, there is always room for improvement. For example, when I read novels I intend to burst with both ideas about, as well as interpretations of, complex texts. My strength as a reader centers around my ability to grasp the big picture. Rather

I became interested in English literature and writing when I took two Advanced Placement English classes in high school. Subsequently as an undergraduate student I have taken a variety of English courses that have challenged the conventional approaches I used to explicate and understand texts. Initially I struggled with writing assignments because I had been programmed since high school to follow a formulaic method of writing. It was through Professor Emma’s Stapely’s course on American Literature that I first learned that there are multiple approaches one can take in order to make sense of a text, such as through attention to visual economy. I also learned that when interpreting a text one is not restricted to a single understanding, but that

Most of us at one point in our life or another have had a friend in which writing comes easy. They can write anything from a personal narrative to a research paper with no issues. However this is not the cause for most of us, we worry and stress about getting a good grade or even how to format our papers. This is writing anxiety, and it can cause some major road blocks, when it comes to getting the results we want. I hate writing and have since I was younger. I had to take English as a second language when I started school not because it was my second language but because I am dyslexic and it prevented me from reading almost at all and severely limited my writing skills. I was finally able to overcome most of my issue by the time I turned

Dixie: Amanda, I liked that once the sign was changed that people really helped the man out more. I totally believe that no one even read the sign before the lady changed. I think that you have a good point about stopping and think before we write something and making sure it sounds the best. I think that this class will really benefit me. What are you hoping to learn from this class?

As we come to the end of this semester, I am excited to start something new. Expository writing has taught me to think out side the box on topics. It allowed me to free write which I think every student should be able to. I'm glad we did thes blogs, there was a lot of room to have freedom on our writing.

My guided lesson 3 went really well this week. This week the lesson had been implemented exactly the way it had been planned. The lesson began with students looking at the title page and making predictions about the book. Everyone had interesting points to share about the predictions they made. I could tell the students were really excited to read this book as it was very colorful and it got their attention. Before we started reading, I asked the students to look for main events that took place in the book as it will help them retell the story at the end. All the students were able to retell the story to me at the end. What went well the most was the fact that my students brought the main events to my attention on their own before retelling

Learning anything in school was very hard for me growing up because I always felt discouraged when there were people learning the curriculum faster than I did or making better grades, but reading and writing was something that I always wasn’t discouraged with. I learned how to read and write from experiences and creativity that I had or that was shown to me. My family had a lot of issues and a lot of drama would happen that my brother and I caught in the middle of it so I found a way out of it.

Arriving in this class I didn’t really know what to expect, and having a fragile background in English I was a bit concerned on how I would perform. Carrying over twenty years of discouragement stemming from my high school years, I thought I knew enough but came to the realization I didn’t. After a few weeks of settling in to class it felt like doors that I didn’t know how to open could be now opened and ignited my desire for more knowledge. For the first time in my life I was excited to learn English and eager to use it. My reading was above normal along with my vocabulary, however my grammar, and writing structure was my weakest point and that’s what I wanted to focus on.

It was a cold, February night at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Boonville, MO. I was at my eighth grade formal. Leading up to my high school years, I was always in my shell. I never came out. A group of my friends and I had been dancing and I noticed two guys walk in. One, I knew through his sister. The other, I knew was in the grade younger than me and his name was Kendall, but nothing more.