Personal Reflection

On 08/20/2017 at 1002 hours FTO Wheeler #4361 and I responded to St. Luke’s Hospital emergency room entrance, on 3555 Cesar Chavez St., regarding a women in a hospital gown trying to break the caller’s vehicle window with a brick. Officer Wheeler and I were in full police uniform driving a marked patrol unit when we responded.

The six course goals of this English 109W course are to Engage in writing as a process that includes planning, revision, and editing based on feedback from peers and instructors; Critically read and analyze academic texts; Understand, identify, and analyze the rhetorical situations of academic texts, including their contexts, audiences, purposes and personas; Understand, identify, and analyze the rhetorical situations of academic texts, which may include genre, format, evidence, citation, style and organization; Develop an awareness of and preparedness for the writing they will do through their majors through research, exploration, and or practice of the discourse community’s conventions; and Engage in formal and informal writing that analyzes and critically reflects on their major’s writing conventions and their own writing practices and choices. I perceive that I have achieved all the goals for this course through the various drafts I composed, polished papers I produced, and the supplemental work that I have selected to include enclosed within my portfolio.

Have you ever wondered whether a writer’s voice and the standard rules of academic writing can exist on the same page? According to Dr. Debra Pena, English Professor, University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and Mathew Teorey, English Professor, University of New Mexico and the author of "Using Freshman Composition to Analyze What Students Really Know about Grammar" a writer’s voice and the process of academic writing can exist on the same page (Personal Communications February 13, 2017, Teorey 2). However, my first essay In Freshman Composition II titled, “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE): Is it the New Death Sentence for Future Athletes Playing Sports in America?” where I lost the power of my voice to the process of academic writing.

In college, we get asked to write enough papers to fill a book, and all those papers start off as drafts where they must be edited and corrected before turning them in as the final draft. This process is particularly interesting to see how one can improve their work. Analyzing a paper to see the ways in which information is portrayed and relayed to the reader is vital to the writing process. In this paper, I will be examining a previous assignment from a former English course. To analyze the paper thoroughly, I will be looking at the rhetoric used within and its effectiveness, along with the mistakes that lie within the paper. I will critique my work and suggest ways to correct errors, or applaud attributes within that were well done.

Proficient writing is an essential skill in all aspects of academic and professional achievement. English 101, Introduction to Composition and Rhetoric, provided the framework to good writing, teaching me composition and rhetoric fundamentals, polishing up my grammar and style, and expressing a clear message. English 102, Composition, Rhetoric, and Research, continued to build on the skills I learned in English 101, focusing on the subject matter research process and employing various rhetorical and literary devices to better express a clear message to the reader. The course also improved my critical thinking capacity, allowing me to culturally evaluate my target audience, present logically flowing arguments using appropriate language and structure, and critically reviewing my writing projects for content and expression. Every writer inherently knows there’s always room to improve and I hold fast to this mindset in all academic, professional, and personal writing projects. English 102 has both challenged and inspired me to grow into a much better writer than before I began the class, providing the necessary skills to be not just a good writer, but a great writer.

Growth, I believe, is inevitable when one is compelled to learn and apply that knowledge which has been presented to them. This semester has proved to be a time of development, change, and substantial growth. During my time in English 101 I have had the chance to really explore new genres of writing such as memoirs, rhetorical analyses, and persuasive essays. In this class I have been able to build upon old writing skills and cultivate new ones; and I have also come to recognize what I like and dislike writing about through the completion of the assignments we were charged with. Through this semester in English 101 I feel as though I have had the opportunity to enhance my ability to apply the rules of rhetoric to my work, convey my thoughts and ideas with greater clarity, and recognize the places where I can improve my work through the revising process.

Over the course of this past semester, my ability to write has improved tremendously. Prior to undertaking this course, my expertise in writing was not as fine-tuned as it should have been. I had never previously been enrolled in a class specifically tailored to writing-- which was quite clear. Upon reading my past works, it becomes apparent that my writing style consisted of fluff, small words, and inconsistently structured sentences. These problems have, for the most part, been remedied with the coursework I have tackled in College Writing. Rather than long, drawn out papers that take an eternity to reach the primary point, my recent work is much nicer in terms of composition and grammar. I credit these improvements to the three primary

To do my research I had to have many participants to correctly do my research. To start my research, I began by researching strategies and completing a literature review on the strategies to figure out what is important to aid me in reach the process target of giving effective feedback to the students. After figuring out what feedback strategies I wanted to research, I then use the strategies during the ten-week internships thought whole class instructional lesson three times and also providing feedback to students' one-on-one or in small group settings through my internship. I used the chosen strategies in multiple ways to make the best use of my ten-weeks there to make the best use of my time there, I gave oral

For the course of my break I was let down a little by some companies I wanted to volunteer with. Instead I helped my family because of the position I was in during the holidays. Even though I didn’t help a wide scale of people in a community; I helped my family members. Even the smallest deeds I did for example, making sure my grandmother buys healthier foods and accompanying my dad to places to do errands made them happy. I made them happy regardless of me not being there for them throughout the year. I didn’t volunteer for the break, but I did give gifts. Spending time with my grandmother examples, encouraging her not to give up so soon, enforcing her to cook better foods, and change her diet. I helped my dad out by cleaning up, and

The writing I did this semester for Engl 110c has meant alot to me because I was able to pick a topic that has such a huge impact in my life. I was able to do the topic about Navy Wives, which has a huge impact on me. I recently became a navy wife a year ago and my life has changed drastically. I was able to share everything I wanted to about the life of a military wife through my writings, as well as share to my classmates about my topic. I really enjoyed creating my ePortfolio because I could come out of my shell and be me. I made a ePortfolio website that would be for military wives to read. I believe this website would be perfect for any military wife reading it. I was able to give tips and information on what it’s like to be a military wife, how to prepare for deployments and how to stay strong being a military wife.

I can remember when I was back in 4th grade; I used to attempt to write books or stories. When I was younger, I loved to read with my mom and then would try to write something similar to the book I had previously read. My Mom would help me read books like The Magic Tree House and would simplify and slow everything down for me so I could better understand what was going on and why. Nina Sankovitch, a reader who blogs about what she reads captures my feelings when she talks about how “I discovered new wells of resilience and joy, empathy and beauty” (Sankovitch). When I was younger, I didn’t know how to always capture these emotions, but my goal was always to make a story and try to recreate those feelings. It was a real accomplishment for me because at the time when all this was happening I struggled with reading in class. When I first started reading: I would dread being called upon, but I liked to write stories of what I read on my own, and now I do not like to read anymore.

At the starts, my first semester in college, I was not entirely sure what I was getting right into. I didn’t know what to expect and how should I act in this setting, but the main concern was in how difficult psychology should be for me as a student. I tend to not set goals for myself in anything and just go with the flow. I always want to break the mold since my usual routine is not something that I’ll be confident describing to anybody, so I must change it. I always want to better myself subconsciously, so I aimed to try and study by reading what I wrote down from each class period since reviewing seems to be the only method of studying I can manage. I am aware of the flash cards on the resources online, yet I don’t fully utilize it since I am slow at reading the textbook. My goal, I guess, is to not lose sleep at night over not knowing what I am learning by having a firm grasp on the chapter of interest. I have done an okay job so far by learning it the first time it is introduced since I don’t study well. I have met my goal in a sense, but something has got to change.

The central focus of my lesson was comprehension. I wanted the student to draw on their inferences to better understand the story. My lessons have built on one another because I have focused on different areas and made them more challenging. I first started the lessons with decoding, once the student mastered that I moved onto blending and finally comprehending. Each lesson up to this point has focused on what the student has learned from each tutoring session and building upon those areas to better understand the text by strengthening her fluency. I know that the student does not enjoy reading, therefore I make lesson plans that I believe she will enjoy by using subjects, text, and fun worksheets to engage her learning. I support my student’s literacy learning by creating engaging lessons and finding strengths in her reading that they may not notice. I try my best to compliment and support her progress by praising her when needed. My main focus in the beginning was to create trust. I believe once she trusted me that I want her to succeed, but to also trust me in the sense that she should do her best work, I began to notice that she tried her best once the moment of trust was built. I also try to create rapport with my student by getting to know her better and relating to her for a personal level. How I know if the student has mastered a topic in the lesson plan is based on the summative and formative assessments. The goal of my lessons is to improve my student’s fluency in

There is a quote from Claxton (1998), ‘If the roast potatoes are slow to brown, you can turn up the oven. But if you try to speed up the baking of meringues, they burn… The mind, too, works at different speeds.’ It stimulated the idea of the individualism of learning and thought, and how every person has a unique learning identity and approach.

Today has been a very hectic day in which, I totaled my car. I began talking about this very true statement because there are many ups and downs to life no matter how much you prepare there is endless possibilities for things to not go as planned. Therefore, I understand why you would want some individuals to track their expenses for a little over a month and then go back and review the information. First, I chose to track my credit card expenses by my bank statement, of course, I remembered to write down each item because in your bank statement it does not disclose the item description. It just shows the summary or the place you purchased it. Another thing, I chose to track all cash expenses by putting a certain amount of money in my wallet and then seeing how much was in it at the start of the next week, which yielded great results because I rarely use cash. Second, we started collecting all data towards the middle of October and I would not say I learned an extreme amount, but I did learn some very hard taught lessons throughout the process. Truthfully, I was glad I was already taking the necessary steps in money management. Honestly, I also figured out how economic struggles can affect your schoolwork and build up harmful stress. Third, I feel the Excel chart that I use paint a better picture of the breakup of my spending as a comparable whole. The plain charts show you how much you spent, when you spent it, and how often you spent your money in one category compared to