Reflection About Reading And Writing

This semester has impacted me and my writing abilities greatly. I feel I have improved in all aspects of writing. Throughout High school writing was never my preferred subject, but after taking this class I have developed an interest in writing and no longer look at it as a chore, but more as a method to express myself.

In the 2011 article “Helping Students Meet the Challenges of Academic Writing”, educators Linda Fernsten and Mary Reda offer innovative self-reflective writing exercises that post-secondary instructors can employ to help students improve writer self-image and academic writing. The authors’ rationale for reflective and practical writing strategies were developed from direct classroom experience, and are based on four (4) assumptions. Their claim that self-reflective writing can aid student writers in overcoming conflict (due to dominant culture, upbringing, former writing experiences, gender, and other marginalizing factors) to improve writer self-identity is plausible. However, their argument that cross-curriculum academic writing can be improved through self-directed, self-reflective writing requires further investigation.

My memories are blurry. They are fragments of disjointed moments, without a linear narrative. I remember reading. It was in Mrs. Davidson first grade class. My reading proficiency skills were very poor, the English language still thick and unnatural on my tongue. While some of the other students took a Gifted class, I had to take a remedial course—English Learners (EL)— just so that I could hold onto the edge. I remember reading. I had a hard copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar in my little hands, reciting only the first page of the book from memory. The classroom was dark; the stream of sunlight filtering through the windows served as our only illumination. The rest of the words on the book looked like a mess of jumbled letters. I couldn’t make out anything other than the words “the” and “and.” I remember enthusiastically pointing out my “fluency” to my teacher, seemingly applauding my menial abilities: “The catpater at droo!” (The caterpillar ate through). In the first-grade, my free time was spread sporadically between watching The Little Mermaid, catching ugly black crickets and pretending that I was Sailor Moon, guardian of the galaxy. In the first grade, I was not at all concerned with words, literacy and books. In the first grade, I did not know the power that words hold. I did not know that books would change my life.

As a teenager, I now look back and realize how vital it is for children to learn to read and write at such young ages. I am so thankful for parents that read books with me before I even started school, and I am also thankful for the teachers who taught me vowel sounds, prefixes, suffixes, and much more. Teachers also taught me that reading could be fun, which encouraged students to want to read in their free time. Reading and writing are unique activities to me because these activities can be used academically or for personal entertainment. Reading has had a huge impact on my life in the past, present, and hopefully in the future.

As a writer I’ve grown so much throughout my college experience at Rowan University through the writing arts program. I was introduced to the different genres and styles of writing within all of my courses. Specifically, my Senior Seminar Evaluating Writing course. This course introduced me to the many different genres and styles of writing. I learned quickly within this course that the genres in writing can be determined by the literary technique, the tone, the content, the voice, the vocabulary used and even how the long the reading is. Not only did I learn all of the ways to determine a genre, but I have also learned all that would not be considered a genre.

Throughout the timespan of a semester could you improve your writing to where there would be noticeable differences? When writing for English 1010, I noticed that there was obvious weaknesses and minimal strengths or lack thereof in my writing abilities. In many ways I do believe that I was able to improve in areas pertaining to reading, thinking, researching, and writing.

I can hear my heart pumping faster and faster. With every breath, it pumps a little faster. I count each person ahead of me in my roll. Pam will read paragraph one. Carl has paragraph two and Donna will read paragraph four. That means I will read paragraph five. I go over every word making sure I can pronounce each one correctly. I am not aware of what the others have read. My only concern is not to make a mistake. It is my turn. Yes, I made it. Wow, glad that is over! What I have described is my early reading experience in elementary school. Reading was not something you did for pleasure. Reading was something you maneuvered through making sure you didn’t explored by the bombs of vocabulary. It was not something you enjoyed. My parents were very strict about education. They knew their children were intelligent, so if you were not doing well in school you were playing around. I remember every time I had to read or go to the board to answer a problem, I would always make a mistake. I believe it was due to the amount of stress of possible failure. When my teacher told my parents that I was having a problem at school they thought I was just being lazy. I was immediately punished.

Although I would see a combination a few students, I identify most with Eric and Marie the most. Like Eric I have a problem with articulation, what I write is clear to me clear to me, yet confusing to an objective reader. Secrets at 618. I often look for ways to improve my writing, such as writing every day or, like Eric, look for other writing courses to improve my writing. Id. Although I spent ample time researching and writing my 1L memo, unlike Eric, my grade was not reflective. Id. at 621. In addition, like Eric, I spend a lot of my time researching and reading and less time writing. Id. at 623. As noted in footnote 45, I spent a lot of time looking fo the “perfect case.” Id. at 635. The article describes this as “a way of postponing

This class has helped me to improve my writing in many ways. Though I do not manage my time as well as I would like to at the moment, I have evolved this aspect of my writing vastly. At the beginning of the semester, it took anywhere between two and four hours to complete an essay, and I would wait until the very last minute to even begin writing. I have learned how to properly manage my time in order to write my essays in a shorter amount of time. I have also increased my ability to find and present sources in an academic essay. Though I still need to polish my ability to present information without bias, I am able to find relevant information in order to further prove my point in an essay. Overall, this class has taught me many valuable things

For as long as I can remember on the first day of class no matter what class it seems that the teacher would always look upon the class and ask what our personal definition of reading and writing or why we were in the class and people always seem to give the same hesitant answer every year. I thought I knew why I in the class, I assumed it was like high school english as long as I stuck to the formula that was engraved in our minds that I would have no trouble making it though the course. However, after the first day of class i knew that this class probably wouldn't be that way. After being turned off to reading and writing from a young age, my definition of reading and writing were hindered from these experiences. Going from classrooms

“Teachers won’t be able to read what you write if you don’t make your handwriting more neater” I heard this statement almost every time I brought homework home or a test; or anything that involved me putting more than my name on a piece of paper; back to my house. For someone only in first grade that was a lot to have to worry about knowing that my handwriting was so bad that my teachers, my mother, AND I couldn’t understand it. To make matters worse my teacher was in the process of teaching all of us to read and write in cursive so that wasn’t going to make my writing more coherent or understandable. I would have to say with no doubt in my mind that i hated writing in first grade hell i hated writing all through elementary school

When I read Frederick Douglass’s story “Learning to read and write,” it reminded me of when I was learning how to read and write. I was very young so I didn’t know how to write or read. I remember when I was in the second grade that’s when I started to notice that I was going to enjoy writing even though I would have trouble with it especially on how to start it of.

My head is pounding and my eyes are burning while I try writing for this weeks discussion. The more I read about the process of creative writing the more confused I get. Will I ever understand how to apply what I read correctly? This week I tired to learn about using specific details, cutting wordy clauses, and varying sentence structure.

This semester has taught me a lot in writing. From being in high school last year I have seen a whole lot of new expectations and standards that should come out your writing as well as the way you should set up essays. One of the things that scared me throughout this writing process was trying to exceed the length of an essay because I wasn’t really used to writing more than at least 4 pages. In my high school English class we never really had an essay that was as long as 5 pages. Thankfully outlines which were given in this class helped so much in what I needed to explain and what points I had to make when writing an essay.

The challenging component this semester, was the transitioning part from high school level english and writing to college level. High school writing did not have many expectations, its main focus was on the ideal five paragraph essays. As compared to college, writing is mainly geared and focused on one’s ability to thoroughly answer the prompt. However, I quickly adjusted to the change. In English 10, I have learned many valuable elements that I can incorporate in my everyday writing. I have chosen to include my writing from project 1 “Why English 10” and project 2 a rhetorical analysis on, “Black Lives Matter. These works effectively demonstrates my growth as a writer.