Reflective Essay In English

At the time, I signed up for spanish because it seemed the most useful considering the hispanic population in the United States and our close proximity to Latin America, but I never truly understood how helpful knowing another language could be. Over this past summer, I hosted a student from Spain for about a month. Before this experience, the language never seemed real to me. Meeting Marina and recognizing that spanish is the language she uses in everyday life changed my perspective. Spanish is exciting for me because it is an entirely new way of life that I haven’t experienced before. I spent my whole childhood speaking english and recognizing american traditions while other children spoke spanish and had different customs. Continuing to learn spanish will allow me to communicate with more people and exchange ideas with people who did not grow up the same way I

My entire family was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. After three and a half years of living there my family decided to seek a better future in The United States. My father would go to the United States back and forth to work and earn money to send to us in Mexico. Eventually my mother was able to get a visa and my brother along with my little sister had an alternate way into the United States. We lived in Dallas Texas and Atlanta Georgia before settling in Howard county Maryland in a very small apartment. Luckily we were doing pretty well with my dad being the only one knowing English at the time. My father was working two jobs and I was getting ready to start kindergarten. I was very excited because the education we would have received in Mexico was nothing compared to the education in Howard County. I was excited for what was to come, but there were disadvantages of knowing only Spanish. Being bullied because of my poor English had an impact on me. I was in completely separate classes learning things that were simple compared to the regular course. I was excluded from certain activities, field trips and assemblies. I was clueless at first though as I slowly learned the language I understood things a lot more.

Even though my mother was Mexican it was hard for me to speak to my friends who knew mostly Spanish and a little English because Spanish was not my first language. As years went on, I went to high school, where now I can have a full conversation with my Spanish speaking friends, and since it is an international high school, it brings in more cultural diversity. With this international high school in El Paso, it has helped me learn new cultures and experience the dozens of traits they do for activities or how they celebrate

For a period of time I was an ESOL (English as a second language) classroom teacher. This meant part my class was native English speakers and the rest was native Spanish speakers. All of my little first graders had an entire year of culture appreciation and learning to be patient with one another. They learned about holidays which they both celebrated and holidays they did not have in common. When certain Spanish speaking students would get tired of finding the correct English words they would speak in Spanish.

As a new immigrant, I took the accuplacer test and went straight to 111 English level. So, English 111 course became my first college English class. It seems like a great achievement for a French speaker. Nonetheless, this performance linked to significant challenges. Even though I am a fighter and an optimist, I was frightened about my academic achievement for this semester. The problems became bigger when I took my first practice test on sentence structure (fragments and run-ons) and got a D. I was frightened and felt that I will have to drop the class. However, I decided not to give up. I started working hard and had a V+ on the next test. This positive grade energized me until now. During this semester, I have much homework and practices which allow me to identify some strengths, weaknesses, and gave me lots of skills for my English 112 class and the future.

I interviewed an Instructional Aide that I work with at Cottonwood Elementary. Her name is Marcela and she works with the Kindergartners. She moved from Argentina to New York when she was 3 years old and her first language was Spanish. Her mother put her in preschool when she turned 5, to help her learn English. Marcela shared with me that when she went to school she felt very sad, disconnected and was constantly looking for other children that spoke Spanish. She did find a girl who spoke Spanish and she became “buddies’ with her. The girl that she befriended would help her by translating everything the teacher would say, which was all in English. Marcela said she was speaking English by Kindergarten, but she must have had a strong accent because they put in her in speech

Throughout English 1010 thus far, I can certainly say that my writing skills have been tested and tried. Writing for fun and composing rhetorical essays for a college-level English class are vastly different styles and require contrasting attitudes, voices, and points of view for each. Before writing essays of the former diction, I must admit that I did not understand the rhetorical strategies and had no idea there even was a rhetorical triangle. The assignments included in this portfolio show the advancements I have made in my writing with an academic tone.

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.

The dreaded English 102. Could this be my final English course in my career as a student? I don’t know for sure. I still need to decide what my major will be in. There is something that I know for sure, that is, needing to take this class to move on. I am not certain how my time in this class will go, but I plan to work hard to get the best grade that I can. Hence, I have decided to get this out of the way now, I look to fine-tune my writing skills, and I expect this course to help me understand my writing style.

I totally agree with what the author is saying in the text. It takes time to get a good product out even though we think some people are deep and wonderful they still have the same struggles that we have when it comes to writing. I like this text because it is realistic it is giving an account of first drafts from common day people and shows how it is even for professional writers have problems with. This point is important because as people we sometimes feel we are not as good or capable of doing something not realizing that the people we look up to have the same problems we do. Another point that I agree with the author on is that you have to start somewhere. Many times as writers we don’t know where to start when it comes to writing. That being said we will just sit and think for ten twenty minutes when we could've just been information on the paper and then editing it later. In addition I liked that the author used examples from his professional experience when it came to writing food reviews. By him using details like how he went to the restaurant and sat down with friends and took notes of what was said. This was good to me because it helps me connect with him and the things that he does to write his reviews.

Children gain great academics from learning Spanish in school. Many people are to limit what young non graduated students learn and impede them from being capable of learning Spanish. Why would they stop them from learning? Parents think that America should be an English only speaking country and wouldn’t appreciate a foreign language to be involved. I believe it makes you more intelligent in various ways. I say that for the sake of children learning Spanish at such a young age gives them a huge advantage in college. “ Studies on language development, however, show that the more exposure young children have to all languages actually gives them a distinct

Growing up in a Latino household only knew how to speak Spanish. I was surrounded by only Spanish speakers, when I attended kindergarten is when I was introduce to the English language. It was difficult for me to connect with other classmates because they didn’t speak my language, not even the basic words. I believe it’s important for children to learn different languages from young. It will help the students from other countries to have a sense of comfort. I believe schools should in force learning the basics Spanish words, so has the Childs gets older to high school they may grasp the language better.

Before I came to college, I felt my writing had to follow a certain pattern and be fixated around one way of thinking. What I was fortunate to learn was quite the opposite. Writing does not have to follow any certain pattern, but can rather be structured through many different possibilities. I was also told in high school that my papers either had to agree or disagree with the given topic, even if I believed otherwise. This formulated a very one-track way of thinking when it came to my papers. Now I know that I can let my mind explore new and exciting ideas. I can agree, disagree, compliment, criticize, and question the author however my heart desires, as long as I have the evidence to back myself up. Many authors in the book, Writing About Writing, explain their processes as well as the processes of others when it comes to writing. As a writer, I can draw on my own processes and relate them to the authors, as well as use their ideas and apply them to myself. Through reading, I have learned new methods of invention, planning and revising, and incubation when it comes to writing. All ways I can use to create more meaningful and creative work.

This fall semester in ESL 91has been pretty interesting, and so far successful. The main object of this semester was to improve our essay writing. We were taught various lab techniques that helped us to improve our English writing skills, such as using appropriate verb tense and how to write a research paper with a works cited. Through my work on the research paper I have learned how to write in an academic style, how to find appropriate sources from an academic database, and how to cite my sources. Most of all, I can say that my reading skills have improved because the research for our papers required me to do a lot of critical reading.

Since beginning to write papers in English class, I have had countless successes and failures. While many of my English classes have taught me how to improve my writing, I have not learned very much in others. My most recent English class was last year, my sophomore year. My class was particularly undersized; therefore, it gave each student the opportunity to have additional individual attention. Throughout the class I experienced high points, weaknesses, and even difficulties that I never overcame. Overall, my writing skills improved, but only marginally.