Reflective Essay 4 Mafer C.

Reflective Essay 4

I started learning English since I was in kindergarten. My first classes were really easy. I began learning the colors and the numbers. The time passed, and my classes turned a little bit difficult. I learned to write complete sentences, then paragraphs until my paragraphs turned into a complete essay. But I realize something, even though I already knew how to write in English it wasn't the same to write it on my native language, Spanish. People may say that if you know the words in English and you understand it you can write it, but for me it doesn't works that way. For me to write goes beyond knowing the spelling or the grammar of the words. You need to find a way to express your ideas clearly and to make coherence on them if you want other people to understand you. During all my life my teachers thought me that one of the bases of writing was grammar. It didn't care if I wrote on English or Spanish they used to take points off my paper if I have a grammar mistake and now I realize that they didn't even pay attention to what I wrote. I used to agree with them that grammar was so important, and I do consider that now, but with this class now I can say that having no mistakes won't lead you to a good written paper. In order to have a good writing you not only need to write correctly, you need to be clear, you need to use examples, quotes, know your audience and not be afraid to commit a mistake.

When I first arrived to this class I remember that on the first reading the authors asked the question "Is writing universal?" and I remember that my first answer was, "yes it is". Even though they said it wasn't I couldn't agree with them because I thought that if I wrote something anyone in any place could understand me but over the days I prove I was wrong. Writing can't be universal for lots of reasons, and that is one of the things that I learned during this course. Why is not writing universal? Because, for example, if you write about your culture you can't expect that in China they will understand it because first of all they are not going to agree with you due to the differences of cultures. What I’m saying is that writing can't be universal because the topic you are talking about is not directed to everyone, also you need to see if you are writing to kids, to teens or to adults. Writing varies lots with ages.

Another thing that I learned with this class is that we are all a little bit afraid to speak a language that is not our native one. I remember the class when we had the activity of speaking in the language we were learning. The ones who speak Spanish needed to speak in English and the ones who speak English needed to speak in Spanish. That class actually was one of my favorites because we got to see what our classmates were feeling and we got to realize that we were not the only ones afraid to talk in our second language and that speaking and learning other language is something that we should be proud about.

I also learned lots of concepts, for example peer response, funds of knowledge, interpretation, comprehension, rhetorical reading, things that I already knew but I got the opportunity to applied them on my research projects. Even though learning concepts was a main part of this course I believe that one of the things that we all enjoyed the most were the experiences we had during the semester. I think that we all opened a bit more our minds in order to see other people opinions and we learned to listen to them.

Even though it was harder for me to arrive on time to class and to catch up with all the written projects, sqrs and journals that we needed to write I really liked the class. We had a really comfort atmosphere were we all could give our points of view and different opinions. Working in teams, answering questions, giving examples and quoting authors helped not only me but all my classmates to make this class more interactive and funny.