Monday, May 2, 2011

Reflective essay

Well who's not nervous and especially for their first day at an English remedial class. Well I expected an old lady who was bored and wanted everything perfect. I went into class not knowing what we were going to do. I thought it was going to be boring and that we were going to be sitting on desks and writing on cold white paper. But then as the instructor came I was like who is she? She said she was going to be the teacher for the semester. Well she was not as old I expected to be and I think she was wearing a wonder woman shirt. I thought to myself maybe the teacher is not as bad as I expected it to be. Then she mentioned that we were going to move class rooms to a studio. I was like wow it was not what I had expected it to be. Then we got to start using technology in our writing, it was better and funner than writing with pen/pencil and paper. It was not your typical classroom.

Well my reason for being in this class was because the score I took on a certain test was not good enough. All my life since probably kinder garden I had been thought just to write pain and simple; and showed that there were only few ways of writing for example narrative and persuasive; And was never really thought that there was other ways of writing. For me writing an even some times reading were difficult to me because I was the first English speaking person in my family and sometimes had problems trying to express myself in writing. Before I came to class way of writing was like elementary writing very basic and plain writing. I wouldn’t go into detail and would just be generalize and my audience was the teacher for that class. Also the amount of writing I had done before was very minimal and I would just write the necessary.

As I came to class one of the first things we did was read some articles and do SQR’s. Neither there was a problem I had no idea what was an SQR was nor never do one before. Articles I had read before but in this class we wend deeply into them and analyzed it deeply compared to my prior experiences where we just read and discussed. My experiences of reading the articles had a big impact on me because I had never analyzed an article before I was never thought to analyze a reading. But in this class we did and broke it down into pieces and asked questions to why this or why that. And also learned to find the reason why the author wrote it and for who did he write it for. After reading the articles we had to do SQR’s. In it there was a summary and question and answer to that question. I had summarized before but I had never asked a question about an article and nether less answer my own question. By doing this I found it easier to understand what they the article was talking about.

Well i had a great experience with the blogger it was one of the things I had never done before. I found it interesting because I am part to a forum and found it somewhat related. Through this blogger I could post work without printing it out and taking it though the teacher and also I could go back and edit my writing. Discussion in this class were important without the discussion I we wouldn’t had been able to see on certain things I had missed out on or see things a certain way. Feedback wich to me is information given back about something you did or are doing; was also an important part. in all of this we got feedback from peers or interns or the teacher. Sometimes we got feedback through the blogger. Without feedback we could have made our paper better. By getting feedback we see what we missed or certain things that were not clear enough by having feedback we could make our writing better. Most of the journals I had had on the past were actually in a journal or a note book. These journals were in the blogger. In some of the journals I would go back and reflect or sometimes I would talk to myself in them.

I had never done as many projects in a class as in this class. Some of the projects I did I could have never done for other classes such as play a musical instrument and relate it to a theory or idea I had. For one of the projects I did I brought my accordion and played some music and see if prior knowledge and experience affected our way of giving meaning. a poster was a another project I did by doing a poster i could test out my theory which was how prior knowledge affects our way of giving meaning. All of the projects I did had a reason to them even though most of them at simple or plain view didn’t look like it. Some of the problems I faces was coming up with what to do for a project.

Revision for me was a whole new experience revision for me before was to go back and check for spelling and punctuation. Revision in this class was a whole different thing the teacher didn’t even care about spelling she cared about what was the message in the reading. Revision for me is rethinking, rewriting, and re format your writing. For me revision is practically like fixing the bugs. Sometimes it got tough with revision I could find how to fix it but by getting feedback it would make it easy and found out was I need to work and what to work on. And the best way we could revise was through peer response which is information given back to you from your peers.

This class 1320/1301 has reshaped and changed my way of thinking of certain things for example revision and also helps me define new things like rhetorical reading and founds of knowledge which is the knowledge we bring from home. In this class I learned and understood who to make my writing better and better ways to understand what I’m reading. After this class I think I’m on a better path to better writing and reading. Some of the problems I had in reading and writing were to understand them clearly but after analyzing and doing certain things several times I got to understand them better.

At first I had a whole different concept of the class but at the end found out it was better than what I had expected. Also the same thing happened to my way of thinking towards reading and writing. After doing new things and redefining certain concepts I had I think my writing and reading strategies are better than before and I accomplished this by putting effort and with the help of the great clas

3 comments:

  1. I really like your intro, the part of the old lady was great! You really use a hook here by writting about your feelings at the beginning of the semester. Using personal experiences was
    really helpful because I understand why you were in a remedial class like me. I notice the way you describe everything we have done in class and I think it is very interesting to know what do you like about the course and what you didn't. As I keep reading I noticed that you really take something for your next
    classes as me. I clearly identify what was your problems, questions but I also realized that you put a lot of effort to reverse all that doubts.

    I really like your essay, it shows why, what and how do you learned through the semester and it also allow us to know you better. Awesome work.

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  2. I'm glad you really liked the essay Luis, but the homework was to provide feedback on two places in the essay where Carlos can improve upon. You won't be getting credit for this if you don't provide Carlos with helpful feedback. Praising is nice, and Carlos well deserves it as this is a realy good essay, but it doesn't help Carlos take his essay to the next level.

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  3. For paragraph 2, I think you should take this to another level by adding what did you actually bring to class. I only noticed why are you in class but not a single detail about what did you think about writing or maybe by telling us more about your skills or experiences as a student.

    In paragraph 5 you should mention what articles did you used for your project. What was your project? You only mention that it was a lot of work but we want to know what do you did!

    Through all the essay you mention many terms but you didn't actually explain them. Feedback is mention a lot and if I were somebody that is not familiar with the term I wouldn't have any idea of what are you talking about. What is feedback and other terms like peer response for you?

    In paragraph 7 you try to describe audience but you just don't use the term. If you are describirn something make sure to put the name of the term on there.

    I think you can have a better ending by having some grateful words for the class in general.

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