What I Learned In My English 1010 Class

I have written more in the past year in this course than I probably wrote throughout high school career. This class made me notice that prewriting really does make a difference in the end result as well as having a peer critique your paper. Instead of writing a quick paper and just handing it in, I was actually forced to take the time out to write a rough draft, read my own work out loud, and revise my work. It helped me make my writing more organized and have a better flow throughout my paper In the future, I will continue to use this method as well as visit the many resource we have on campus that can give feedback what can make my paper better or just checking for grammar errors, spell check, and sentence fragments.

I learned that you are not only writing for your own benefit, your writing for your classmates, teachers and peers as well. It helps you gain common knowledge that you may not have known otherwise, as well as teaching us research skills that we will need later in life due to the rise is technology use. I have learned that research is a part of life and you will need it throughout college. Writing has helped me understand things I was unable to comprehend before, and gives me a feeling of capability. As Frederick Douglas, an African American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman, once wrote, “Thus, after a long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning how to write” (McQuade and Atwan). At the beginning of the semester, I would have never guessed that I would finish this course on a positive note; however, I finished, and it was not as difficult as I thought it would

Being that it is a day before quarter one ends, my biggest challenges so far have been keeping my grades at a proficient level consistently. When it comes to my academics the struggle these past few months was in my Pre-AP English class. Every other week or so we would take reading check quizzes to make sure we were reading our books and that we understood any confusion we might have faced. My social life is a whole other story, to make it short we are  middle school students going through everything WE could possibly think of that has nothing to do with real life problems; also change happens and it takes time getting used to. I am handling my self the best way I know how when it comes to me… well let’s just say I’m a handful in a positive

I began this course with goals to significantly improve my writing. I knew there were challenges for me to overcome, because I have not written much at all since high school, which has been more than twenty four years ago. Nonetheless, I was up for the challenge and each week I made sure to do exactly as instructed in the weekly syllabus, reading each every assignment very carefully. At first I felt overwhelmed, but as I completed the homework and discussion post assignments for the weeks prior to the major papers, the overwhelming feelings subsided and I concentrated on each task at hand.

During these past three weeks I have realized that college is going to be very challenging, it is not what I expected it to be like. This class has helped with my reading and writing experience and has contributed to my understanding of expectations for college and goals for my future. It has helped me with preparing and planning my work ahead of time. Dr. Sariscany has helped me with becoming a better writer and helped me prepare for college level work. She has showed me that college is not going to be easy and we should get used to it and put in all our effort and time into everything we turn in.

After much thought, I came to the conclusion that there was not just one significant learning experience from this course. I enjoyed the variety of readings and the conversations with classmates. Developing papers to convey my thoughts and provide supporting evidence, has helped me become a better writer. Though, I am far from being a superb writer, this course provided the opportunity to further develop my writing skills.

I learned to take each paragraph separately and break it down step by step instead of jumping into to the assignment at once. The amount that I have learned throughout this course was surprisingly a lot more information than I expected to learn. I expected to do complete similar work that I did in high school, but this course really expanded my knowledge on writing. I could gather a better understanding for transitions and the proper way to use them. Reading academic articles will now come much easier to me because I understand the language and structure of these articles. Sentence level and organization would be the two biggest things I struggle with when it comes to writing. The skill that is most valuable to me would be starting with body paragraphs and taking them piece by piece, then moving on to write the introduction and thesis statement. This will be very helpful with future writing assignments because it will help me maintain organization and not get

This course will guide me to develop better writing habits. I will reach this goal by taking the time to use the proven process of writing, instead of just sitting down to write and start forming my papers without first outlining the concepts that I will be covering in the paper. This habit will take some time to develop, but if I use my new habits with every paper I write they will become habits to last a lifetime. I believe, by learning the writing process, this class will give me the confidence I need when putting ideas into words on paper.

I first started learning about the names of these five sentences types in Rubin’s English 201 A/B class. In a sense I’ve always known about these sentences but I never learned about their rules, structures, or names this clearly. They were simply sentences being built and put together before. I know a lot of this is suppose to be things we’ve learned in high school but i either didn’t pay as much attention as I thought or I really never learned about sentence types. Sentence types are important to learn and practice.

Before attending this English 100 course i wasn’t as confident as i am with my understanding of of grammar and writing. I always struggled with these things throughout grammar school and high school, so i thought i would never really get the concept of using punctuation marks, run-on sentences and overall just writing a paper. But now thinking back over the time i spent inside this classroom i can actually say i have learned way more than i thought i would. I now know when and when not to use a colon, semicolon, comma, hyphen, period, etc. The main things i learned is the difference between a colon and semicolon, how to fix a run on sentence using those punctuation marks, and also how to fix sentences fragments.

This course has taught me more than I could imagine over the past few months. I have reached and surpassed many of the goals I set for myself and reached objectives I never thought possible because of this class. Despite my success and continued improvement over the course of the semester, there is still much room for my writing to grow.

Since taking this course I have been very honest about my writing abilities. Through this course I have had to come to terms with my strengths and make a real effort to overcome the weaknesses that I have found within my writing styles.

What is the context in which you are providing instruction to the featured student? I’m a teacher at JD Middle School and my teaching area includes grades 6, 7, & 8 located in a low economic impoverished area in the city. My classroom is comprised of five girls and fourteen boys from several different ethnic backgrounds which include 5 African Americans, 8 Hispanics, and 4 Caucasian. Standard 3 The students in this class age range from 11 to 14 years old. My classroom is a specific learning disability classroom (SLD); most of the students have difficulty with processing long term and short term memory. Some students can retain information for a short time but when it comes to processing long term memory the students have a hard time remembering

Overall, I am enjoying the relaxing atmosphere in this class. When I entered this class, my writing was too unorganized and have many grammar problems, but I am happy to point out my mistakes, in order to improve this aspect of my writing. And the reading of this course gave me something to think about my own life, how I should engage in oral conversations with others and how to shape my thoughts and opinions. This course is a very helpful experience to improve writing skills, and I also learned some valuable tools, based on what we did read, how to form my opinion in the future.

Personally, I felt that I did not have many strengths prior to attending this class. In reality, the class has strengthened my style by introducing a variety of different writing genres as well as various writing assignments