Reflective Essay In English

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.

English class has never been my strong suite. I always had to work twice as hard in English then I did in any other class. Writing paper always had me stressed and overwhelmed, I felt discouraged in my work. l never seemed to be able to get to the level I wanted to. I would try my hardest and paid attention in class, but when it came to writing the paper none of that seemed to help. I think that my experience in English Composition 1 has helped gain and grow in some areas, but I don’t think that it highlights a well-written college essay. Some elements that I worked to improving was introduction paragraphs, tone, style, and thesis statements.

A freshman college level English Composition course aims to improve students' abilities with writing, critical thinking, mechanics and usage, punctuation, grammar, and vocabulary. By studying English 101 at Luzerne County Community College, I will work diligently to improve in all of these aspects. My main focus is to develop skills specifically to create clear and concise thesis statements, strong and persuasive essays with cajolement, and to develop different perspectives on narratives and other essays. These writing skills may also improve my critical thinking and reading skills.

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.

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.

Before entering English 1301, I had my doubts about what this class was going to consist of. Considering this is a college level English class, and a subject I struggled in, my worries were not at ease. Throughout the year, my understanding and comprehension of the writing process, as well as how to write different varieties of writing, have strengthened. After partaking in this course, I am confident I have met the student learning outcomes.

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.

English 102 has been an extremely huge learning experience for me both inside and outside of the classroom. I feel as though I have grown as a writer in more areas than others throughout this course but overall I feel that this class was extremely helpful. My English 101 course was very different compared to English 102 in terms of what we learned. In English 101 it was more of a personal based writing class while in English 102 there was a lot of emphasis put on academic sources and research. Coming into this class I believed I was a pretty well rounded writer but I soon learned I had a lot to work on. When we were assigned to choose a topic we wanted to focus on for the rest of the semester I knew I wanted to focus on Social Media since it’s a huge part of my life and the way it has impacted society. It was a difficult topic to cover

Writing was something my high school stressed a lot. The main focus however was quantity over quality. We were given one essay every month to write in class for each of our classes. They made us write all of these essays in an effort to make us better writers, but never gave back any feedback. I picked up one skill with this and that was how to put words on a page and finish the assignment.

Being a high school student while taking two college English composition classes has been anything but effortless. Essay after essay and something is almost always due the day of class. The assignments are never worksheets that take little to no thought or quick reads in a text book. No, what happens in English 111 and English 112 is the gaining of rhetorical knowledge, mastering the process in developing an academic essay, and plenty of critical thinking.

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.

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.

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.

I feel that the subject of English Language Arts is vital for a student to excel in. In previous English classes, the teachers gave multiple comparative essays, persuasive essays, personal anecdotes, reports about news articles, essays analyzing historical figures and events, and other assignments to their pupils to teach them the various forms of writing and how to improve their creative writing skills. Even with this teaching, I do hope to improve my persuasive writing since I prefer to keep papers relating to actual events or issues mostly objective and to not misrepresent the opposing argument or side of the story. I also hope to improve my vocabulary and my grammar, as neither as improved substantially. I feel that in the past my vocabulary was improving and expanding due to my frequent recreational reading, a habit I’ve abandoned in recent years. Books that I definitely enjoyed include The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Chasing Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson, SYLO by D.J. MacHale, and The Disaster Artist by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell. When reading The Book Thief, I ended up appreciating the novel more than I did initially. My favorite character was Death, mostly because of his moral dilemma even as a metaphysical entity and his cynical view of existence, which made him sympathetic yet slightly unlikable.

The language that I first learned to speak at home was English. My family, considering my father’s side of the family is Mexican, has always loved the Mexican culture. They love the food, the music, the history, and the language. When my parents learned about an elementary school that was able to teach me both English and Spanish, they jumped at the opportunity to enroll me, and later my sister, into the school. My parents made it a priority that my sister and I enroll because they were never able to learn how to speak, read, write, or understand Spanish very well, so they wanted us to have this fantastic opportunity. They also decided to enroll us so that we are able to talk with our family members who live in Mexico that speak no English at all. Although I was too young at the time to ask to be enrolled into that school, with my knowledge now I know that I definitely would have advocated for that to happen.