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Thuydung Le English 1102-063 Ms.

Ingram April 22, 2013 Reflection for Eng 1102 I have learned so much more than I ever expected from this English class. When I first walked into the class for the first time, I thought to myself Well, young professors equal tough graders, Im dead!. Those who have better luck with the older professors know exactly what I am talking about. Most people refer English to an easy A class. I have to disagree with this because not everyone has a strong background in the subject. As a new English speaker since I came to America not long ago, this English class has been one of the most time-consuming classes I have ever taken in life. Yet, it is one of the very few classes that I truly appreciate. I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to my learning throughout the whole semester. Anything that I believe I have gained from all semester will be discussed in details here.

The purpose of my e-Portfolio is to show to everyone especially to myself the process of my learning. Different major assignments can be found under different tabs according to their names. I chose this order because in my opinion, it is easier to follow and observe the changes through each of the assignments.

Since it is a writing class, our most frequent activity is writing, and the process of inquiry. This was actually very important as shown in the research paper assignment. We

were asked at the beginning of the course what does it mean to be healthy?. It was beyond the physical health as we came up with many areas from the brainstorming activity. We did not start on the paper until the second half of the semester. Yet, we always had that question in mind as we were trying to figure out what our topic will be, which then took us to the inquiry process. After I found out that I wanted to do something about friendship. I then asked myself what about friendship that I want to know about?. I started to add more questions to the research, which then narrowed down my topic to become more specific enough. I was still quite unsure, but I decided to take my point on the side opposite to what people usually go for, so I can argue about it. The inquiry step was very helpful to my research because at least I had something to start with. I will definitely use it for my future writing assignments if applicable.

To practice with the inquiry process, we start with the WILTBY essay. The inquiry questions were already given to us in the assignment: Who are you? What is the stuff you are made of?. These questions first seemed to be easy but once I started on the first draft, they actually became so much more complicated than I thought. This assignment was used as a warm-up, a tough warm-up. In my first draft, I mostly described what I think about myself. My usual emotional kindergarten style is also found within this draft. I tried to be creative but I ended up being too dramatic. I made a big change on the second draft by starting everything over again and this time I decided to answer the question directly. Who I am is described in this draft as a daughter, a sister, a student, a friend, and a mother. During the whole-class-swap workshop, my classmates made some comments on where they got lost while reading my paper and with their help, I broke

down the long paragraph into the shorter ones and tried my best to make more sense. Also, everyone wondered why I added a picture of Vietnam but never actually mentioned it in the paper. For the final polished draft, I decided to replace with a picture of a cat doing Chemistry because it includes both things that are important to my life. I believe this one is better than the one from the last draft because readers can relate when reading through the essay.

The next piece of writing I would like to include in this portfolio is the Annotated Bibliography. I had a tough time finding the sources because I did not use the selective reading strategy that I learned later in the reading in the book. My classmates let me know where I need to give a little bit more details on and there came the next draft. I paid more attention on the content of third draft of the Annotated Bib and also included more types of sources.

From the first draft of my Argumentative Research Essay, I was quite successful with getting out anything that interests me, but the main thesis was still undefined. In the second draft, I define my thesis as people who are more family oriented are more likely to be successful in life, stay away from negative behaviors, and have higher aspirations. The reason why I compared between friends and family in this argumentative essay is because many of the people I know look up to friends over family. I wanted to convince people that no matter where they are from and what social class they are in, their parents still want them to be successful. This was good until I found out that unfortunately not all parents expect their kids to go to college and such. From personal experience and

scientific research, I propose that although most people benefit from friendship, it depends greatly on the peer group that one happens to be around. On the final draft, I changed my thesis to this and just focused on talking about the negative affects of friends. Then concluded that between friends and family, most friends want to be better and most family expect the best for their children. I feel like there would be less disagreement this way since the last draft lacks the proof for what I was trying to say.

Last but not least, I keep track most my progress through the blogs. In the second blog, I still did not have a topic at the time but one question on the blog that I used to work on the research was Is it healthy to have a strong friendship? To answer the question, I would say it depends on the peer groups, same conclusion I have made in the paper. In blog #4, I indicated Im aiming for everyone as the voices in the conversation. I later learned that I should avoid this in order for my argument to be effective. I feel like I was still struggling with the binary thinking at the time, right and wrong. So what I concluded in the final draft of the ARE essay, that it depends on the friends, would help me shape the third voice of the paper. I enjoyed blog #6 the most because it was a chance for me to figure out the answers to the questions that I had before, and take notice of where I am going with my education. I did not understand the point of Generation Education and I actually hated one class I have this semester. The blog and the readings kind of help me feel better taking these boring classes because I would tell myself they prepare you to know what other people are talking about. Re-reading this blog is also entertaining to me because I said that I was transferring to another school but then I made up my mind and now I want to keep what I was doing at this school. I see these blogs as the journals

to my improvement and thoughts that I had at the time. They affectively show how I have changed just after a short period of time. Also, I said that I dont like English as much as I appreciate it because it gives me such a hard time. I still believe the same thing except that I appreciate this English class even more after I looked at all my writing pieces at the same time to see how much I have improved.

Writing has always been the number one trouble I have to deal with in my academic life. For many people, writing just comes to them naturally. I like sitting in the library, listening to the other peoples keyboard typing sound. Then I hope that one day I could sit down with a bunch of books and fluently type on my keyboard like a real Chemist. On the first day of class, not being so familiar with the College of Education building, it took me a while to figure out where exactly my English 1102 class was. Just like writing, whenever I hold up a pen or sit in front of the computer screen and force myself to write for an essay, I feel like if Im getting lost in the middle of the desert. Now I know that starting with at least a question would help.

After a semester in this class, I feel more comfortable showing other people my writing and accept that I need changes to make my writing better. So again, what I believe has been the most significant aspect was the teacher and my peers who helped me through the revising process. The number one key concept that everyone who is passing this class accomplished is responsibility for ones own learning because what we have shown in the end through the e-Portfolio demonstrate the time and effort that we have put into the course. I strive for an A in this class. Honestly, I already tried the best I could and took

this class very seriously since the first day of school. But to take into account for other things such as my contribution to the class, I might not deserve it. Anyway, I would be happy with any grade Ms. Ingram gives me.

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