15-01-14 Ferrer Francisco Section 001 Journal 2 First Draft

In this semester I was facing one of the most difficult subjects in our area: Reading and Writing I. In the beginning the writing and reading files was like an introduction with the tittle of Writing as process or Reading as process, after that, the coming file was about coherence and cohesion, also, we read about any kind of paragraph through 5 or 6 writing files with an average of 5 good quality exercises for file with an explanation very clever. The first file opened with a very important question What is the writing process? This was my first challenge because I wasnt a skillful student in this area but I learned that more than a hobbie, the writing is a process of 3 steps (Prewriting, Drafting and Revising) after trying all those steps again and again, my conclusion is that I have learned a lot and I have a huge improvement in this area. The second file is about the prewriting in this file we went deep water in this step of the writing process. In this unit I learned that the prewriting has some steps to take in consideration like before we start the writing process we have to choose a subject, select the purpose, audience, narrowing the subject to a topic and using examples but more important of those steps we have to write about something that interest us if we have the freedom. The exercises in this unit are about the prewriting techniques like the brainstorming, freewriting, visualizing, questions and grouping this unit was a real challenge for me because even today because my favorites and the most easiest techniques for me, are brainstorming and questions. The file number three is about the structural component of writing and it is divided in 3 part, the first one is about The sentence or how I called it How to write effectively? In this unit, the challenge was how to combine six sentences and turning it in 10 sentences and in each one with new information that doesnt have the previous one. In the second part of this unit we went deep in this subject to how to write a topic sentence about this in my knowledge will be always that topic sentences has to be very direct and specifies about

what are you going to write. Also, the challenge in this part of the unit was the paragraph structure, that that is influence by the sequence, the order of importance, the definition, contrasts and so on. The third part of this unit we went even deeper in this subject going to the unity and coherence that a paragraph needs. The challenge in this unit is in this sentence No material should be introduced that deviates from the clear development of the main idea To be honest after I wrote all my paragraph, after I do a lot of practice, I can say that today the coherence and unity of a paragraph is the most easiest part for me. Finally this unit has a 3 exercise about how to maintain coherence and unity in a paragraph. The file number six is about Drafting a narrative paragraph this one was one of the most difficult drafts, I tried to write because for me wasnt easy to narrating an event but after I was practicing with the exercise of this unit over and over again and realized that is easy to write if you follow the guidelines provided for the unit, Also a helpful thing is to follow the drafting decisions in this unit, in you follow the guidelines and the drafting decisions will be an easy paragraph to write. The file number seven is about Descriptive paragraph for me this one was the most difficult to write because you have to follow and specific order, and that order changes as the object of your description. That order was my challenge in this unit and I have to improve that, because I have problems for example when I have to describe a places and I have to remember there are to describe a place: A birds eye view and a pedestrians eye view. After a lot of practice with the exercises provided by the guide, I do not have problem describing a scene as a moment of time, or a person, actually describing a person is the easy one, because there are two ways to do it, when you describe that person in a physical way or just the personality. One of the last paragraph file is Expository paragraph this paragraph is used to presents facts, gives directions, interprets facts, and defines terms and so on. The guidelines provided for the unit its all you need to develop a expository paragraph, if you dont follow those guidelines it will be a challenge but after a lot of practice with this unit I learned that there are four things to explain in a expository paragraph: Explaining how to, the meaning of, explaining in that ways X is like/different from Y and explaining why X happened for or the effects of Y. An important thing in this paragraph writing is the uses of the connectors that show chronological sequences. Finally the most important thing I learned is this paragraph is used for extends a definition and a cause/effect paragraph.

The last paragraph we practiced was the persuasive paragraph; this was the easiest to write for me in the whole semester in this subject. In this unit I learned that the objective of a persuasive paragraph is to prove or support a point of view, it was an easy paragraph to write if you follow the guidelines provided for the unit. In the reading file I there are two questions: What do good readers do? And what can you do to become a better reader? And the unit provides strategies used to before reading, during reading and after reading. For me the more important strategies are to set a purpose for reading and the activation of your background knowledge. During reading for me for me the most important is to connect background knowledge to the text and finally the after reading strategies the most important is to draw conclusions. In the reading file II is about guessing the meaning from context, this unit was and still it is a challenge for me because the unit explains how to guess parting from the parts of the speech (Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs.) I have to improve this because Im not that good in this. I need to practice more with the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs because I can talk about it but I d ont know how to identify them in a text. The reading file III is the second part of Guessing the meaning from context I learned from this unit that we can get the ability to infer the meaning of an unknown word by the vocabulary around it. Also you can infer a meaning identifying the word if its a verb or an adverb and checking if there is a synonym that has the same meaning, the same thing with the antonyms. The reading file IV is about the reading skills and the improvement of them. There are 2 reading skills (my favorites) Scanning and skimming, the scanning is to read quickly to understand the main ideas and find it and the skimming is looking through the text in order to find particular information. The challenge for me is when you have to mixed the skills even today Im practicing that a lot. The reading file V is about the making inferences that are an educated guess or prediction about something that we dont know about based on our background knowledge. Im still learning this skill because when you make inferences you are not just guessing, youre analyzing the authors choice of words not just the denotative meaning but the connotative meaning too. I have to improve my inferences skills and my skill to analyze the authors voice. Finally after a lot of practice in the entire paragraph guides and reading file, I learned that there are challenges if you dont read the guidelines provided in each guide. My advices for future students

taking this course is to follow the instructions to write and read paragraph and files in the best way possible, ask for your classmates help and dont be shy to ask your teacher help .