Personal Narrative: What I Learned In My English Class

At the beginning of the semester it had been over six years since I had been in an English class, So naturally filled with panic and discomfort with the subject I began the class with low personal expectations. However putting forth my best effort I attempted to take everything presented to me in stride. Things that were problems to begin with were Grammar, Sounding arrogant, according to a pretest, and staying on the subject during a paper. Things that sparked my interest are peer reviews and using the meal plan. With those things being said I’d like to go into further detail about how I’ve felt about my time spent and performance.
During this semester I showed up as often as I could out of fear of falling behind. I also never stopped trying to retain the information that was presented. My intentions for further English classes are to show up even more because falling two or three days behind were detrimental. Personally I showed myself that I’ve got a pretty solid work ethic and that is something that should be retained for all my future classes.

Prior to this class I had not ever used the meal plan.

The concept was completely foreign to begin with, however after extended amounts of work at it the style eventually began to make sense. The style consists of each paragraph starting with a main idea. This gives your paragraphs something to be based on. The next subsection of meal plan is the E which is the examples and evidence to support your main topics claim. The evidence and examples also provide logic and purpose about what is being said. The A section of meal plan stands for analysis, to do this you have to describe what the evidence and examples actually mean or why they are that specific way. After all of that you finally have the L which links it all back together and reaffirms your main

topic.
Peer review was something that really stuck out to me because I got a great ordeal of pleasure knowing that I was helping someone. The concept consists of stating something that was done well first because people are more receptive to criticism after hearing something nice said about their work. Following that step you give a suggestion on something you the peer reviewer would have done differently. This is just merely a suggestion so the writer could take it or they could leave it. Lastly you would go over small things that don’t change the paper overall, but fine tuning and using correct grammar.
Originally I had used lots of bubble planning for my papers. This was something I thought helped me plan out the path of my work. Unbeknown to me, I’m actually much better suited free writing and editing style. This gets my creative juices flowing and allows me to organize and edit my thoughts after my first drafts of things. Stopping and starting again for each section is more of a hindrance than something that is beneficial to me.
Online sources that I frequently have used are paperrater.com and the school’s library for finding articles. These articles present works of other people to use in our own work as references, quotes and paraphrasing. Paper rater has given me a grammar god sent to help edit and revise my papers. Considering this is not a strong suit of my own, it is extremely valuable. With this wonderful free program I can present my free flowing rough draft, then be presented with all my grammar errors.
The area in which I required most improvement was grammar. The resource I used was Paperrater.com because it was essentially a second teacher and peer review all wrapped into one. This website has helped my grammar exponentially by providing hindsight and guidance on what is incorrect in my work. The vocabulary I use now is comprehensible for everyone, but still attempts to sound intelligent. I’ve developed into quite the English student despite prior uncomfortableness with the subject.