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Throughout this semester I have written several essays and journals using techniques both important and unfamiliar to me. This class helped me use these techniques and steps that are involved in creating and formalizing an essay. The writing process of an essay includes information gathering, creating ideas, and writing it on paper to create a cohesive and organized paper. In complete certainty I can say I lack many of the skills necessary to create such a paper, but during this course I have learned some writing methods which I believe have improved my essays. The essays and journals in this portfolio reveal both my strengths and weaknesses in my writing and how I have both continued to make the same errors and improved in other areas. The struggles in my writing are organization of ideas, bad citations, and bad or at times nonexistent transitional sentences. My organization of ideas is probably my greatest struggle; there are areas in my essays and journals that don’t make sense at all. The greatest challenge for me as a writer is to get my ideas on paper and to create a natural flow of these ideas and not sound like an idiot. It is extremely difficult for me to formulate ideas in the English language and have them make sense. The evidence of my greatest struggle can be mostly seen in the random journal entries assigned throughout the course. In the journal “What I think of behavioral drugs and children” you can appreciate how I have no idea in how to start this entry; one fourth of the paragraph is scratched off especially the beginning. In the last two sentences of this paragraph specifically show how my ideas do not flow from one sentence to another. In the second before last sentence, I am talking about how children should... ... middle of paper ... ...Paper 1 there are many non-existing transitional sentences, one of these can be found in paragraph #1 of the “Children and behavioral drugs” essay; after stating how children may have up to three disorders at a time, I give a statistic talking strictly over ADHD. I fail to make a transitional sentence that connects these two ideas together. Again in the second paragraph I speak about ADHD is diagnosed to how doctors abuse the prescription of the medication. In Paper 3 paragraph #3 I fail to make an intended correlation between sentence six and seven. I am speaking about the town’s casino then shift ideas in the next sentence as I began to talk about Mexican residents and their particular liking to the border town crossing. I believe by incorporating more transitional sentences in my papers I can achieve clarity to the overall paper and have my ideas flow logically.
Throughout this portfolio, I demonstrate my abilities to critique my own writing and to make an argument based on evidence and analysis. My revised papers are the evidence, and the analysis I make is how these papers show my growth, improvement, and now capable writing abilities to meet the outcomes of English 131. In the very creation of this portfolio, in addition to the revised essays, I accomplish multiple global objectives for this class. These objectives include writing a complex claim, writing with intertextuality, showing awareness of my audience, and revealing the effect of successful, critical revision and editing techniques. As I aimed to meet these outcomes throughout the quarter, my writing slowly, but surely developed into critical, organized, and academically correct text.
For me, writing is like my 13-year-old self. That was the age where I started to really familiarize myself with hobbies I enjoyed such as a painting, playing the guitar, and making videos. It is how I feel towards writing also; it is full of so many different styles and genres, all of which give an opportunity for the writer to be creative. Writing is different for every individual, but for me, writing is a creative and thought-provoking process.
Although I am not the best writer, I have come a long way and improved immensely from my first essay “Where is the Line Drawn?” at the beginning of the semester to my last essay “Differences” towards the end of the semester. If it was possible I would have loved to compare my very first essay from semester 1 to my last essay in semester 2 to show the extraordinary change and my writing journey.
I remember the day vividly. I practically floated across campus with a newfound hope in my heart. Smiling at strangers all along the way, I reached my destination at the main office of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. I gleamed at the man behind the desk, "Hello. I am here to officially declare a new major." He guided me to a computer and through a few quick steps. From a scroll down menu, I selected 'English, B.A." A few brave clicks and I changed my life.
For this artifact, I wrote a literary analysis, and as a class we ready Everyone Leaves by Wendy Guerra. This was a learning process for myself, I got to go more indepth about Cuba and its history, based off of a time period when cuba was under strict circumstances. I also was taught how to write about different poems such as African praise poem, senryu collection, Ballad poem and practice writing free verse. These were some skills that helped me create my artifact by building up evidence on focusing on one character. The essay's main idea is to see what theme is stated, implied throughout the entire story. The essential question for this assignment was why do people stay or why people leave. This is meaningful especially during the time when
From the incident, I learned a lot about myself; how I want my actions to reflect what I want in life. I also learned how my actions could have had much more severe consequences than I received. I have always been a good kid – I make straight A’s (and some B’s), I have always been in involved in extracurricular activities in both high school and college. However, though I try to make my case for being a good kid and a good student, I did not justify the type of person I am with the decision I decided to make the night of January 16, 2016.
We have reached the midpoint of the semester. Two long months of continuous reading, writing, and annotating; article after article, paper after paper. As much as I dread reading and writing, I am glad to say that I have improved substantially since my first days in your English 5A class. Although there are still some aspects of my writing I have yet to improve on, I have made significant strides on improving my grammar, sentence structure, and the transitions from paragraph to paragraph. Evidence of my improvements are visible on my first two major writing projects this semester; “College Writing For The Incoming Freshman” and “Segregation Is Over, Right?”. Aside from writing, I have also improved on my analytical skills and rhetorical skills.
The winter before I attended my second semester of college, I had the opportunity to take part in the Atlantis project in Athens, Greece where I spent 20+ hours each week shadowing doctors for 4 weeks. My time in Athens was nothing like at home in the summer—wake-up came at 7:30 a.m., and by 2 p.m., students were asked If they’d like to stay extra time and shadow; I always agreed of course! From the fellowship, I gained clinical experience, cultural immersion and a new passion for healthcare. During my time at Ippokrateio Hospital, I rotated through shadowing Neurosurgery, Vascular Surgery, General Surgery, Otolaryngology and Paediatric surgery. Nonetheless, I enjoyed every second of my time in Greece. I met passionate medical professionals
During my freshmen year of college, I was determined and motivated to manage my competitive boxing career and secondary education. Balancing both boxing and college coursework was challenging. My rigorous training involved running three to five miles a day, lifting weights to build up my strength, spending countless hours punching the heavy bags, and sparring. Since I was competing, I was training six days out of the week. I competed in amateur boxing events ranging from club shows to regional tournaments and my resolution to achieve the goal of being the best has led me to victory after victory. However, my success in boxing did not reflect success in my academic life.
Looking at all the languages, dialects and accents that are spoken in The United States. I will be analyzing my own language, my own language variety and look at my accent and dialect in an effort to try to identify my speech community that shares the same language variety, dialect, and accent that I have. I see Dialect as a form of a language that is particular to a region or social group, for example, Japanese Versus English. I understand accent as a distinctive mode of pronunciation of a language, especially one associated with a nation, locality, or social class, for example, Australian English versus American English.
For as long as I can remember, my mother, an artist herself, has encouraged me to express myself with paint and paper. Together, we would spend hours painting and drawing whatever we desired. But, as I grew older, I began to have less and less time to work on my personal art projects. Going into high school, I promised myself that I would find some way to fit it into my schedule.
First thought that comes to mind when I am asked to describe myself as a writer is all my weaknesses, but my strengths, writing process, past mistakes, and style all come into play as well. The question is so broad and can take many different directions. The purpose of my review is for myself; to understand my writing and to recognize my strengths and weaknesses. My review is for my fellow classmates; hopefully to recognize similarities and differences in what works and what does not work for us, and possibly help each other out with our weaknesses. This review is also for my professor, to understand what I think of myself and to help me throughout the semester to improve as a writer.
In the early years of my life, I had never once thought that an individual would have an impending circumstance that would lead them to be unable normally process life’s simple problems. This idea changed from early on in my third-grade year to where I would bring home a constant string of Ds and Fs in my occasional assessments which would eventually turn into my grades. Little did I know, this complication would land myself into multiple summers where I spent most of my time in classrooms rather than the pool. It was not long after that where I finally discovered I have a math learning disability. From what I have learned through my own impacting endeavors, I fully understood that amid any and all disabilities a person may carry, they have
For as long as I can remember I have always resented writing. Even now as I write this I sit back and count the words making sure my writing piece is between 500-600 words. However, my earliest memory of my disdain towards writing comes from my elementary years. As part of Hawaii’s learning standards, we as elementary students would be forced to sit in front of a computer for 3 hours a week and made to write out shorts essays and responses to prompts we knew little to nothing about. I dreaded these writing sessions and many times teachers would scold me for not being able to write about what was in front of me. So, from the third grade I have never looked at writing as something I enjoyed, instead I always viewed it as a requirement needed
Applying for a master’s degree has been an extended journey with interesting twists. I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. Even since I was a kid, and without me even know it, I was creating communication tactics to persuade. At the age of 8, I sent a letter without my parent’s consent to a children’s magazine in Santo Domingo called “Al Compas”, encouraging and creating awareness about contamination and discrimination against children with disabilities. During my high school years, I transformed most of my classes’ presentations into TV programs to facilitate my classmate’s interest in the presentations and avoid them to get bored by hearing the same information over and over. At the end of High School, I received the “Student Excellence Award” and won a scholarship to study in Universidad APEC, where I started a Bachelor degree in Communication, majoring in Advertising.