Looking Back
Content
Sehaye 1 Luwam Sehaye Dr. Rieman English 1103 11 October, 2010 Looking Back, Looking Ahead When I decided to take this class I wasn¶t sure what to expect, I knew the class would be challenging but also believed that it would strengthen my writing skills. I have experienced and learned new reading and writing activities such as the writing community groups, forum posts, and day book entries. These activities are new to me and sometimes difficult because I don¶t usually like letting other students read and review my work, although I know it will improve my writing skills. I also have read and wrote about writing which has caused me to reflect and be more cautious of the way I write. For example, the Intertextuality piece made me think about if and how I base my writing off of others ideas, and the Writing Error piece made me become more aware of the way I read and realize I am more likely to notice an error when I am looking for it in one of my peers paper rather than a published book or article. The parts of class I have enjoyed the most were reading The Blue Sweater, the freedom of the way we write our papers, and The Sponsors of Literacy assignment. We have done a lot of reading in the past few weeks most of which has been long and difficult to read but I enjoyed reading the blue sweater mostly because it was interesting to hear about Novogratz experiences traveling all over Africa and trying and accomplishing to make a difference in the world. What I also really like about this class is that our papers are not rigidly
Sehaye 2 structured with a minimum number of pages or a five paragraph format. As soon as I started high school every paper I wrote looked exactly the same with a specific writing style, paragraph style, number of pages, and annoying rules like don¶t use I or conjunctions. Being able to write freely without so many restrictions has been a relief and makes writing for me easier and more enjoyable. Looking back on all the pieces we have wrote, my favorite was the Sponsors of Literacy paper. Although I didn¶t like reading the Sponsors of Literacy, writing about it was interesting. Writing about my sponsors made realize I have many people to thank for my literacy, and appreciate even more that I have had access to all my sponsors. Thinking about the work I have done up to this point I would call it less than satisfactory. I haven¶t been putting in enough time or effort into my homework assignments or classwork. So far l feel like I am more comfortable writing formal papers. I feel more challenged by the reading the Writing about Writing pieces and posting forums about them, mostly because for me they are difficult to understand and stay along with. I feel I have met some of the goals stated in the course description like: to understand that academic writing is a complicated, multi-dimensional task, to support your interpretation of a text with examples from that text, and to use key ideas, terms, or concepts from reading one or more texts as a critical lens to interpret other texts. However I have not nearly met the goals I had originally set for myself in this class. Thinking about peer workshop, I feel like it has been productive. It is very helpful to have your classmates to read and review your work not necessarily on grammatical errors but by how and where your paper can be improved. Looking ahead into the rest of the semester I am doing my best to be optimistic. I know I can do a lot better if I start giving one hundred percent of my effort, focus, and do all of my work. For our next Inquiry paper I will take advantage of all my available resources like the writing
Sehaye 3 community in class, The Writing Resource Center, and simply asking questions and discussing with my professor any difficulties I am having within the course.
Sehaye 2 structured with a minimum number of pages or a five paragraph format. As soon as I started high school every paper I wrote looked exactly the same with a specific writing style, paragraph style, number of pages, and annoying rules like don¶t use I or conjunctions. Being able to write freely without so many restrictions has been a relief and makes writing for me easier and more enjoyable. Looking back on all the pieces we have wrote, my favorite was the Sponsors of Literacy paper. Although I didn¶t like reading the Sponsors of Literacy, writing about it was interesting. Writing about my sponsors made realize I have many people to thank for my literacy, and appreciate even more that I have had access to all my sponsors. Thinking about the work I have done up to this point I would call it less than satisfactory. I haven¶t been putting in enough time or effort into my homework assignments or classwork. So far l feel like I am more comfortable writing formal papers. I feel more challenged by the reading the Writing about Writing pieces and posting forums about them, mostly because for me they are difficult to understand and stay along with. I feel I have met some of the goals stated in the course description like: to understand that academic writing is a complicated, multi-dimensional task, to support your interpretation of a text with examples from that text, and to use key ideas, terms, or concepts from reading one or more texts as a critical lens to interpret other texts. However I have not nearly met the goals I had originally set for myself in this class. Thinking about peer workshop, I feel like it has been productive. It is very helpful to have your classmates to read and review your work not necessarily on grammatical errors but by how and where your paper can be improved. Looking ahead into the rest of the semester I am doing my best to be optimistic. I know I can do a lot better if I start giving one hundred percent of my effort, focus, and do all of my work. For our next Inquiry paper I will take advantage of all my available resources like the writing
Sehaye 3 community in class, The Writing Resource Center, and simply asking questions and discussing with my professor any difficulties I am having within the course.
