Reflective
letter
Dear Ameer,
As I write this letter to you, I find myself about this semester is I had struggle in reading and writing in the beginning, but overtime I have improved a lot in my English composition class. The reading, which had the most impact on me as a reader and a writer, was the article called “ Everyone Knew I Was Gay, Except My Brother (Brian Kennedy) . This reading was very interesting because it showed the difference between “showing and telling” and this was something new that I have learned and I used it in some of my writing materials. One of the articles that were hard for me was “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anne Lamott)” and because it was too long I did not enjoy reading it, I was loosing my focus. While reading the article on the side of the pages we had to draw images as to taking notes, that did not help me because my drawing is bad and whatever I drew, it was hard for me to understand it later, but good thing we went over the article in class and the class discussions always help. Another article which was difficult for me was “ Zen in the Art of Writing (Ray Bradbury) because the writer used figurative language and I believe it is written in an old version of English. Since English Is my second language, writing notes in my language which is Urdu, doesn’t help me because then I have to translate it all in English and it is time consuming for me. When I am revising the material I like to read my notes in my own English writing. In the article " Picturing the Personal Essay: A Visual Guide" Highlighting did help me because I found the context easy to understand but if the context was difficult then highlighting wouldn't help me because when i would go back to revise the material I will have to understand the context again and sometimes it takes time to get it all back in our mind.
Our professor explained us that in order to be successful in life we have to get better at reading and writing we cannot ignore it because we will need this in any career we are going for. This really got my attention and I started to take my readings serious. My professor Mr. Sabatino counsels the students in class and the advices helps us in outside world too. In our English class we have made our own Website to blog and put our assignments, I think this is a very interesting way to share our materials with the teacher, classmates and anyone can look at our stuff and they can write comments, it makes it more fun and it’s very encouraging when someone gives you a positive comment on your work. I like how we can post videos, images and edit our website to make it look more attractive. One thing which I did not like about blogging was that some assignments were personal like when we have to write about what’s going on at home and sometimes I am not comfortable sharing that. One of the blog that I found very hard to write was when we had to visit a strange place and write about it. I did not have time to go to a place the next day, which I found it strange and that is why I didn’t do my assignment. In my Creative Nonfiction Essay, which is about the conflict that I had with my brother about covering my hair. To improve my essay I showed it to one of the classmate and she told me her point of view to what I should add more and what I should cut down from my essay. After my conference with my professor, when we went over my essay he pointed out some valid mistakes. I decided to take tutoring and went over my drafts with my tutor and he found many mistakes which i didn't realize. It really helped me to make my essay better and to work on to add more details. I actually enjoyed writing my creative nonfiction essay because my topic happened recently and I had everything fresh in my mind. My time management was good because I did all my work on time and kept myself focused.
Overall, I think I have learned the significance of reading and writing and I am proud of how I have improved myself. I also wrote I-Search paper and the topic is "food Americans eat." Farmers have many tenchniques to prepair the contaminated food faster by feeding animals corns and many chemicals, which makes the animal grow faster and heavier. I used three resources which are "http://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/08/science/organic-farming-moves-toward-mainstream-america.html" This showed what American thinks of farmers in America. Another resource was "http://www.responsibletechnology.org/10-Reasons-to-Avoid-GMOs" It shows how GMOs are harmful for humans. My last resource was a movie that i watched "Food Inc" It tells us all about the food process in America. The methods that worked for me was to write rough drafts and write notes on sides. I watched couple of videos on youtube but it did not help me to write my paper because the videos were off topic and i decided not to waste so much time on it and rather google the information which would help me.
Your Sincerely,
Rahma Anwar.
As I write this letter to you, I find myself about this semester is I had struggle in reading and writing in the beginning, but overtime I have improved a lot in my English composition class. The reading, which had the most impact on me as a reader and a writer, was the article called “ Everyone Knew I Was Gay, Except My Brother (Brian Kennedy) . This reading was very interesting because it showed the difference between “showing and telling” and this was something new that I have learned and I used it in some of my writing materials. One of the articles that were hard for me was “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anne Lamott)” and because it was too long I did not enjoy reading it, I was loosing my focus. While reading the article on the side of the pages we had to draw images as to taking notes, that did not help me because my drawing is bad and whatever I drew, it was hard for me to understand it later, but good thing we went over the article in class and the class discussions always help. Another article which was difficult for me was “ Zen in the Art of Writing (Ray Bradbury) because the writer used figurative language and I believe it is written in an old version of English. Since English Is my second language, writing notes in my language which is Urdu, doesn’t help me because then I have to translate it all in English and it is time consuming for me. When I am revising the material I like to read my notes in my own English writing. In the article " Picturing the Personal Essay: A Visual Guide" Highlighting did help me because I found the context easy to understand but if the context was difficult then highlighting wouldn't help me because when i would go back to revise the material I will have to understand the context again and sometimes it takes time to get it all back in our mind.
Our professor explained us that in order to be successful in life we have to get better at reading and writing we cannot ignore it because we will need this in any career we are going for. This really got my attention and I started to take my readings serious. My professor Mr. Sabatino counsels the students in class and the advices helps us in outside world too. In our English class we have made our own Website to blog and put our assignments, I think this is a very interesting way to share our materials with the teacher, classmates and anyone can look at our stuff and they can write comments, it makes it more fun and it’s very encouraging when someone gives you a positive comment on your work. I like how we can post videos, images and edit our website to make it look more attractive. One thing which I did not like about blogging was that some assignments were personal like when we have to write about what’s going on at home and sometimes I am not comfortable sharing that. One of the blog that I found very hard to write was when we had to visit a strange place and write about it. I did not have time to go to a place the next day, which I found it strange and that is why I didn’t do my assignment. In my Creative Nonfiction Essay, which is about the conflict that I had with my brother about covering my hair. To improve my essay I showed it to one of the classmate and she told me her point of view to what I should add more and what I should cut down from my essay. After my conference with my professor, when we went over my essay he pointed out some valid mistakes. I decided to take tutoring and went over my drafts with my tutor and he found many mistakes which i didn't realize. It really helped me to make my essay better and to work on to add more details. I actually enjoyed writing my creative nonfiction essay because my topic happened recently and I had everything fresh in my mind. My time management was good because I did all my work on time and kept myself focused.
Overall, I think I have learned the significance of reading and writing and I am proud of how I have improved myself. I also wrote I-Search paper and the topic is "food Americans eat." Farmers have many tenchniques to prepair the contaminated food faster by feeding animals corns and many chemicals, which makes the animal grow faster and heavier. I used three resources which are "http://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/08/science/organic-farming-moves-toward-mainstream-america.html" This showed what American thinks of farmers in America. Another resource was "http://www.responsibletechnology.org/10-Reasons-to-Avoid-GMOs" It shows how GMOs are harmful for humans. My last resource was a movie that i watched "Food Inc" It tells us all about the food process in America. The methods that worked for me was to write rough drafts and write notes on sides. I watched couple of videos on youtube but it did not help me to write my paper because the videos were off topic and i decided not to waste so much time on it and rather google the information which would help me.
Your Sincerely,
Rahma Anwar.