Henley 1 Marissa Henley ENGL 1101 Elizabeth Hinnant 12/3/13 The Year in a Glance When I began English 1101,

I was not the least bit excited to be in the class. It was just another required course that I had to suffer through in order to later get my degree. The first day I dragged myself to class completely unenthusiastic and uninterested, but by the end of the class I began to see it wasnt going to be so bad. The class was much different than my initial expectations. It was much more interesting and thought provoking than any former English class I had taken place in, and even though it was just something I needed for my major and to meet the general education requirement, it was a class I definitely needed otherwise. English 1101 has been a great experience for me. I feel like I have improved massively in writing as well as in analyzing texts. I am at a much different place as a writer than I was before I began taking this class. The class has helped me improve through the many different activities and projects we have done throughout the semester. The major components of what the class consisted of include moodle posts, a literacy narrative, a rhetorical analysis, and a genre recreation project. Each of these assignments challenged me in a different way and turned out to be very valuable experiences. Throughout the year, there were many different moodle posts that we were required to complete. Most of them consisted of reading a passage and responding to a question or two about it. The moodle posts were not necessarily hard, but they added to the class since we were required to respond to at least one of our classmates on each one. The moodle posts that I liked

Henley 2 the most were the response to Bohannon both Intro through Chapter 2 and Chapters 5 through 7, the response to King and Lamott, the Molly Daniel response, and the response to Langston Hughes and Malcolm X. I feel like those were the moodle posts that I did the best on and that were based on the most enjoyable readings we did online. For the actual moodle post, all that was required was to write at least 200 words on each one about the questions listed. It was a pretty simple and helpful process, since most of the readings we discussed the next day in class as well. It wasnt difficult to get them completed on time, though it was easy to forget about them completely. These helped with defensive writing because whatever answer or point you had was fine as long as it was on point and well backed up. The responses to the moodle posts were a bit harder for me personally. I am not very good at giving feedback, so most of mine were just agreeing with what the person said. I felt like most of the moodle posts I read had good points that were defended well, so I generally agreed with what was being said. I feel like it was worthwhile that we were required to read some of our peers posts because it gave a different view on the topic and sometimes pointed out something I may have missed when I read the text. The literacy narrative was the first of our 3 major assignments. A literacy narrative is basically choosing something from your life that you feel affected your writing, reading, and vocal communication. This could really be anything that you could come up with, from religion to culture. For most it was relatively easy, but for me it really wasnt. I choose a rather difficult topic, alternative music, so it took a lot of thought and effort to get the paper to come together. We looked at many examples in class and had discussions about what was expected, but the examples that really helped me the most were the ones on the website we were given of other

Henley 3 students work. I found one that was about music as well, although in a different context, and it really inspired me to how I wanted to write my own. It was a lengthy process that took much planning and coming up with examples and such, but I got it done. We had a peer workshop during each of these papers process which was very helpful. My group pointed out some of my mistakes and things I could work on, such as repetitive words, run on sentences, and unclear topics. It was very helpful hearing from my peers, but did make me worry that I couldnt fix my paper enough to get a good grade. It seemed just bad to me, even though my peers assured me it wasnt. I spent time making sure to find better examples, such as actual songs that inspired my reading, writing, and vocal communication improvements. It was soon time to turn in the paper, but I felt much better about it since I had gotten some very good feedback from my classmates. When I got back my comments I began working on fixing the paper more so immediately. I spent a lot of time working on each of the things my teacher mentioned, such as fixing unclear spots and better defending my arguments. The paper now is much better than my original draft that I turned in, and I feel like it wouldnt have been if it hadnt been for every part of the class process that we went through. Each part is valuable, especially the discussing of examples and good feedback from both other students and the professor. As soon as we were done with the literacy narratives, we jumped straight into the rhetorical analysis. A rhetorical analysis is a thorough evaluation of any text such as an ad, notebook, pen, water bottle, and defining why it is relevant to it and an important part of it. To begin this, the professor had us analyze an ad in the class. It was amazing how every little thing in the ad contained so much meaning. It was a good way to open up to the concepts of the rhetorical analysis. Then we were then supposed to bring in our own choice of text, preferably

Henley 4 the one we were going to use, and the class was going to point out different things that could be used in the paper. This activity was somewhat helpful, and soon it was time to actually start the paper. The paper itself wasnt as hard to write this time. I chose to do a very busy Tommy Hilfiger ad for this and wrote about how the ad was clearly aimed for college aged young adults. I remember I didnt feel very confident in my original draft, but during our peer editing my group found my paper to be pretty good. They had a few spots where they were unsure if I defended my ideas and liked the note I had about adding another paragraph about another aspect of the ad later on. I revised a little on this paper, but not nearly as much as on the first one because this paper seemed to go together better than my last. When I got my teacher comments back, I was pleasantly surprised because I had a lot less than last time. Most of the suggestions were small details and it felt like the paper was a lot better than my last. It made me happy to actually be able to see my writing improving before my eyes. There were still things I needed to fix, but I didnt have to spend nearly as much time with this paper as I did my last. The big things I remember were that I did go back to my old habit a little of throwing things out there and not defending them, and having a few sentences that made no sense. In my final draft, I feel like I have fixed all the major and minor issues my paper had and that it is much better than my first draft. Our last major assignment came directly after and was called the genre recreation project. This was not only a paper, but also a presentation, and a project. The genre recreation project consisted of taking the original text, changing its genre, and writing a paper about the change of genre. There was also a requirement to make the change into a physical product, and later to make a presentation about the changes and why. It was quite a long project as well as process.

Henley 5 We began the transition into this project by looking at some examples of this in class. They were very interesting to see, but it was still hard for me to choose what I was going to do with mine. We soon did this group activity where we each brought in about 4 ideas and had to discuss them and give each other ideas about where we thought they should go with it. My group members had really good ideas, whereas I really didnt. I decided on doing childrens entertainment and making a board game for young girls which was very fun to make and to write about. My first draft was nothing short of a disaster. Even though we had done some things about genre recreations in class, it turned out I had no idea how to go about writing the paper itself. I ended up just writing a paper about the board game and who it was aimed for, which is really just a rhetorical analysis again. I was very worried because I knew I was going in the wrong direction but couldnt figure out how to turn it around. Luckily we soon had peer editing to help turn my paper around. My group spent a lot of time on my paper in particular and helped me to understand where I should have been going, where I was actually talking about the right things, and so on. This paper definitely had the most marks on it out of my 3. I was very thankful though because I felt that it was very helpful to have all of their critiques and ideas. I spent a lot of time re-writing the paper and eventually got it to a point where it seemed like it was on the right track. When I received my teachers feedback, I was relieved to see that I was right. There were some issues, but none too big that I would have to re-write the whole thing again. I made some very novice mistakes, such as grammatical errors, vague descriptions, and repetitive ideas. It took some time, but the final draft is much better than the original. I added a lot, took out some unnecessary parts, and continued on it until it seemed as good as it would get.

Henley 6 This class as a whole has taught me a lot about writing, analyzing texts, and more. Im glad that it was required and that it has helped me to improve in my writing in many ways.