Freewritting:

English-100 class
syllabus
This course is all about

learning how to write for

varied audiences and
purposes
(including your own).
Even though freewriting
falls under the category of low stakes, I treasure it just as much as one of my high stakes because
I received important benefits out of this. Personally, writing in English is a synonym of the word
struggle. This is mainly because English is not my first language. Though I am not that bad of a
speller, I prefer to write in pencil because by doing so, I am able to make as many corrections as
needed. During a ten-minute writing period, I said good-bye to the pencil and I started writing in
pen. To write freely, ignoring grammar and spelling rules, is priceless; I felt relieved from the
tension that writing entails. Soon, I started to like this exercise and I started writing a diary. My
initial one page of writing increased gradually to four pages. My composition book served me as
free therapy, where I could ventilate my feelings and concerns without being judged.

Reading and
Annotating Texts:
Course Learning
Outcomes
Read, summarize,
analyze, and evaluate a
variety of texts.
Reading was one of my
biggest struggles in this class.
Alone, my first semester, I read
more than I had read in my entire life! Since I was not accustomed to reading in English and
especially in that quantity, it was a serious task to stay focused. Some of the selections contained
several unknown words, and I often had to read them twice for better comprehension. I spent
countless hours reading, and I often felt overwhelmed and discouraged. At one point I wanted to
drop the class, but my desire of mastering the language and the encouraging words of my

Professor, Rivas Gomez, and my husband kept me going. While in this class, I realized that the
key to become fluent in English is constant reading. Thanks to this class, I am developing my
reading skills and my reading comprehension outside the classroom. I now read books and the
newspaper at home.
Annotating the articles as I read required me to be actively engaged with the texts. For
example, questioning, predicting, and connecting the text helped me tremendously. These factors
contributed to my understanding of the reading; particularly the last one. Making connections
with the texts made it easier for me to understand and remember what I read about. I tried talking
to the text but, honestly, that made me feel silly. I probably would not have such difficulty
writing journals later on, if I had done it. I am not very good at predicting either, even with
movies, unless it is an action movie, for it is well known that the main character survives to the
end regardless. So annotating my readings is something I need to improve on for next semester.
Now, I know that the better the annotations are, the easiest it will be to summarize the story and
write a journal.
Nevertheless, annotating the articles helped me to enrich my vocabulary because in order
for me to annotate in my own words, I had to first investigate the meaning of the unknown
words. Hence, as I was annotating I would circle the new words too.

Journals:
Course Outcome
Read, summarize,
analyze, and evaluate a
variety of texts.
I personally took the
journals as an assessment test of my
understanding of the readings.
Writing journals was a tough task to do because even though I had understood what I read, I
dont think I did well on summarizing the readings. Summarizing requires of a decent repertory
of synonyms, and this is something one builds through time and obviously, by reading a lot.
Hence, the language was a barrier to overcome when writing journals too. Knowing that I had
the ability to do the assignments, but it would take me four times longer than any other student in
the class made me feel frustrated.

Discussion Board:
The Mission of Stacc
Program
Empower Students to
see themselves as writers,
scholars, thinkers, and world
changers
The beginning of the
semester we had a discussion board
on canvas, which was a life changing
experience for me. I remember
feeling so out of place in that
classroom; I was the oldest and the only student who did not speak English fluently in the class. I
never felt so intimidated and insecure in my life. The discussion board about mindset occurred
just in time. Mrs. Rivas shared different scenarios of how she approached certain situations either
with a growth or fixed mindset. Her experiences were empowering. She also said, We can grow
in so many ways, if we are willing to practice. These words made an echo in me. Her words
made me believe that with hard work and a growth mindset I could actually succeed in the class.

SLO High Stakes

Writing Essays:
Stacc English 100 Student
Learning Outcomes
Compose a variety of
texts, including academic
essays, that demonstrate
analytical thinking for
multiple contexts.
Throughout the entire semester I
struggled not only with the language but
also with my biggest obstacle, my
insecurities. I have always doubted my self as a writer. When Mrs. Rivas asked us to write an
essay in class, I said to myself this cant be, I am not going to finish it on time. Certainly, I
was the last one to finish writing the essay. I received my first B for this assignment! From this
point on, the Rubric and the prompt become handy tools for writing my future essays. The
prompt helped me stay focused on what I needed to write about, and the rubric was a constant
reminder of the areas I needed to improve.
The Level of difficulty for writing an essay was on the rise by our second essay: A
Literacy Narrative with Research.
We had to reflect about our identity
as readers and writers, and
incorporate a diverse selection of
other literacy narratives. We had to
share our first draft with four of our
peers and they had to read and
highlight the main ideas; allowing
myself to be vulnerable before the
eyes of my young classmates was a
tough situation. Though this practice
was helpful for the process of writing
my essay. I took in consideration their suggestions and added, or removed words from the essay.
I was certain that my second draft was going to be better than the first one, but soon I was proven
to be wrong. I showed my second draft to my professor and she, skillfully, handed it back to me

asking to highlight the main ideas. She knew I was going to learn a lesson out of this. I went
crazy finding the point of each paragraph! Then I asked myself, if I myself could not figure out
what I want to communicate to the reader, how could I expect the reader to understand my
writing? I went home and started re-organizing my essay. I am proud of myself, my hard work
paid back with an A.

Essay # 3: Understanding Resilience.

This assignment is the one I feel most proud of. Why? It represents extensive hours of
hard work. I strived tremendously to come up with a well-organized and coherently written
essay. I wrote several outlines and destroyed multiple drafts. When I was finally satisfied with
my analysis, made sure my essay complied with the requirements of the prompt, and ensure that
I did not repeat the same mistakes from the past essays, I moved on and this time I made it
certain that main ideas were
underlined. To analyze my life was
already hard, but to evaluate
someone elses life was an
assignment that required critical
thinking. I mastered the essay and
received an A.