Alsader 1 Dana Alsader Ms. Hofman English 1101- 010 2 December 2012 Final Reflection Dear Ms.

Hofman, Before starting this semester, I somehow had a negative view towards my writing, especially in English. I am an international student and English is not my first language. I was extremely nervous because I assumed that there would be a lot of papers and I was not sure if I would be able to be a good writer. I used to write a lot of paper back home but in Arabic language. In the beginning it was hard for me to translate my ideas from Arabic to English language and so translating the words, but then after practicing and doing more and more reading it becomes easier. Knowing all of this, its not hard to imagine what I was thinking when the first major assignment was given. The first assignment was a literacy memoir essay where we are supposed to write a memoir of how I become the reader and writer I am today. I really had no idea what I would write in this essay, but after some thinking I remembered the things of various events through my educations and learning how I become the writer I am today. By the time I was done with the draft, I noticed that I didnt give more details in some parts of my essay. My peer reviews didnt help that much; all I got was a couple grammar comments which werent what I was having trouble with. But, once I had the paper that was edited by Ms. Holfman I was more able to see where my issues were and how to fix them in the paper. When I turned my first revised paper to Ms. Holfman, the paper didnt have enough details. It was

Alsader 2 helpful to me to be shown what needed to be more detailed because I now know what kind of things should be explained more in an essay. For example, I had to write more details about my experience with religion and how it had affected my literacy by showing more examples and stories from my childhood. Also, I had to explain the difference between formal and modern Arabic language. There was a part of my literacy memoir where my Arabic friend who lived her life in The United States helped me translating some Arabic words to English words. My friend helped me understand how to write some words in English without being confused with my Arabic language. For example, some Arabic words when we translate them to English doesnt make any sense and the sentences doesnt seem to be understandable. She helped me get rid of these sentences and taught me how to put them properly in English. After reading my teacher comments on my last revised paper and learning more about literacy, I think I have broaden my thoughts and now I became more open-minded about the definition of literacy. For example, I thought that using of lingo would decrease the literacy, but then after reading more about Mirabellis article and the class discussions when we talked about digitally literate I changed my ideas and I think in literacy now in a different way. The second major assignment was writing about student rights to their on language. I think this was the hardest assignment that I have had this semester. In the beginning I didnt understand this topic and I had hard time reading and understanding the articles which talks about this topic. I didnt know how to relate this topic to my own experiences so I was thinking to start writing an outside research about this topic. After some searching on the internet, I found some articles and a couple of books on the topic. Unfortunately, my first draft did not have much of my opinion and didnt relate to my own experience. The peer review was not that helpful again, but the teachers comments were. She showed me where in my paper I was not

Alsader 3 clear at explaining my ideas. Also I was mistaking writing this essay because I used an outside research. I didnt use my own experience. I should have read the assignment instructions more carefully because now I almost changed the whole topic. After thinking more about the topic. I started to write more about my own experiences and I got rid of many paragraphs that are not related to my topic. I think now my revised essay looks so much better. I improved my writing and corrected my grammars. The third and last major assignment was about a discourse community that I am interested in. I think this assignment was so interesting to me. However, collecting information about the discourse community was not that easy. I had to send emails to the members of this community in order to get more and more information. The first draft wasnt that good because it was written as a question forms; the interview between me and Mr. Brian, who is the director of the community I chose called Respiratory health association. My peer review helped me a lot this time. They give me more ideas for example, they asked me state that its an online community and to write more about the intercommunication between the members. After the conference meeting with professor Linda, I was given more ideas about what my focus could be and where more details should be added on my essay, like analyzing this community using Swales Concepts. Lindas comments showed my weakness in the paper I lacked many details. For example, I didnt say specifically what do the members communicate about. Also I failed to write why this discourse community is important to me. Now my final draft looks so much better. I wrote how community relates to me. I wrote more examples and observations from the website. On the first drafts of the three main assignments I failed to use the MLA format and failed to use the work cited in a good way. Now after revising the three of them I used the MLA

Alsader 4 format and I cited my sources. I belive my literacy memoir is my best essay because I was able to write about something I know well and because its from my memory I can make the essay really show the scene I am writing about. Also because it reminds me of the people I love who are considered to be the sponsors of my literacy I think my last draft of literacy memoir was the most stable one because I revised more than the other drafts and the assignments. I have received good comments and feedback from you and that really helped me in completing this assignment. I think students rights to their own languages was the greatest challenge to me because in this assignment I had to incorporate and reflect all the articles that I have read throughout this semester with my own perspective. Also, I think I learned the most from this topic because I earned more knowledge and skills as a second user of the English language. In this portfolio I have included some of my in/out classes writings. These writings consist of reading responses to the articles that I have read for the class. Furthermore, you will read in this portfolio the reason behind why I chose every each one of them. I believe that all the reading responses that I have written this fall semester have served me well in improving me as reader and writer. I can certainly say that I have grown a lot in many aspects this semester. The most beneficial activity that I have assigned to do is the class discussion that we had as a whole class about Digitally Literate. One thing that surprised me the most about myself during my writing sessions for this class, is how my religion shaped my writings and how it is reflected through some of the words that I use.

Alsader 5 Writing my reading responses to the article we are assigned to read for this fall semester have improved me as a reader in many aspects. My reading skills; such as, skimming scanning and reviewing takes less time compare to the time that I used to consume at my very first reading assignment. I have learned so much about myself as a writer through this class. I learned so much about the writing process from this class. I learned so much abut the writing process from this class that I know more about how to start, revise and finish an essay. I have found that I have to add more details to my essays and that I have issues with verb tenses and to look for them when I am writing. Interactions with my classmates helped me but not that much, but talking with Professor Linda and people from writing center has been extremely helpful. They showed me where my problems are, why it is a problem, and how to go about fixing them. I also found that while I have a hard time writing essays, I do have a lot to say and I am learning to communicate theses stories and opinions better in essays. I now look at writing assignments with a different perspective, while they arent my favorite things to work on, I can work on an essay without the huge amount of frustration and the headache that comes with it. I have one main goal in my writing; I want to improve my English. The more I write, the better my vocabulary will become. I think that learning the process of writing was the most important thing I learned, I would definitely carry that into all of my other essays I will write in college. Knowing how the process works I will better able to find the problems with my future essays. If I am asked to choose between doing a digital portfolio or submitting my work by hand, I would definitely choose building a website or an electronic portfolio because it brings out a

Alsader 6 creative site of the students and many things about their personality. Likewise, it gives the opportunity for me to share my work with friends and family. Sincerely, Dana Alsader