Week 15

As a writer, I feel that I have learned to be more aware of how my positions effect my writing style and research methods. Before, I would research for a paper to find information that I felt suited me, rather than finding the truth. I now feel as though I have more openness to other's points of views and ideas. I have found that  my writing may seem very different than others', when in fact we are each supporting the same ideas and beliefs. I have also learned to remove myself when making observations that will effect my writing. The more I am able to remove my positions from my writing, the more accurate and realistic my research will be. I feel that overall, this semester has taught me to be more understanding and aware of the diversity in the world. I now embrace diverse cultures and populations as a result of this course. 

I feel the my weaknesses occur during the revision process. I often work for such a long time on my first draft that when writing the final draft, I have difficulty finding parts of the work that I wish to revise. This creates little room for growth during the writing process. Becoming too attached to my first drafts has often given me difficulty when I am required to submit more than one draft. One of my weaknesses in writing also occurs in the researching process. I typically only read sources that pertain to my point of view, rather than read all the sources that may be relevant. I have improved on this throughout the semester; the difficulty will be remembering and reinforcing this in the future (even when there is a time crunch). 

English 104 is a great class that allows expansion in the writing and researching process. I believe that all the assignments were appropriate, the papers were written in a sequential fashion and the semester lesson plans were very well prepared and thought out. One suggestion I would make is for more class activities in groups, instead of several partnered activities. Also, the class discussions were sometimes painful due to lack of participation. I feel that this is because the required text was sometimes not very interesting and did not provoke a great deal of thought to read. I'm not sure if the lack of discussion was due to lack of participation, or that students simply did not read the text, but either way, I believe the class could benefit from something new. I feel that having conferences are probably very helpful for some students. While both my professor and I agreed that I gained little insight from them, I know this is only due to my anal-retentiveness in my personal work. I think that these conferences were very helpful for other students. This class was run very effectively and I feel that I gained a great deal of maturity in my own writing style.