One of the main reasons I had enjoyed the class, English Composition 1, was because this class is like no other I had taken before. This was not the boring English class you are forced to take each year, basically learning the same thing year after year after year. English classes in the past for me consisted of reading several novels which followed with a test and essay on the book. Each year I would learn the difference between a noun, verb, adverb, and adjective, along with where to put a comma and semicolon. These classes became a drag and I could not stand them. Even after all these years with English I felt like I had learned nothing and my writing level was below my other subjects. I did not feel like I could write any papers well and they all were adequate. I received good grades on each of my papers but felt my papers had no meaning. My view on English had changed for me after I had taken this course at Delaware County Community College. This course was very different and did not follow the traditional English classes I've taken for years. This was very refreshing to me and sparked my interest in English and writing. Each day was something different in class which kept the class interesting. Instead of writing our papers and handing them in one of the coolest things we did was create this website. One day my mom and I had come to the school and looked for my classroom, when we found a classroom with computers for English we swore we were at the wrong class. Coming in the first day, our professor explained that we were going to be making digital portfolios and it made sense. When we first created our own websites I was not sure how mine would turn out, I had never done anything like this before and stepping outside of my comfort level was challenging. After I put time into it I began to love the website. Posting our work onto our website is so cool because anybody can read our work (Just like whoever is reading this right now!). Blogging is one of my favorite parts of this class, especially because you don't see any other English class with a blog. In the beginning I used this blog for English only, but half way through I began to use this for more than just my assignments. Getting out my thoughts has always made me feel better, so blogging has opened something knew up to me. I am considering starting another blog after this class to use to just get my thoughts out there and maybe help people who go through the same struggles as me (senior year, choosing a college, balancing school and activities). Another one of my favorite things about this class was how our professor taught us in interesting ways. Multiple times throughout the semester he had hosted game shows with rewards in regards to our class if we win. Game shows taught us many things without the feeling that we were learning. Learning through this non-traditional way made the information stick with me especially since you are more likely to remember things that stand out. Since I never did these activities before they always stood out to me. Our professor also drew many diagrams while teaching us which helped me since I am a visual learner. Many things were followed by a video so this helped me remember what we had learned. Also, our professor taught in a way that related to the students. It is the worst when you look back on notes and have no idea what you were just taught. Every time I looked back on my notes I could relate and they helped me. At the beginning of this year I was bummed when I received this class, only because all my friends were in a different class together. After the first day I was so happy, walking out of class I was so excited and they were all bummed because they were already given a book to read. This course is one of my favorite classes I have ever taken. I believe I learned more and improved my writing more this semester than in all my other English classes combined! I will definitely use my notes for this class on my future English classes and hope that my other professors follow the same structure as this class (I doubt any will be this good but at least along the same lines). These are some of the diagrams we used in class to Improve our writing that I have found very helpful!
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I used to find documentaries very boring and never wanted to watch them. After all, what was the point of watching something that didn't follow a love story??? I loved watching movies that followed two people and at the end they fell madly in love. As I have grown older I’ve changed my view on movies though. Don't get me wrong I love watching romantic movies but I have found an interest in documentaries. When I watch them in class I don't mind them anymore and find them fun to watch, of course only when they're on good topics.
As I've gotten older I have developed a love for learning and find it so interesting to discover new information(I know it's quite nerdy right). Documentaries teach me so much and I am so intrigued while watching them. In class, one of my favorite things we did was watch the documentary Where to Invade Next. You can find a summary of this documentary in my blog post: Summary of Where to Invade Next. At first I did not think I was going to enjoy this documentary but ten minutes in I knew I would love it. Finding out what other countries do really showed me how much America lacks some improvements. Sure we are perceived as the number one country in the world but we have many flaws which our government tried to hide from us. Learning all of the things other countries do was so awesome to me. I was calling my parents right after and telling them about it. As soon as I got home I was showing them my notes to show them all the stuff I had learned. It was so interesting to learn about the other countries because it opened me up to so much. I never realized how far down in education we were, or how our workers are treated compared to other countries. What really shocked me was that America had these ideas first out of any country but fails to use them to improve our country. It had boggled my mind why America won't use these ideas if we have them and they can improve the country. All of the topics were so interesting it was so hard for me to pick my topic for my research paper. After I decided to write about America's school lunches, researching the topic was even more intriguing for me. I realized how much I love research and learning new things after doing all of this. Using the library database I found so many articles about the topic and each one taught me something new. Even though I struggled with the research paper and where to begin at first I still enjoyed the whole process from the documentary to the paper. I enjoyed pushing myself and allowing myself to become a better writer by struggling at first. This documentary is one of my favorite things I have watched in a class so far and learning about the other countries has been amazing! As my English composition I class is coming to an end, I have been reflecting on certain things that we have done in this class. One thing that has occurred in this class that really stands out to me is our writing process. Instead of turning in our papers and receiving a grade, our teacher uses the approach of constantly revising our work. We post drafts of our papers onto our website by certain dates but we can constantly revise our work. Our final draft of our paper is due by the last day of our semester. This process allows us to grow as writers and to be able to develop well written papers. Our teacher constantly gives us opportunities for feedback on our papers too in order to make them better. For both our memoir and research paper he offered hand-written feedback as long as we gave him our draft. For our memoirs, we had conferences to discuss our papers and ways to make it better. For our research papers, in class we went over how to structure our paper and ways to improve our thesis to make it detailed enough. Also at any time you can make an appointment or talk to him during class to talk about your work. This approach has been very helpful in becoming a better writer for me and I have liked it a lot. When you just receive comments on a paper without any other information editing a paper can be hard and not allow you to grow. When I receive comments, I blindly fix the mistakes without processing what I did wrong. In this class while I was talking about my paper I was able to see he strong and weak points in my story, along with how to make it a better writing. During our conferences our discussions were led by ourselves which was very helpful to me. When I went into a conference with previous teachers they would tell me my mistakes and then send me off to fix it. When I went into my conference for my midterm and memoir I was to lead the conference. I was asked what parts of my story I liked and could make better and how. I had to figure out what to improve and then he guided me on ways to improve it. This was awesome to go through because when I went home I knew which parts I had written well. My introduction was very well written but prior to the conference I was unsure of it. After talking about it I realized that was a strong point in my story and I had done a good job. Before this class my writing was very weak and I did not enjoy English at all because I have associated it with reading and then writing based off a book. Taking this course has taught me to enjoy writing and allow me to grow as a writer. I enjoyed going to class each week to learn more about techniques and other things. I feel as if the approach that we had used this semester for writing has made me improve as a writer and I hope more teachers adapt this method. This is the model we had used in our class for writing. Our process leads to our product, and when the two are combined it makes our portfolio. |
Brianna Costa
Within this blog I will write about concepts in my English class and about events in my life. Archives
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