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Obeid 1 Sarah Obeid Professor Rieman ENGL 1103 October 11, 2010 All My Reading and Writing- Past and Future Throughout this semester in College English, our class has dealt with an abundant amount of different reading and wr iting practices. Honestly, this is the most writing I have ever done for a class. In high schoo l, I did write many papers, but I never wrote many different pieces in a variety of different ways and styles. Every morning in English class, I have completed Writing into the Day entries in my daybook that basically answer a pretty simple prompt about the reading and writing I have d one. I have do ne several forum posts from the start of the semester, including a letter of introduction, a li teracy access a nd understanding response, and an intertextuality res ponse via Moodle. Also, for the li teracy paper I wrote, I received peer workshop responses from the members in my group. All of these particular writings have been  pretty easy for me. I have had no trouble answering the forum posts or writing my da ily entries. They seem more informal to me and I feel like I do not have to write in a certain way, or in other words, I can write in a way t hat makes me feel comfortable. These t ypes of writing are based more on my op ini on a nd how I feel about t he particular topic I am writing about. I feel like a forum post and a daybook entry should be a quick, not too complex response that just sort of answers the question in a paragraph o r two. These types of writing practices, to me, are nothing too difficult or thought provoking, but heading on that track to help me write a later deeper piece.

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Obeid 1

Sarah Obeid

Professor Rieman

ENGL 1103

October 11, 2010

All My Reading and Writing- Past and Future

Throughout this semester in College English, our class has dealt with an abundant

amount of different reading and writing practices. Honestly, this is the most writing I have ever 

done for a class. In high school, I did write many papers, but I never wrote many different pieces

in a variety of different ways and styles. Every morning in English class, I have completed

Writing into the Day entries in my daybook that basically answer a pretty simple prompt about

the reading and writing I have done. I have done several forum posts from the start of the

semester, including a letter of introduction, a literacy access and understanding response, and an

intertextuality response via Moodle. Also, for the literacy paper I wrote, I received peer 

workshop responses from the members in my group. All of these particular writings have been

 pretty easy for me. I have had no trouble answering the forum posts or writing my daily entries.

They seem more informal to me and I feel like I do not have to write in a certain way, or in other 

words, I can write in a way that makes me feel comfortable. These types of writing are based

more on my opinion and how I feel about the particular topic I am writing about. I feel like a

forum post and a daybook entry should be a quick, not too complex response that just sort of 

answers the question in a paragraph or two. These types of writing practices, to me, are nothing

too difficult or thought provoking, but heading on that track to help me write a later deeper piece.

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Obeid 2

In addition to the forum posts and day book entries, I have written five writing to explore

 pieces and one formal paper concerning my own literacy history. I have also read The Blue

Sweater and four different essays that touch on literacy, intertextuality, error, and research. All of 

these reading and writing practices are time consuming and are a lot of work. I found a lot of the

essays to be difficult. The only one that seemed fairly easy that I was able to fly through was the

Intertextuality article. I really enjoyed reading that. Never before had I read any intricate, long

essay such as the ones our class reads in Dr. Jan¶s class. The Sponsors of Literacy and The

Phenomenology of Error essays were close to impossible for me to read. I tried to break up the

essays so that that they wouldn¶t seem like a lot to read in one sitting. I felt like a lot of those

essays could have been shrunk down some. The main points were clobbered by too much extra

information and details, in my opinion, but in the end, I still felt like I learned a lot from them,

especially after the class discussions. On the other hand, The Blue Sweater was much easier and

more fun to read. I certainly enjoyed reading that book because I could relate to it. A lot of my

life is spent traveling, similar to the life of Novogratz. I have been to Africa twice and picked up

on a lot of the cultural aspects that Novogratz mentioned in her novel. The only thing I did not

like was that I had other work to do and sometimes I had to rush my reading of TBS, and

therefore could not always get the best understanding out of it.

The writing to explore pieces and the literacy paper that I have done so far stressed me

out a little bit. I kept re-reading them after I had them written. I wanted to make sure I answered

the prompts exactly, clearly, and thoughtfully because I knew those were major grades. I wrote

them based on the fact that I am currently trying to receive a B plus or higher in this College

Writing Course, so what and how I wrote them was a big deal. I did not have trouble writing the

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literacy paper, even though I could not always remember some of my own literacy experiences

as a child. The writing to explore pieces I usually like to take a lot of time on because I know Dr.

Jan will be reading them and than giving me a score. I always hope to earn a ³Fabulous´ on each

of them. Since these kinds of papers are more formal, I feel like I need to spend more time on

them and really explain everything in the best way possible. Certainly, writing these kinds of 

 papers are more challenging for me than submitting a response on the forum or writing in my

day book, because they are graded more intensely and require more research and information.

Even if sometimes I get stuck while writing them, I still realize that I am learning and I will get

help whether it is from my peer workshop classmates or Dr. Jan herself.

A lot of this writing course focuses on how we as writers write, what we write, and how

we develop meaning from what we read and write. At the very beginning of this course, I felt

that the work involved would be extremely challenging and difficult. However, I felt that it

would be manageable, considering I took AP language my junior year, AP Literature my senior 

year, and just have a general love for writing. Although I had my opinions at the start, now, I

have come to realize that the course was different than what I expected. We do so much writing

in this course. Instead of being graded on how to write an essay based on a particular method and

having quizzes to check to see if I read certain material, I am actually learning why I write and

how I write the way I do. I actually am becoming more aware of the type of writer that I am. I

know I am going to benefit a lot from this class. I hope to improve my writing skills, conduct

research without merely summarizing texts, learn to read a text and create a new meaning from

it, and focus more on what makes me the writer that I am.

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Many of day book entries, my literacy essay, and the writing to explore pieces allowed

me to see where I am as a writer and what I feel most comfortable writing. The day book entries

helped me plan out my essay writing, see what I need help with from the peer workshop, and

comment on classroom culture groups, and how I read the sponsors of literacy essay. A lot of the

writing to explore pieces help me better understand language in terms of discourse communities

(my home, classroom, my friends, Palestinian relatives, etc), where I like or do not like to write

or read, and what I do not like to read or write. The literacy essay broke down my life from the

age of three to now, showing my beginning steps to reading and writing to where I am today,

writing complex essays and reading complex books and articles.

Some of the work we do in class involves working in groups. We had to write a

summative classroom culture document in groups and we also had to do a peer workshop

session. Many of the rules of the classroom culture document state how we as classmates should

help, communicate with, give constructive criticism, be open, and listen to each other and

 participate as a team. By doing peer workshops especially, I put these specific classroom culture

ideas into play. I always try to give my group members the best advice possible on how to fix

their papers, without just giving them a simple ³it¶s good,´ or ³fix this sentence.´ Overall, I like

my peer workshop group because they usually give me good feedback but I also think that in

order to get the best constructive criticism, we should change up groups for each paper 

assignment. I think this would help the class as a whole and give each student different

 perspectives or different insights on how to fix their paper each time.

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