Reflection+Essay

  Throughout this year in cyber English I have had many experiences throughout the course of the entire year, but most specifically in the areas of writing, reading, and learning. I have truly learned a lot this year in these three specific categories but most importantly I’ve come across different strengths and weaknesses that I possess in these three specific areas and I’ve learned about myself in this process.  Out of all three of these areas I think I’ve learned the most about myself and have grown the most, in the area of writing. I’ve always found that I shine through as a writer in elaboration. I’ve always been good at elaborating details, even if I only had two or three actual facts/details provided. I can take those two or three details and elaborate on them enough and build on them, using common sense, to create a whole full-fledged paragraph. Unfortunately, where I need improvement is over-elaborating. Sometimes I can get so into it that I start using multiple words just to say one simple thing. Also, I tend to repeat myself a lot in elaborating, which I’ve always done and I’ve worked on fixing, but it still remains within my writing. I don’t realize it when I’m writing because when I’m writing I’m really just venting my ideas out onto the page and what I think comes out, and when I vent, at least, I repeat certain ideas multiple times. I can easily improve this by just simply being more conscious while I am writing and when editing for my final draft make sure to exterminate all the wasteful sentences. This year I found the most difficult type of writing was in fact the persuasive essay. It’s really weird because that is a very open essay that calls for elaboration and I thought I’d be good at that, but in that case because the whole essay is arguing and venting your idea I over elaborated so much to the point where it degraded the essay. So to me, writing persuasive essays are the hardest, but they’ve always been tedious to me in that way because you need to convince the reader to listen to your opinion. The easiest type of writing for me is personally narratives and creative writing. Even though the narrative essay was my second worse essay, still being a B, narratives are easiest for me, the only reason my narrative essay suffered was I didn’t follow the voice guidelines strictly and it was hard to relate the topic to language. Narratives and creative writing has always been fun to me, like the creative writing assignment was so much fun to me because I love making stories and using creative approaches to writing, it’s so free and not strictly written, I feel free.

In the reading area, I’ve learned a lot this year because I’ve learned how to really look deeply into a book now and question certain simple things and see if they are symbols, however, I still don’t like taking notes. The most engaging books to me have honestly changed a lot this year, I used to like adventures and things like that, but now I like more philosophical books, don’t get me wrong I still like adventures, like The Big Sleep, but I’ve developed an interest into deeper books, they keep my attention and I like that fact that a book can change my perspective on life, like for example, right now I’m reading 1984 and I really like it so far and it’s mostly philosophical about government, so far at least, and it just makes me think about today’s world. That being said, the one book truly appreciated this year was The Things They Carried. I haven’t finished reading 1984 yet so I can’t have a valid opinion on it, but The Things They Carried was both adventurous and very meaningful in a deep way that really opened my mind, especially Tim O’Brien’s writing style, it was quite interesting and it made me feel the way he felt. I really felt connected to it and I might reread it without note taking to more thoroughly enjoy it. When I read I usually retain the bigger details quite well, even smaller details that are attached to those bigger details I can retain, but really small and meaningless details I can’t retain well, for example, like that one quiz for Into The Wild was really hard because it was all small details that I couldn’t remember because I thought they weren’t too important to the book and that’s why I can’t retain them. I feel like I could try to pay more attention to even the small details in books and that will help improve it, but usually I don’t need to because when I am reading fro enjoyment I’m not having a quiz on the small details.

The last area that I’ve learned about myself in is learning. I find that I learn best when I have someone go through something step by step and let me try it, if it can be tried, and keep trying it until I figure it out with that person there to help me fix it. So trial and error. I also found that this year it was easier to learn in a class with a lot of friendly faces, and no not because we talk! But when we’re learning something new it just makes the environment a lot more comfortable and when you have to present or you mess up something in front of the whole class it isn’t as bad. Also, you have someone you already know to relate the class too and ask for help if you don’t understand something. The information that has stuck with me most this year was overall probably analysis of text. I really do enjoy reading and haven’t had a lot of time to do it for enjoyment, but when we learned about analyzing text in class and finding deeper meaning it truly stuck with me and has shown through my readings of other novels besides the ones in class. It helps me see what I can’t see with the naked eye in the novel and helps me not miss out too much on the novel. Over-analysis is bad though, so I don’t over analyze things when I read but I notice things more and say to myself, hey that may be important and not just a random detail. Things that have flown right through me this year have honestly been the rhetoric devices, etc. and the Latin roots. That Latin roots can be helpful, I agree, but because I am focusing on ACTs not SATs they aren’t very important to me and just go in one ear and through the other, they are also hard to memorize. The rhetoric devices I will probably not really use unless analyzing speeches again or in another English class so they went through me as well. But I have learned a lot in the class this year and it has made me a better student of language.

Over the course of cyber English this year I have learned a lot about myself in the areas of writing, reading, and learning, and I have found ways to improve myself in each. I truly have enjoyed taking cyber English this year; it was honestly one of my favorite classes because the vibe was always funny and relaxed. I think I will take things out of this class and they will forever help improve my language with writing and reading. I do feel like I have become a better a writer and a better reader with those few things I mentioned above in the reflection. This is what I will take away from this year and I’ll remember this class and how much fun it was. And thank you Ms. Taylor, because this year of English was the best year in a long time, it was overall a great class.