Since the next unit we are working on deals with the new media [facebook,. youtube, myspace] among other things, I thought we would make our reflective journal for the closure of unit 1, a blog.
I would like for you to write a reflective journal on one of the flollowing topics, publish your post on this blog, and then reply to someone else's blog posting. YOU SHOULD POST YOUR BLOG ENTRY ON THE DAY YOU SUBMIT YOUR PORTFOLIO, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14. PLEASE PRINT OUT A COPY OF YOUR BLOG ENTRY AND INCLUDE IT IN YOUR PORTFOLIO.....
I will be posting an assignment description on Moodle shortly. Please read it before you submit / publish your blog entry.
1. What are some of the problems you have encoutered this semester with your writing? What do you think you can do to resolve some of these problems? What are some of the successes? What can you do to replicate these successes?
OR
2. You received feedback from your peer editor and myself. How difficult / easy / meaningful was it for you to integrate these comments in your draft 2? Do you have issues with any of the comments you received and why? What are some strategies you could adopt in your writing in unit 2 so that you can deal with these issues before your first draft submission?
Evaluation Criteria:
Your journal will be evaluated on the basis of the following criteria:
Does it truly signal reflection of your work?
Is it genuine?
Are there any insights?
Is it properly formatted?
Does it use proper style and tone?
Did you respond in a meaningful way to at least one of your classmates?
ooking back and thinking.
It is known that English is a process. To be good at it, you have to practice. This was the major reason why I had problems with English. Before, I used to read stories and articles, and to write poems that got published in my school newspaper. Now, since I’ve stopped reading for quite a long time, I’ve been having problems especially with writing. My communication skills have also been giving me a hard time lately as well.
ReplyDeleteThis semester with all the pressure at hand, these problems took a greater range. An essay would take a lot of time more than it should, my vocabulary were so weak to the extent that it would take me like forever to find the word I want, and after all that time I would spend, I won’t be able to express what I want to say properly. It can be noticed in my writings that there is a lot of disorganization. I am having problems organizing my thoughts due to the pressure I experience while writing since it is not fun to do like before. This also has affected the way I speak. I became a bit uncomfortable with the way I speak, due to being psychologically unconfident with myself. When it comes to reading comprehension, I would sometimes read a paragraph more than once to grasp the main idea of it. These were problems I faced at the beginning of semester.
Personal writing should do me a good practice to get right back on track to write more beautifully than before. Learning to focus while reading and the annotations made during every reading assignment gave me an advantage in getting closer to every text I read. At first, I didn’t consider annotations as the best way to read a text, but with trial, it proved to me more efficient. Practicing to read actively through annotations would definitely help my comprehending skills and my writing skills as well. The most important of all is to read on a daily basis, and by that I don’t mean a story; an article in a newspaper would do well. Furthermore, communicating with friends and relatives using the English language and avoiding to chat on the internet using slang will give a boost in improving these skills
As the semester started, a detailed and paced explanation on writing a proper essay was introduced that I successfully grasped. Writing few responses and prompts also participated in helping me practice my writing skills more. This has even helped me in recalling the way I used to write in the past. The more essays I wrote, the more confident I felt while writing and the faster I was in developing ideas. Active reading has helped me in understanding the deep ideas in the texts that I didn’t usually grasp in my regular reading. I noticed that from my unit test that gave me more self-confidence that active reading is actually working.
To replicate such a success, what should be done is practice whenever possible. What’s more important than that is to take English as a serious language so that it can be learnt properly. As it is said, practice makes perfect, and practicing to read will help enhance English skills. In addition, writing should be taken as a way to express one’s feelings and emotions and not as an extra pressure that will make things even worse.
As I sit on my desk, contemplating the question that my instructor has asked concerning the 2nd draft of a 5-page essay, I can’t but remember how hectic it was to write the essay especially with the multitude of quizzes that I had to study for those few weeks. ‘A 5-page’ I thought to myself, ‘how am I supposed to get through with that?’ Miraculously I was able to spare sometime to write it down, with some effort I have to confess.
ReplyDeleteThen came judgment day, not only was the instructor going to read, but a peer editor too. I thought I would do fine, I had written quite a piece of work. I had read and re-read the essays in the Course book to make sure I do not overlook any important points, not only that, but I thought I had really understood the prompt.
“Change the tone”, “Out of topic” and more of these comments jump at me as I take a look at my essay. I am dumbfounded. How did this happen, why did I stray away from the topic at hand, why does no one notice the relevance? Questions run through my head as more and more comments spangle my essay. Both my peer editor and instructor share the same comments, so what went wrong? I go through the essay, trying to understand the comments, re-reading what I wrote, and then it hits me. I did stray away from the topic. I was so focused on using as much of the texts as possible, that I went overboard with my essay. What now? How do I mold the “Mumbo-Jumbo” that I wrote into a well aligned, relevant essay? It’s quite simple actually. I will go through the comments of both readers; their feedback will guide me through draft 2. Other than that, I am definitely going to ask someone to read it, and get their feedback before submitting. Re-reading it and putting my feet in the audience/readers’ shoes could be a good idea too.
All in all, I am ready to work draft 2 to perfection!
Moving from ENG 102 to ENG 203 was like moving from a country to another one. There are many differences between the courses. In ENG 102, we dealt with texts that belong to a certain theme such as cause/effect, comparison and many others. However, in ENG 203, we are dealing with interesting texts related to our own life such as advertising, fashion and conversation between two sexes. The most difficult part among the two courses was in the writing part; there is a huge difference between them. At first, we wrote essay that contain compare/contrast, illustration and narration. In this semester, we are exposed to write reading response and expository essays which I faced some difficulties with them.
ReplyDeleteOne of the hard tasks I am facing this semester is writing a reading response or essays. I’m not familiar with expressing my opinion and criticizing during writing; that’s what is required mainly in a reading response. In my reading responses, I end up summarizing the texts which leads to an awful grade which pisses me off. I find it hard combining different ideas from different texts and commenting on them. As for the essay, I first was shocked by the number of pages and didn’t have a clue how to write an expository essay. The teacher’s guidelines and description gave me an idea what to write; yet, my first draft was horrible because I didn’t stick to the prompt and as usual I ended up summarizing each text and including irrelevant details.
After our first draft, my teacher paired us for the peer review. I found it an effective tool especially when your classmate is honest with you and doesn’t say things for the grade or because you’re his/her friend. My peer reviewer was totally direct with her comments although I didn’t approve with all her notes; that is one way that will help me a lot in my second draft. Moreover, my writing conference with my teacher was fruitful since she gave me some advice concerning the way I write; also, she set with me an outline for what my final draft should include from ideas or how I can organize it.
One of the main concepts that I believe I succeeded in was the in-text citation. I think it’s an important concept that I not only can use in my English course but also my other courses especially while submitting my research paper. Moreover, I’ve learnt when to paraphrase, summarize and quote. I believe I’m improving in using the correctly. I was glad with my unit test one grade because I had a difficult time with the text which I felt hard and a bit long.
In conclusion, the one thing that can help me to replicate these successes by sticking with the prompt and not only summarizing what I read. I should avoid the grammatical and sentence structure errors. Furthermore, I can learn how to be more criticizable while responding in an essay. Finally, I hope that my effort I made on the second draft will pay off.
I really love and enjoy this class, one of the major accomplishments I did was writing an essay of 5 pages for the first time. Learning how to quote for the article we have might help a lot not only now, first it might help give a better message of the idea you want to send in a more professional way. Second in my opinion it makes the essay more interesting and gives it more life.
ReplyDeleteBut one thing I didn’t really like about writing is that we always had to write about the same topic, but in different ways. At the end I got out of ideas and started to write the same thoughts over and over but in different ways. Although we had different prompt but they all ended up having the same notion in a way or another, in my opinion…
My skills in writing good also better, through using new vocabulary and terminologies. What also hepled a lot was the disscusion we used to have in class, they helped a lot in giving me new ideas and other people opinion about certain things and ideas.
We have been asked to reflect on our progress in this course. I did this by asking myself where I experienced difficulties and how I carried out steps to overcome these difficulties. As I reviewed my course objectives finding; Using active reading strategies to analyze/synthesize academic, journalistic, and literary texts, and how to develop schemata reading texts related to universal/controversial issues, and how to read critically to evaluate texts, and many other objectives.
ReplyDeleteThis course English 203, is a continuity to develop students communication skills, therefore we were put in groups which urged us to communicate and use our skills in group manner, enhancing us to communicate and use our abilities to exchange and accept ideas, and then look at these shared ideas in a critical manner. I developed a lot of skills in this course such as being able to synthesize/analyze in a more rapidly and improved way. And now after completing the first unit, I can read and analyze texts and link them to the same scheme.
Before this course started I encountered some problems such, while I am reading a passage, after just two paragraphs have been completed, I would realise that I had almost completely forgotten what the beginning of the passage was talking about. So when I used to read an essay I couldn’t concentrate, benefit, or feel the passion of reading, which people talk about habitually. In this course, we were taught some good methods about critical reading, and they in fact aided me. I found myself reading a passage and actually understanding the details of the passage and comprehending any hidden sense behind the passage.
At the beginning, I felt that the number of assignments given in this course was too much, and as I am getting pressured from other courses, where every teacher thinks that their students are taking only their subjects, but I still found what Mrs. Zane did was very appreciable, therefore very helpful where she pressured us in times and relaxed us in others. I don’t know what unit II is trouncing for us and how hard it’s going to be on us, however what I am concerned, and sure about, is that we are in safe hand with Mrs. Zane, and I guess it is going to be easy as she at all times seeks for the undemanding way to make us swallow the information.
Reflective journal:
ReplyDeleteDear Ms. Sinno,
Some students weave their way through your life and then forever vanish, but others eternally stick with you and earn a permanent spot in your heart. I am still in my second semester at AUB and so far, I can recall a numberless amount of spots that have already been engraved in my heart; most of them have immersed during my English class. How can I forget Dana’s radiant smile that used to brighten my afternoon, Ramzy’s humorous yet witty character or Elie’s clever remarks and interesting observations? How can I forget Ramy? He had always been there for me whenever I needed help in anything. And most importantly, how can I fail to remember your blooming and stimulated personality Ms. Sinno! As I look back at my time in this class I can not but take a breath and look back at all the improvements I’ve achieved or still need to achieve in my writing skills.
My summary writing has definitely progressed and been refined as a result of all the corrections you used to do on the projector. I always found your corrections to be such pieces of help, rather than significances of grade loss! I have tried learning from each and every one of my mistakes, and that helped improve my synthetic and analytical skills. Furthermore, I have become more eloquent with using In-text citation, an issue that I always had a hard time keeping in mind while writing. I have also gotten more familiar and comfortable with punctuation marks. I have adapted to a more frequent usage of the semi-colon and the colon, thus avoiding run-on sentences and confusion, and instead resulting in shorter, clearer phrases. Finally, being a double major student, whose other emphasis is journalism in the Lebanese University, this course has been of great help, since it has encouraged me to read articles in English, as all those required by the other university are all in either French or Arabic.
However, life is all about learning and growing. I still have many issues to improve in my writing. For instance, I realize that I should work more on organizing my ideas and thoughts better, in a way they would correlate and flow consecutively and naturally. Moreover, coming from a French educational background, I still tend to follow unconsciously some of the writing norms of the French language, such as leaving blank spaces; hence I should work on that as well. Finally, like everyone in the world, including the world’s finest linguists and writers, one’s mind still has infinite room to grow through reading, and I, a reader myself, hopefully and realistically aim to add up on the number of books I consume.
All in all, I think that this course has helped me improve my writing skills and analytical readings. However, for the next unit, I should critically read the articles several times and not just once or twice in order to be able to participate better in class.
Sincerely yours,
Lara Eid.
English 203 is an advantageous course that one can benefit a lot from. Personally, I improved many of my grammatical, vocabulary and writing skills. Moreover, this course is very motivating and exciting since it holds debates and discussions in the class where one can know others opinions and perception of life. Furthermore, what was interesting about this course is that we took the unit of fashion and advertisements that is linked to our society that we live in nowadays.
ReplyDeleteI believe that my writing has improved by means how to tackle a topic and illustrate a topic sentence on it including controlling ideas, and then elaborating in the body paragraphs on these ideas. So I learned how essays should be written in a proper format in order for the reader to engage with the writer and sense the words he is reading. Moreover, my sentence structure also improved; however, that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t work more on improving my writing and grammatical skills.
In truth I have never really paid attention to my grammar and find it sort of hard to spot my mistakes. But now I can say that these skills have enhanced a lot after taking English 203. Another significant concern I have learned from this course, which I consider as the key in writing an essay, is to brainstorm before starting. I believe that in that way the writer’s ideas will be more organized and it will be clearer for the reader to understand the main points of the essay.
What I liked about this course is that the social environment in class was very healthy and friendly. We got along easily with each other when arranged in groups and there were never any arguments or awkward vibes between peers. In this class there are certain people I have already met before and others that I met recently who I most probably got linked to.
Hearing to others’ point of view make a person realizes how different people perceive life in an opposite way, which makes the course more appealing. Debates, conversations, group works and all such kinds of communication make it clear for us to see certain aspects of life from a different angle.
Also I want to comment that the peer review my friend made for my essay was very effective in certain things. In that way a classmate shed light on certain details I didn’t realize. So this was a good approach to learn from these mistakes and improve in the second draft.
I can say now that I learned many things from this course. I really consider it very successful and valuable since I learned that class discussions make one more open to the world. Moreover, quoting and paraphrasing is a new thing I learned in reading responses. This course should be tackled in a very careful manner in order to succeed in it. It requires a good writing mood since most of its assignments is about essays and responses. Yet, I consider that the best way to achieve something in this course is not to overnight on the material to be handed in the next day since writing requires going back to the work for improvements.
English 203 course this unit was basically about communication and visual images. I was fascinated by both topics as they tackled vital real life issues. I opened my eyes to the various impacts it has on us and our lifestyles. It wasn’t an easy unit at all, but fortunately and with the help of my teacher, I managed to improve significantly and overcome my difficulties.
ReplyDeleteWe started off this unit by writing whatever was on our minds in the first 10 minutes of most of the classes. I found this to be an exceptionally great idea, since it enabled me to be more aware and at peace with my thoughts and inner feelings. Then we learned how to respond to articles accordingly I enhanced my thinking and writing skills. In general, we were introduced to various well known authors and analyzed and gave our own opinion of their work. In the end, we learned how to write an expository. Accordingly, each one wrote a 4-5 page expository essay, regarding this unit.
Nonetheless, I had faced several problems with my writing skills. To be more specific I had difficulties assembling my thoughts and focus them in free writing. Moreover, I discovered problems with the grammer and structure of my writings. As a result I worked harder and tried to find better ways for tackling these complexities. Accordingly I started to read the articles more thoroughly and comprehensively in order to find better and stronger ideas in response to the articles. Adding to that, I worked on my grammatical problems by using help from thesauruses and dictionaries. And I tried with all means possible to follow my teacher’s pieces of advice and comments to improve my structural difficulties.
In conclusion, I’m glad and satisfied by the amount of time and work I dedicated to this unit, as I feel that it has not only improved my English language, but it has also developed the way I think and act significantly. I believe that nothing is impossible as long as we put our minds and hearts to it.
Dana Batlouni
ReplyDeleteEnglish 203 –Section 7
Reflective journal
The reason behind calling the English 203 course, an academic English course, is its main goal: to help us learn how to academically think and write, how to utilize all these abilities in other courses in an appropriate way, and how to improve our academic performance through better writing and critical thinking.
The main issue that I was facing at the beginning of this semester is not being able to think critically, I did not fully understand what that entails, which was problematic seeing as it’s vital when writing a reading response. Basically, a reading response is the whole concept of critical reading and thinking. I would not have been able to write 3 to 4 pages commenting and giving my point of view about an article without having a clear idea about the text and organizing my own personal thoughts about it and about the subject discussed. At the same time I had to have enough confidence to believe that I had the right to criticize the writer’s ideas, and to point out what I thought did not make sense in the text, or even give input on what could make an article better through elaborating on ideas that I had earlier thought belonged solely to the author. The reading responses that we have done through the first half of this semester provided me with an opportunity to say whatever I want about a given subject to anyone who was willing to listen to my point of view. They pushed my self esteem to recognize that what I think counts in everything and that I have the right to say what I know and what I think is right. Of course, some more improvements are still to be made to ameliorate this ability, such as working more on my readings, reading more articles, thinking critically about them, and finally trying to always find myself and my own point of view in a text, and recognizing the points of weaknesses that should be replaced or elaborated upon.
Another problem thing that I am still facing in my writings is the language structure mistakes. These mistakes completely change the meaning in the sentence and make it more difficult for me to express myself while writing. They can change the whole meaning of my concept because of a small mistake that I have done. And I think the ultimate solution for such a problem is practicing, and that is exactly what we are already doing in this course and will continue to do through the different types of writings that are assigned for the second half of the semester through this course.
There are many different improvements ahead of us in the rest of this year that will definitely solve some more problems that we are aware of and ones that we have not discovered yet .
When I first came into this class I did not know how confusing writing really was. This course has given me the capability to take the frustrations of writing and put it into thoughts of enrichment. I have learned that each type of writing requires a certain amount of preparation, or maybe that there is no one right way to approach a writing assignment, that each situation calls for a different style. In this reflective journal I will be going through the major frustrations and successes I had started out.
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of frustration is to make the mind work to learn more. One minor frustration was the synthesis writing assignments and trying to think of what to write. I felt like I was wasting my time on minor works, but now I see how they related to the course goals and what we are suppose to accomplish in this course. So I discovered that the frustrations of synthesis writing only helped my mind get prepared for the next writing assignment. Other major frustration was writing the first draft of the essay in addition to the two assignments that required enormous effort and time, Critical Thinking, and reading past class articles that are related to my prompt. Writing a 4-5 pages essay was not an easy task, but at the end, this assignment really helped me in critical reading and editing my own work.
One of my main successes was the change in my attitude towards writing in which I noticed while working on the “Unit One” essay I used to approach writing the same way whatever the assignment was; however, in this essay I began to realize that this is not always true. By the time I was working on the essay I had already began to see how different assignments require different approach.
In conclusion, although I experienced some difficulties in first unit through writing different types of essays; however, I feel that I have improved many communicating skills and I went through various selections of articles that broaden my imagination and enriched my vocabulary and writing techniques. In addition to the experience I gained from group work assignments and editing peers’ papers by correcting their writing mistakes properly. As a result, I hope in the next unit “Unit Two” I will try to avoid the mistakes I encountered, and certainly I will use the experience and skills that I learned to develop my writing skills and present better quality of essays.
2)
ReplyDeleteAfter two long nights of progressive writing, I finally got a satisfying essay in hand. The key bottleneck was at first finding the prompt I could best expand and show a self-recognized set of thoughts about it, or in other words something that I can relate to and that already had a place in between my ideas. When it was finally done, and it was time for others to review it (officially of course, I made two of my friends read it before I submitted it), difficult times began.
My peer review came first. As I was reviewing a colleague’s essay, the latter was reviewing mine, right next to me. I couldn’t make my eyes unintentionally, though purposely, take fast glances at my essay as it was being reviewed. In fact, I was reviewing both essays at that time (I always had a belief that one can’t revise his thoughts and ideas until one sees others’).
When I got my review, I was satisfyingly relieved with how my instructor and fellow colleague reviewed the essay as one solid, valuable essay, just as I thought of it. However, there was one chink in the chain, which was a direct long quote of an experiment that supported several of my ideas. At first, I thought it would be a good way to fill blanks in my essay, after all I’ve never wrote such a long one. But then when I reread and refreshed my ideas in the essay, I found that it served much more than that. It support to my ideas gave credibility to my essay, much more than I could’ve given it if I just summarized the experiment. So I decided to keep it, for the reasons aforementioned, and yes, I’m that stubborn.
My instructor gave me a boost in morale, and gave my language and style a well-deserved increase in self-esteem. She also thought that some ideas can go further in writing. After an exhaustive mind squeeze, I came up with only one solid idea to be sensibly added to the essay, and it fitted beautifully. When I wanted to expand some other ideas, I found it hard to do without repetition that would hurt the entire body of the essay, so I kept my original ideas and format as they were; the advantages to change them clearly outweighed the benefits.
Integrating comments and reviews in my essay can get really tricky once the essay is done. Reviews would be more beneficial and implementable if they came prior to writing the essay, in the phase of brainstorming. Instead of having friends read the essay and comment, one would rather have them take a glance on my thoughts, contribute their own, and showing week links in them. In that way, one will be able to study a whole new way of format and style for the essay that has new original ideas now.
Today English is one of the main aspects in life, for this language became the most important language in the world for its influence in today’s modern world is clear in all fields of knowledge. Last year at high school I didn’t take English seriously considering it as only my second language, but here at AUB this English 203 course showed me a new way of seeing this language, and I think that this course have widely improved my performance in this subject.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion my problem in English was how to write a well structured essay but with the help of my brilliant professor Zane Sinno, who gave me many valuable advices to improve my writings. My professor made this subject interesting due to the several group works we have done in class, as well as the humor found in class which made this section a very nice one. These several group works in class enhanced me to see the different point of views of my friends which increased my knowledge several ways.
In addition to that, I think that my grammar mistakes are reduced a lot, for instance I know now how to prevent from using run-ons and fragments in my essay, and because we submitted several prompts and in which we tried to review our assignment in addition to the peer review helped me identify my errors by myself in order not to repeat them again.
Moreover one of the main things I learned in this course is how to cite my work. This helped me to do my own work without plagiarizing which I did a lot in high school. Before taking this course I thought it would be an annoying course to me since I hate literature related subjects but this course was so interesting that feel of taking eng. 204 next semester and of course with my best English teacher Zane Sinno.
In conclusion, Prof. Zane Sinno showed me the other face of English teaching and her nice style of teaching made me more interested in English courses. In which she helped improve my grammatical skills as well as my writing skills.
If someone asks me about my weak point in the courses my answer will probably be writing an essay. In writing any essay I get trapped by plenty of obstacles. The first obstacle is writing a thesis statement I had a little knowledge of how to write a thesis statement. Until I practiced writing different essays which elucidated my mystery about the thesis statement.
ReplyDeleteThe second obstacle I face while writing is the difficulty to gather up my ideas and unit of thoughts. This obstacle was solved by learning the method of brain storming and listing ideas which helped me filter my ideas attaching them with strong junctions.
The third and most 'fatal obstacle' is my grammatical mistakes I admit of having a poor grammatical basis which can distort my good ideas. In this course I discovered that my work is always underestimated as I find it hard to express my ideas in words, and this was probably due to my poor grammar. Now I'm increasing my reading in order to construct a strong reinforced language with minimal grammatical mistakes.
Moreover in the past I used to have a difficulty in expressing my opinion in the essay. I used to list directly my opinion which could decrease the value of the work. In this course I learned to describe my perspective implicitly reinforcing it with quates picked from writers supporting this view.
Before attending this course, I had non-efficient reading and writing habits. At school and as a scientific-oriented student, I usually had little interest in literature and arts. This was not only my fault, but also the fault of my instructors. Some even convinced us – as peer students – that writing is an ability that hardly can be improved .This notion negatively propelled my initiative for reading and writing. Even though the syllabus at school contained similar reading and writing processes, my school instructors never strictly enforced them as you did throughout this course. For this reason, I admit that it was not until this course that I started benefiting truly from the reading and writing process we engaged to in class.
English 203 has been a very educational course for me. I learned to think on a whole new level when it comes to reading and writing. Active reading is one of things I found to be very useful especially when I’m having a hard time understanding a certain text. Even my writing improved and became faster as I learned to brainstorm and list before I write. The writing also became on a larger scale as I never wrote a 5 page essay before. Now I can write 5, 10 and even more and not find it as difficult as before. In-Text citation is also an important thing I learned where it teaches how to use information from other authors to back up your point of view. It gives your writing validation, and it’s useful when it comes to avoiding plagiarism. One of the most important things I managed to succeed in is looking at things from a different perspective. The issues discussed in the text book are very interesting especially the ones about advertisements and weasel words. I learned to understand the true meaning of things before I completely embrace them. The class discussions were very educational where I learned to debate and express my point of view in an orderly manner.
ReplyDeleteIn spite being an interesting and educational course, it’s not that easy or at least it wasn’t at first. At the beginning of the course I had a hard time writing fast and supporting the given with enough ideas. Sometimes I even added irrelevant information and went to the wrong side of the fence. I thought that some required essays were too long so I kind of lost interest in writing. That was hard because I often left writing them to the last second. It was usually very stressful and complicated but I got the work done at the end. Another problem is that I didn’t know how to quote without plagiarizing. If I needed an idea from another author I used to rephrase it disregarding possible plagiarism. At some stages I put in a lot of work in writing an essay but didn’t receive the grade I was hoping for. It really put me down sometimes but I stood up eventually and tried even harder the following time.
Even though I had such problems I didn’t lose hope and I persevered. I learned that overcoming them is easy if I put my mind to it. Listening more closely to the teacher’s instructions in class and comments on essays is the most important thing that should be adopted if future progress is desired. That’s what I did and I’m still trying to do. I following the teacher’s instructions to the point and making use of the comments on my essays. This is helping me a lot in getting better grades and improving my writing a lot. Also learning from previous mistakes is an essential requirement when it comes to expanding our success in the course. As time passes the mistakes narrow down and getting it right becomes what we do.
At first when I registered for this course I thought that it will be an ordinary English class that will teach us how to develop our view of points and ideas in a well organized structure. However I was surprised when we entered the discussion about advertisement and fashion so that know I can understand the true meaning of the ad and will not be deceived anymore.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to writing an essay I face a lot of difficulties. Finding a suitable title is one of the problems that I face when writing an essay. The title is one of the important elements of an essay and any type of writing; it is the hoop that catches the reader's attention. Moreover, this is an important thing since an excellent essay is the one that can gain the reader attention and focus on the topic introduced. Usually when I write I spend a lot of time thinking of a title that would strengthen my essay, and sometimes I don't find it, this always prevent me from proceeding in writing. So, that simple thing, which is a maximum of about 5 words, will prevent a five pages essay from being written. For example, in the essay about advertisement and the language of cloth, I had a difficulty I choosing a title that would allow me to drive the teacher's attention to my essay. So I had to find a title that grabs the reader’s attention and gives him the motivation needed to go deep in the essay and read it all not just the first to paragraphs.
Not only title was a conflict in my way, however synthesising the proper topic sentence that will illustrate the whole idea of the paragraph, since a topic sentence is like a more developed title. Where most of the times a wasted a lot of time only in developing the proper topic sentence that will also grabs the reader’s attention and the road forward to develop it and give my view of point and elaborate more about the topic.
However what I suffered from the fact that i didn’t know how to express my idea. i have a lot of information to use in my writing but most of the times I couldn’t express them that will consequently be the cause for getting bad grades.
On the other hand when i started this course i began to learn new techniques that will ultimately help me in overcrossing the difficulties facing me. One of the most effective techniques was the effective reading and the brain storming the showed me that when i organize my ideas the topic and title will be formed ultimately without spending a lot of time on it. By that i accomplished one of the main obstacles i face.
In conclusion i rank this course in the same category of my major course because it is the basis for all other courses I’ll take in this university because as i have seen that all the courses i take her are basically relying on my English and how much i can send my view point in a clear way so that the reader will be informed and i’ll be amused through receiving the credit for my hard work.
Reflective Journal
ReplyDeleteRamzi Taybah, Sec.5
Now that we are in the middle of the semester and that unit 1 is over, it is time to stop and look behind to what was achieved during this semester. Starting from the diagnostic essay all the way through to active reading, passing through responses and all the way to writing an essay, there is a lot learnt in these few weeks.
This class taught me how to actively read and analyze academic, journals and other English texts. Reading critically and responding to texts is also an attribute I acquired throughout this unit. Not to forget, all the times in class we spent talking about how to write an expository essay. In text citations was another thing I learnt in this course which I didn’t know before. In the same time, I started spotting the mistakes I used to pass through when using the language.
To start with the first mistake; I never used to read the passage actively, but read it because I just had too. That didn’t help me in understanding and analyzing the paragraph given to me. Second, due to the peer editing and the teacher’s review to my first draft, I realized I had so many mistakes to get back on and correct. Grammar is one of these problems, as I had many grammatical errors in my writing. Another mistake I have done in my draft was that I didn’t develop the ideas I have placed because I thought they were sufficient in the first place; but after reading my peer’s suggested ideas, I found there is much to elaborate on. Thirdly, I have realized that I have been making a lot of language error that would not occur if I had been concentrating on my language.
To solve these mistakes, I have learnt to read actively and thoroughly the passage given to me and make sure I read between the lines. Also, I should always try and improve my grammar by reading the sentence in my head and checking out if the structure is right. Not only that but I should also try to support my ideas by explanation and examples that would serve the purpose of the main idea.
I am looking forward to the next unit that has a very interesting title. But what I would like to carry with me, is the successes I accomplishes in the first unit. There is a lot to pick up from and a lot to progress in, let’s hope the second unit will be as beneficial, helpful and more productive.
Reflective Journal
ReplyDeleteNader Safadi
The unit one of our English 203 course consisted on the study of fashion and advertisement, more precisely the benefits and disadvantages of both its diversity and homogeneity. The readings we had were all focused on these two subjects and authors were all giving their point of view, and supporting them by examples or personal experience or trustful pieces of information.
The unit one of this course taught me a lot, I was taught to criticize an article by organizing a reading response which I never did before, and this helped a lot in understanding what advertisement is all about. I concentrated all my thinking on how I can respond to the articles, and whether I agree with the author or not. By all this, I had to take position regarding the topic of the unit, and the semester ended with a free essay where the topics were both fashion and advertisement but where I was able to write my own opinion, that was enriched with all the readings and was one of my own. I didn’t have much difficulty in my first essay because I already have done many essays of this kind in school, whereas the responses were something I never did before and I find that I have gained a good experience from the first unit. I found a difference between the first response and the second one, on my first respond I wasn’t confident of what I was doing, I still wasn’t sure that what I was writing is a response to the author's opinion, but on my second response, I was way more confident and more comfortable and I think I came up with a great response the second time. In the essay, things were different, I had many ideas that I got through the readings, I had my personal experience, and other good supports from the articles. I had no problem with the length or the language, but maybe my problem was with the organization of my ideas, the way I arranged them, but hopefully the next time it will be different and better.
Finally, I think that until now, I have gained from the English course good knowledge with the interesting topic we had, and more confidence in what is asked from me to do. Things are getting easier for me to do and I am getting used to them by time.
Raja El-Saadi
ReplyDeleteSection 18
Part :1
At the beginning of the course, simplicity and easiness was all I could think of. I believed that English 203 is just greater in number than English 102, and that there is nothing hard or to worry about. Everyone was intimidated, but such a feeling didn’t occur to me. Time proved me wrong and taught me with hard work comes a better education and grade, since that’s what all students aim for. With every upcoming assignment, article, essay, response and others I felt the challenge surrounding me from every angle.
As we began the course, our first task was to read articles from the course’s book. I thought the articles would be of the same level as English 102, easy skimming and understanding. I used the same strategy as my first English course. But with my first flunk in the drop quiz, comes my wake up call. I realized that the course wasn’t a joke. Old school strategies and methods don’t work on a professional level. I became more attentive to Ms. Sinno’s comments, teachings, and in-depth analysis. I learned that if I want to read a text, skimming isn’t a way of doing so. Critical reading and as Ms. Sinno describes it “the Juice of the work” is what is known as reading. To be able to analyze and understand the text is what defines interpretation. With my perseverance and concern of grades along with Ms. Sinno’s advising, I was able to conquer and eliminate what is now an antiquated strategy of reading and replace it with a new, proficient one.
Learning how to read and analyze properly is just a sample of what I was taught in the first unit of the course yet that of significance when it comes to writing. Responses, to be honest, were the last thing I expected I would be able to do. The subject of responding to a professionally written text never crossed my mind. I believed it was a hard task to accomplish. Ms. Sinno took this subject with great deal and concern since it will be hunting us now, later and forever. Therefore, she decided to move on a slow pace with it in order for all of us to understand it properly. She taught us how to respond by first using the reading skills educated before by getting out the important ideas and analyzing the author’s purpose. Then she introduced a new matter which was quoting ideas from different authors. She explained how important it was to provide the name, page, date and quotation marks when quoting from an author because one might be penalized for plagiarism. And she also explained the importance of the quoting in our essay, since it gives strength to the idea I am trying to prove. Joining her teachings together, I was able to write a good first response with a pleasing mark that defines me as a striving student.
Raja El-Saadi
ReplyDeleteSection 18
Part: 2
Yet, the major problem I faced since my school years was being unable to write a proper and excellent essay. As a student with a fresh mind, it is easy to come up with ideas that could be added to the essay. But what was merely impossible for me to do was to elaborate and organize my ideas in a way that could be understandable and expressed in a related manner. I was also unable split major points into different paragraphs. My essays format was always a two or three huge blocks of sentences and ideas joined together in a distinct matter. After receiving my first draft of the expository essay that was due, I was shocked with my own writing. My essay was a mess although general explanations on how to write a good essay were given in class and several links were posted on moodle. I knew the problem was still there. Ms. Sinno decided to provide us a 1 on 1 conference with her in order to discuss the problems that each one of us faced in his/her first draft. At the beginning, the idea of it wasn’t really encouraging to me since I believed that I was a hopeless case. After the conference a new I was born. The 5 minutes chat with Ms. Sinno made me realize where my mistakes were by simply bullet-pointing and explaining each of it. I now know how to write a proper, neat essay with cohesive ideas. I know how to divide major points into several paragraphs and be able to relate them in an understandable way.
Not only had I learned from Ms. Sinno the academic techniques required to continue with my second unit in the course and eventually with my future, but I also had learned how to answer questions in tests in the proper format. I am now also capable of interacting and working with groups because of the in-class and online group activities Ms. Sinno provided us with.
To stop making use of the strategies and techniques I learned with the ending of the semester and the course would be a big mistake that I would be regretting on the long run. Therefore, in order to prevent such an occurrence, I have built a strategy of my own where I would start writing a book about my everyday life. The idea to me seemed crazy at the beginning, but the influence of my friend doing so as well motivated me on continuing with the thought. It has to my realization that such an approach will develop my writing and vocabulary skills even better and put all the techniques I have acquired into use and practice.
To conclude, my gratitude and thankfulness are to Ms. Sinno. She regenerated the thought of simplicity and easiness by working as a team with her and by cooperating with her as well. Without her advices and comments I wouldn’t have overcome my essay defection, develop my reading skills, be able to write a proper response, learn how to answer test questions straightforwardly and to cooperate and work with my classmates.
My name is Tarek Rashdan; I am a second year engineering student. My portfolio consists of the work I did in this class showing the progress I achieved. This portfolio is of great importance to me because it reflects my achievements and goals I set for myself to accomplish during this class. Taking English for the first time made it clear to me how this important this course is, and proved my weaknesses in writing. It is an honor, first of all, and a beneficial experience for me, because simply I am being taught how to read and write efficiently and critically. I learned that becoming a talented writer is based on practicing the efficient techniques of writing to reflect my ideas and thoughts, not just putting words next to each other; I also learned that writing is a complete process not just a random or rational experience.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the first graded essay I wrote in this class taught me a lot, and increased the circumference of my knowledge, because I learned how to concentrate on the topic rather than going off it. Moreover, I learned how to reflect my thoughts, emotions, and ideas in the essay and back it up with scholar information to amplify its impact on the reader.
I think that writing will not just help me pass this course but it will affect my career and the way I see things on paper. This course will also help me in courses that I am considering later in my university career like, philosophy and history because those courses depend hugely on writing essays, second of all writing will help me tremendously throughout my major, that’s because this major depends a lot on writing fruitful informative essays and technical writing. Later in life when I graduate from the university, the writing skills will be a major aspect that companies consider to employ me, so if my writing was good then my chance of getting a good job will be much better. Finally, English will always have a never ending impact on my thoughts, where it helps me bridge between my Arabic culture and the Western culture and thought.
I developed a lot of skills throughout the English courses, I developed my skills on writing an effective thesis statement, a catchy introduction and most importantly an important piece of writing, that’s because I learned that I have responsibilities while writing, especially towards the audience, because if I wrote something that will not leave and impact on the audience or the reader then I will be wasting his/her time.
So in conclusion writing is something essential in a person’s career and in his life as well. A person with a good ability to write will enjoy an effective cultural, literal, and conviction power in this world, which will make him/her a successful and powerful human being and if I don’t do mistakes I think that I won’t learn.
To be honest, I am not a big fan of reading, and this is what influenced my writing techniques in a bad way, where I find myself most of the times incompetent in expressing what I really mean and even incapable of delivering the right message to my readers. These days, most individuals count on the internet as a major resource for their writing tasks, without taking in consideration that this will end up to be someone else's work. This is known as plagiarism, where you take information from different resources without citing them, and this was a problem that I really suffered from in my first semester at AUB. Now, in my second semester here at AUB, I began to do some readings in the book "Shades of Gray", and I found them to be interesting and even entertaining, since they mostly talk about advertising and fashion considered to be very stimulating topics especially to teenagers. And I think that those readings helped me out in writing my first essay, where I was capable of reflecting my whole point of view using indirectly some important notations mentioned in these texts that I've read so far. I also managed to use literally some ideas of the authors by citation, and that really helped me in developing my arguments and discussing them in a more convincing manner, since I used them to contradict with the author or to agree with him without considering it to be plagiarism. After I submitted draft 1, and discussed it with professor "Zane Sinno", I understood the concept of formal writing; and since my essay was emotional in style, tone, and punctuation, I removed all question marks and exclamation marks. This was a little bit hard, because I am used to express my feelings in everything I write, and I also intend to advise my reader which is also unacceptable in formal writing. Although this is my way to reflect my personal opinions in a critical and honest way, I tried my best to be more formal and less emotional in my second draft. Furthermore, group work in class was a useful way to improve my performance in social activities, where we all combine our efforts, and discuss our different point of views, in order to accomplish a work that fairly involve all of our opinions. This was truly a great work that helped me improving my social skills and even my writing skills. Finally, I’d like to discuss in the second half of the semester different subjects than advertising and fashion; because I personally think that we practiced a lot on these issues.
ReplyDeleteRami Saad
ReplyDeleteTaking English 203 is not as it sounds to others, “just a useless course !”. Having homework on a daily bases was a bit annoying to me and most of the other students! H However, it has proven to be of most benefit in such a short period of time – in half a semester my written and spoken language have improved tremendously.
“You have to read from … to … for next session” this is how Mrs. Sinno usually ends each of her classes. The unit we tackled in our book is really interesting to read. Moreover, Reading and analyzing texts critically and linking several readings to the same theme was something I have never thought about and never did before. Reading language of media, fashion victims, Kid Kustomers … etc. are the perfect examples of our daily lives and have an effect on how I view products of advertisements.
To come to the reading part, reading on daily bases became a routine for me as an English homework , reading critically also helped me to understand, elaborate and even write my own responses about what I read in class without problems. Those responses have helped me learn how to divide my time when writing a complete response or an article…etc. in the time allocated in class.
Essays I am writing in class and at home usually reflect my points of view regarding each theme. The prompts that I wrote about were issues from our daily life; for example the last essay I wrote was about “How do fashion, advertisement, and individuals both exploit and promote the power of the image?” we are all facing this issue without our knowledge and advertisements are controlling our image. I have never used in text citation before this course, now I include it in all my writings. I even use in text citations when I have to give in essays for other subjects such as civilization sequence. I also learnt how to write a simple thing like a cover page which in my previous writings and assignment I have never learnt to write. Peer review which we do in class helps me to view what other students with the same level of knowledge and of the same age think of my essays. Peer editing shows me the weaknesses in my essays and Mrs. Sinno’s constructive criticism help me focus on making my writings better. This type of activity has helped me improve my essays more than I thought was possible in such a limited time. All in all, now I am able to produce well-organized, documented essays that adequately address a prompt, reflect a synthesis of texts, and include an expression of opinion. I still believe there is much more to work on and I am ready to work and do my best to impress my teacher, colleagues and most importantly myself.
Since the beginning of the semester and until now, my English course has been significant in promoting and improving my language skills. Excessive responses, essays and writings had severe effect on evolving and improving my language, especially the writing the skills. Stepping aside the language context, this course gave me concrete knowledge about the world we live in. The reading selections provoked my intentions to know more about this world. Hence, this course played a significant role in developing my language and widening my general knowledge about our world.
ReplyDeleteExcessive writings and essays played a major role in improving my English skills. Although I had mistakes in them, still I believe that we learn from our mistakes. Moreover, writing a lot made me become faster and more creative in writing essays and responses. However, I faced a major problem here in stepping a bit out of my assignments’ prompts. While writing my essays I jump into thoughts that do not actually match the main topic. However, I believe I have good language skills and capable of proving whatever I say.
What I enjoyed most in this course are the articles of advertisements. These articles present facts that show how easy deceitful people we are. And on the other side, how clever advertisers are in aiming their advertisements at children. Moreover, these articles grabbed my attention to the ambiguous, hidden words that ads usually use. It’s pretty arresting how ads defend themselves by using tricky words such as “helps”. In addition, these articles provide facts to prove that the main aim of advertisers is actually money!
Nevertheless, group work in this course proved to be essential in developing thoughts and ideas and in improving our way of thinking. Whenever we are in class doing a group work activity, I enjoy listening to the different points of view of my classmates. Hence, this introduces me to new ideas. What I also notices is that group work serves to much efficient than individual work.
In conclusion, I believe this English course is really essential in developing language skills and improving our way of thinking. However, this needs the interaction of the student with these topics and events. For the course along would not do.
Reflective Journal
ReplyDeleteIn this first half of the spring semester, the English 203 course had some good influence on me, but even so I still face a few problems that I have to deal with.
To begin with, as a reader, I found myself improving highly when it comes to understanding a text in English and to criticize it deeply and accurately. Even if I don’t participate enough in class, I am confident that I comprehend the passage and I controlled it as perfectly as possible. This happened because of the continuous reading assignments given in class and some other readings that I made alone at home. The text “Sex, Lies and conversation: Why is it so hard for men and women to talk to each other?”, that we have read, is the one that most influenced me until now because it talks about a topic that we deal with everyday, and that everyone confront once in a while in his life. I definitely gain profit when it comes to new ideas and reflection. I learned new information about advertisements and weasel words, communication and body language, etc...
Furthermore, as a writer, I benefited a lot and boosted my experience in writing. I am able now to write more easily than before and more flexibly, and I am truly enjoying it! Especially when using the Microsoft Word program, because it helps me learn a great amount of new words that I often use in my writings. I find pleasure in expressing my thoughts through writing and I hope that I can persevere and keep improving my skills more and more and keep raising the ceiling of my ability.
But nonetheless, I still experience many weaknesses when it comes to writing an essay. They are mostly because of the grammar mistakes that I make. These errors tend to weaken my essay and writing very much and may let the reader not get my ideas very clearly.
For the time remaining in this course I have to work harder on what I require to be almost faultless, and to obtain a sufficient package for the future, because these skills have a huge impact on the upcoming opportunities that I might face afterwards. I hope to reach my goals and to surpass all the obstacles later on.
Adnan Fakhoury.
Reflective Journal
ReplyDeleteDuring this course I’ve developed new skills whether they are reading or writing skills. Although I still have a lot to work on, the time I’ve spend studying for English 203 really benefited me in a lot of good ways.
At first, when dealing with a text or an article, it used to take me three minutes to finish it for I did not know how to properly read it. But when critical reading was introduced it changed my perspective towards any text I read and thought me how do deal with it. This improvement is the result of the intense assignments given in this short period of time that consisted of approximately seven articles under the topic of advertisement, media and fashions.
These topics taught me plenty of new things related to our daily life. It lightened me on how advertisements manipulate the society indirectly to reach its targets by using lots of methods including weasel words, word slanting and selecting, fashion and many others.
On the other hand, my writing skills have improved a lot comparing to what it used to be in the past. I discovered new styles of properly delivering my desired messages along with new useful words and links between paragraphs. I gained those new experiences when completing the two response papers assignments along with the first and second drafts during unit 1.
My objective is to work even harder during the next unit so that I can finish this course possessing a high level of reading, comprehending, developing and writing skills that enables me to proceed to the next course knowing that I am on the right track to develop my skills even more.
Omar Hussein Safadi =)
reflective journal
ReplyDeleteNour Fakih
When I first took English 203 I wasn’t very excited and thought that this course was just another road to be taken on my way to getting my degree. Instead, this road turned out to be beneficial not ignoring the fact that it drained most of my energy and time.
“English 203 is designed to develop critical thinking and academic reading and writing”, this is how the course was depicted in the first session of this semester. Academic reading and writing aided me a lot in the process of developing my critical thinking. The texts that I read are more advanced and more complex and require active reading in order to comprehend, analyze and explore.
The first unit “expository reading and writing” introduced me to what expository essays are. The texts in this unit didn’t interest me and at the end of the unit the course became boring. Fashion, advertising and the way of communication between genders aren’t topics that attract males. Nevertheless, I loved “The Fashion Victim’s Ten Commandments” (p. 449) and “The Body Jigsaw” (p.463). In this unit I learned how to link the content of my essay to the texts in hand and how to introduce and integrate quotes in my essay.
On another hand, I expect the rest of the course to be motivating because I am a person who loves argumentation and who is good at it. In addition, the content of the second unit is exciting and grabbed my attention ( Facebook, media, etc…)
What really got my attention in this course is that everything is explained on the Internet. The use of technology, which is an interest to most students, is incorporated drastically.
It is obvious that I have a problem in speaking and writing English. I was in a French system school, and I spent time playing during English sessions because I thought it was a secondary language. I was totally wrong. In addition, I never liked reading books in English or other languages. Entering the American University of Beirut and having my first English course (English 102) didn’t motive me enough. English 203 is one of my courses this semester, and I really enjoyed working and doing my assignments. This work helped me a lot in my weaknesses but sure it didn’t cover it all since I have a lot of effort to do.
ReplyDeleteThis course is mainly based on writing skills, and since I got used to a specific style in the French system, I got lost. It is a totally new way for me, I had several problems. First, I can’t express my ideas in more words than what it needs, “The reader surely understands what I mean” so I can’t give more explanations. You can see this in my first essay of 3 pages and not 5 as required. I should read more so that I can write the same idea in much more number of words. I am working on it. On the second hand, asking questions in my writings was a very important point for me since it states my internal thinking, I was little shocked when I knew that I shouldn’t use it. I should show my thoughts in a direct way; I tried to do so in essay 1 draft 2. Moreover, I have the common problem with grammar mistakes that exists in my writings. The worst is that when I read my work over and over again and still I can’t find these errors. At last, I always do my work in the last minute as I’m doing now, one day before the submission, and I realized that it’s working against me. I made a promise to my self that I’ll work long before so I can benefit and correct my mistakes.
Despite all of these problems that I had in this course, I’ve found a bid success in many important matters. The subjects we read about and discussed in class were very interesting and it encouraged me to read more and more. It showed me that there are many things in life that we ignore, but we can reach them just by reading about the subject. In the first unit, every text related to communication was very motivating. And now I’ll surely go buy some English books and enjoy them. Furthermore, my confidence was highly affected. The interaction in class between the students and the teacher made me want to express my thought in front of everybody without the fear of being mocked. I’ll always say my opinion in a professional way as I learned in this course.
Finally, I can’t say anything except that this course had a high priority between my courses. It made me want to learn more, to know more. It helped me a lot with communicating with others. Half-semester is passed; I have the other have to power up my weaknesses and continue my progresses. A proverb in French says: “Vouloir c’est pouvoir” and it means that when you want something you can do it. I want to improve and I will do it.
In this unit about “communication and visual images”, we read and discussed many different selections each holding a certain idea. We took two selections about language, each of them focusing on language from a different perspective. In the selection “Selection, Slanting, and Charged Language” Birk & Birk discussed some tools we use in our language but we’re unaware of. Moreover, we read many selections about advertisements, each of them showing some tricks used in order to grab the attention of elders, teenagers, and kids. Fashion took a major interesting part in this unit. Each author viewed fashion from a different side. For example, Lee has been sarcastic in describing what fashion victims do, and Lurie viewed clothes as being the language that expresses us.
ReplyDeleteAll of these readings improved my writing skills. They gave me a bunch of information that I was able to rely on in my writings. They helped me a lot because in this part of the course I didn’t refer to the internet as a source of information as I used to do before. My diagnostic essay was poor not including many ideas to discuss. Actually, this is my main problem in writing about any topic in English. However, after reading the interesting selections, and learning many skills such as writing a synthesis, a summary, a paraphrase, and analyzing, I’m not finding it hard anymore to write a 5 pages essay.
Another problem that I used to face before this course, is taking so much time in trying to understand a reading selection. However, in this course, I’ve became interested in reading more, since I’m gaining lots of information which I could relate to my daily life.
During the coming period I’ll focus more on reading, and planning for my writings in order to write more rich and interesting essays. I will try to benefit from relating what I write to what I read by thinking of how every author sees a certain topic from a different side and talks about it in his own way.
At the beginning of the semester, I looked at the syllabus of English 203 and saw this huge list of objectives for us to be able to succeed in the course. At first, I thought it was hard for me to accomplish all these objectives, but after our critical readings and assignments, I realized that we’re covering each objective once at a time. The main problem I encountered during the semester is reading long texts, and writing a five page essay.
ReplyDeleteBefore I enter AUB this semester, reading was my worst enemy. I usually read the first line of any subject, and it starts turning into pure torture. During Unit 1, we covered fashion and advertisement, looking at different points of views of different authors. The subject was merely adequate, since advertisement is part of my life. Being able to read the assigned texts, I was able to point out the general idea of the text, agree or disagree with the author, and respond in a way of how I felt the text was inspiring.
As for our expository essay, knowing that we had to write a five page essay, my mind went blank. How to start? Where to start? What’s the thesis? How do I link the ideas? All these questions passed in my mind in a split of seconds. Since we were taught in class about brainstorming, it made things less suffering. I had a lot of ideas; I listed them on a peace of paper, and started linking what’s good to go with each other.
My major success from this unit is personal experience. I am now able to look at things in a clearer way, and gained knowledge of interesting topics. In order to replicate these successes, it is important to stay current and updated, for language enhances your knowledge. I’m glad and satisfied by the amount of time and work I dedicated to this unit, where it’s important to use this experience and skills to develop my writing skills.
Finally, learning from our mistakes is an essential condition to increase and enhance our success in life. As time passes, the mistakes narrow down and we gain eternal knowledge.
English 203 is a required course for every student in AUB. When I first read the syllabus, I was afraid that this course will take a lot of my time because of the numerous assignments involved and especially since I took as well many other important courses this semester.
ReplyDeleteBut I told myself that since I had to take it, I will do my best; better now than later. At the beginning of the semester, the assignments were time consuming and more difficult for me because I had to put my French background aside and concentrate on the English requirements. As time flew, I felt that my reading was improving because I read the text faster, understood and analyzed them better and knew what was expected from me in my essays and reading responses. My first reading response took me a lot of time and work; I was worried because Ms Sinno told us that it should not take more than 30 min. I was anxious at first, but then I noticed that the other writing activities and the second reading response took me less time because I was becoming more familiar to writing and the formatting requirements. I guess the only major problem I am facing with this course is the time constraint because in the French system students are accorded four hours to write a single essay. I needed only to organize myself, set up a schedule and move forward. Honestly speaking, I didn’t like the themes of this unit “Communication and Visual Images” at first, especially the topics on advertisements; I would have preferred if we discussed some historical, political or economic issues. But as we started working in class I realized that the theme consisted of some interesting issues such as fashion and identity. When writing my essay on the different ways for a man to package himself, I felt like I could give my best. I felt that I made a good analysis regarding the prompt and that the texts that I read were really helpful and allowed me to provide some solid arguments and examples which helped me to reach my objective with ease.
I should also mention that, I found some difficulties in the beginning working on Moodle activities since I wasn’t too familiar with it the website.
After all the writing activities we've done so far, my writing improved in many ways: For starters, I sensed that my analysis got better with each essay and the organization of my essays got even better. I also felt that the examples that I gave were precise and helped so much into reaching the goals of my essays. My writing style also improved as a whole: my sentences became stronger and my choice of words showed skill.
I noticed that I still have some difficulties in writing smooth transitions between paragraphs and that sometimes the gaps between them are unnecessary and illogical.
To sum up, I can honestly say that I’m starting to enjoy this course; I’m getting used to the requirements and I’m really feeling that I am improving my writing and reading skill which I really need to acquire at the highest possible level since I am going to pursue my later studies in the States.
English 203 has been an entertaining course at least from to time but I have to admit it is a lot of work and I did not expect it to be that tough but I am happy that I have been doing well compared to English 102. English 203 is a course which I think would be very helpful for a student like me, who has very weak English knowledge and I think I have improved. In general, I might say English is not an easy course, but that’s what is really interesting and good about it. I gave this course a name “no game, no pain.” English 203 have definitely improved my English level in mainly vocabulary, writing, group work and reading wise. I still may need some work in my vocabulary level and I think I need some help in my grammar which I hope I will improve sooner or later, whether in this course or next semester in English 204.
ReplyDeleteEnglish 203 made me work as hard as my other courses and every time I got an essay above an average grade it made me feel good and I think that is what inspired me to keep on going and I am quite satisfied with myself even though I need to get an excellent grade in this course in order to get into my architecture major which is very competitive and my dream in American University of Beirut is to get into the architecture major. In addition, I do need a big improvement in my English skill or level in order to be satisfied with myself and knowing that I can speak the English language perfectly. I use to have a problem with my vocabulary and especially with my writing technique but however I feel like I have improved very well in my writing level and I still need some work on my vocabulary which is I hope just a matter of time. I still need some work on my writing techniques, however I think I did fairly well in my second draft for the expository essay and I appreciated the help I go from my teacher Mrs. Sinno, it was quiet helpful, especially when you gave me tips on the free standing quotations on how to avoid them and you pretty much pointed out what were my mistakes in the essay and I hope that you will find my essay to be interesting as I find this course to be with you.
English 203 has been also a more entertaining course and I am very content that I am taking with you Mrs. Sinno and do not worry I am not trying to suck up. I have to say your teaching technique has been very delightful and trying in the same time but at least it is entertaining in a way and I have never taken a course in university or school which is that much interesting other than gym class back in my school. I also enjoyed the group work which is something I never had in my school days but I am glad I adapted to the group work quickly and I find it more beneficial for all students. However, there is another problem I have which is my grammar and I do not know how to deal with it even though I tried to back then in my school days and first semester but it did not work out. I hope in the second unit of the English 203 course there will be some improvement in my grammar skills because I think if I deal with my grammar problem then it should make my writing better in a big change. I am planning in the future that I am going to get some help in my grammar skills. If I do not improve it in this semester, perhaps I will improve it in summer by making my cousin to help me out since he is an English teacher. I also had a problem with my time organization in university, however I think I have dealt with that problem since I have been doing alright in my courses but I still need more
work on it since I need to time myself well in order to do well this semester and get into the architecture major next year.
ReplyDeleteThe unit essay (comprehension test) made my day the day I got the mark because I did not expected myself to do that well since in English 102 I pretty much got bad grade on it. I think I have improved in my comprehension skills since now I got to know how to interpret ate and understand a text much better now. I always use to mislead what I read but I am happy that I have definitely pass that terrible stage I was in and I think the critical readings of all the articles and stories that I did this semester and annotation definitely helped me understand a text every time I wrote a note beside a paragraph. The group work in class was quite joyful even though it was the most things that got me tired in English class. I liked it since for once everyone in class was working in class rather than sitting down and just listening to the teacher. It was nice because It was nice how everyone in the group was giving opinion and ideas and in the end we voted what was the best ideas give and how we presented them in the essay we gave in. The essays we had to do individually was good as well since it my classmates and I were not writing about something useless or boring for a change unlike English 102. I guess you can tell how I did not enjoy or even liked English 102 but I do not have anything against the teacher it was just that the course was so dull in my point of view.
In conclusion, I hope that the second unit of the English course would be as good and interesting as the first unit test was. I also hope that we get to read about more texts like advertising, fashion and how people are so gullible. Although I am not a big fan of fashion, I admired the text about the piercings and tattoos and I also pretty much liked the text about the advertising language and how they use weasel words to influence people into buying products. In the future and next stage I plan on continuing to do well in my English 203 course and other courses, in addition if it is possible I will try to improve my grades and English level. Even though I am not a big fan of courses having to do with language like English or French, I do need it and I want to learn a language in a course for once without hating it. I have to admit English 203 did not make me hate it or even finding It boring and I do not know exactly why it did not, but I am glad It did not and whether it was because of my classmates or technique of the course or even the teacher, I am satisfied how this course is going with me. I hope this love toward English language will not change and I would like this emotion to spread around me whenever I am going to finish with the English course and start learning the French and Spanish language.
Throughout my school years, I have been taking English obligatory classes. Graduated from a French based system, I realized that there was something quite different when I came to AUB and took English 203.
ReplyDeleteIn my school: “ Lycee Alphonse De Lamartine De tripoli” they taught us the proper literary English which is partly different from the American English system. Actually, I always loved attending those classes, because English hours were often a way to interact, a way to learn more and have more culture. However, in writing, English 203 is different, as at school they taught us other ways to think, write and to compose our essays and responses. On the other hand, at AUB, English 203 concentrates more on the way a student must write, how he should search so he could write in a more efficient way and most importantly how to express himself while writing and in speech. Furthermore, a new thing we discovered is the Plagiarism which was known but vaguely.
For me, writing was always a way to escape from reality or to express my feelings and my thoughts. Every time I felt emotional, angry or even happy, I would go take a paper and write down what I felt. Sometimes I would draw my words, because to me, a writer is not only the one who writes texts, articles, poems and stories… A writer is the one who just uses a pencil, expressing his feelings. A famous quote written by Bill Beatle stated that" the aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think that what to think, rather to improve our minds so as to enable us to think for ourselves then to lead the memory with thoughts of other men".
One of the most interesting issues that I have experienced in this course was the debate sessions which to me are unforgettable. They allowed us students not only to express ourselves and what we believe in but also to properly talk in front of our classmates. Every student has a favorite activity to do in class and another thing that he dislikes. To me writing essays was my favorite because it allows me to learn more about the specific topic. But the problem that I have encountered was the incorrect grammar use that I thought it was acquired during my high school studies. In contrast, reading long essays that I have no interest in bored me and made me feel like I was being forced to do so rather than happily evaluating a focus. In other hand the second problem that I found out is the way I read the question in a fast way and without paying attention to some clue word in the sentence which made fail the unit test 1. And as a popular Arabic proverb states that humans learn from their mistakes, I decided from now on to read more carefully the questions, paying attention to each word and hoping that things gets better in the unit 2. As for the grammar errors, I'm trying to reviewing the grammar rules for the tenses.
Therefore, in English 203, I’ve learned to be a better writer. I’ve upgraded my English writing skills as now I am apt to write in a more efficient way. I think that this course will open many roads for me, aiding me in my ecology courses where I am supposed to write and develop essays and this is due to all the help that I've gotten from the information provided from this course. Finally, I would like to congratulate the teacher of this course, not that I have the authority or position to do so, but from a student’s point of view I loved the way she made me interested in applying the work asked from us to do and the way she interacted with us and showed us that she is here to help us improve rather than forcing us to work on subjects we don’t like.
The reflective journal is a certain record of our progress in learning that focuses on our reflections, our analysis and our own thoughts. The main purpose of writing it is for us to have a clearer picture and a better organization of our thoughts, and more importantly to arrange the steps we need to take to improve even more.
ReplyDeleteTo begin with, if I have a brief overview of the English 203 courses that we have taken so far, and if I question the given materials, I would firstly realize the following. Studying English texts wasn’t limited to reading and understanding the content, it actually surpassed that and helped us, students, to improve other skills like the communicative ones, and that is by discussing the main ideas and the implicit meanings of the given texts. Additionally, it allowed us to progress our analytical and logical skills, and that is by forcing us to go further in our understandings and deeper in our analysis. In fact, personally, as a French educated student, it wasn’t really easy for me to turn from French literature to the English one. Finding words to explain myself orally was my biggest struggle, however it has improved, and it still is. I actually find myself more comfortable than before in expressing myself in English, however, I do not feel that I mastered it, and I do not think that it is enough. As for writing, it was a bit easier, but slow as well. And during this semester, talking and discussing texts and entering group conversations was a primary matter to me, and was my main aid in this battle. I plan to write faster, and to find words quicker, and I can only obtain that by reading more and by talking more in the English language, in classes and outside of them.
Furthermore, one of the good things that I’ve been doing is organization and order. In fact, my writings whether the essays or the responses, follow a certain structure, are coherent and most importantly cover many aspects of the prompt. As well, I tried my best to write interesting ideas, different from the normal and stereotyped ones. Nevertheless, in some cases, I should have gone further and developed more profoundly my ideas, and I should have been more careful with my grammatical errors. On the other hand, as a reader, due to the active reading techniques and due to the course requirements, I was not only able to understand and analyze the content in a deeper way, but I was also able to criticize it.
Additionally, we participated in some developing programs such as the group works (especially the group summaries), the peer editing and the conferences. These one on ones gave us the chance to understand different visions of the same image, and more notably the chance to compare our works with the others. However, when it comes to the group summaries, I felt totally out of place. I wasn’t really able to continue other people’s ideas and sentences, and that wasn’t caused by any inability of understanding their point of views, nor any lack of objectivity, but it was actually because how chaotic and disordered it was. In fact, this English course made me discover my need to always plan and organize my ideas before doing any writing. I just can’t write unless I see structure and order, and quite honestly, I can’t tell if it’s a positive or a negative thing.
Finally, one of the most interesting ideas that we discussed in class was “Weasel Words”. Indeed, it was a subject that never crossed my head before. But now, every time I look at an ad or that I hear one, I tend to search for these weasel words and figure out how the text made me see a reality that I have never seen before. This specific text written by Lutz (1980) stopped me from believing and relying on advertising.
When I knew that I have to write an essay 4-5 pages, I thought it is a very hard task. It is not easy to write 4-5 pages because you need many information to be able to do that . The thing that helped me while writing is that we have read many essays and discussed them in the class, so I had a background information about the essay . But it is still not easy because you should know how to select the appropriate information in the appropriate place. I faced some difficulties because I could not use all the essays that we have read because some of them are not related to my topic or maybe I could not relate them . So I focused on some points and I could not elaborate them more than this, and this was obvious in my first draft where I repeated the same idea many times but in somehow a different way. I went to the writing center to have some help so I can have a very good essay but I think that the time spent in the writing center was not sufficient for that because the person who helped could not guide me how and what to select from each essay because it needs a lot of time to do that because we had about 8 essays as a references and we didn’t had enough time . So I had to select the ideas that I wanted to include in the essay alone where the selected one are not sufficient to have 4-5 pages essay. So I had to include examples to elaborate more, and I don’t know if these examples where the most suitable one. But after the first draft I learned somehow how to organize the essay and to avoid repeating the same idea and how to select the appropriate information to put them in the appropriate place in the essay where you are given some sources or essays to use as references. Also I learned how to do text citation so I can avoid plagiarism. Moreover I learned how to elaborate my ideas in a clearer way. Although it was not an easy assignment for me to do , I think it is a very nice one and that it will help me very much in the future as well as it helped me in improving my English language.
ReplyDeleteEnglish has never been my number one asset. On the contrary, it has often been one of the biggest challenges I face everyday, especially that I attend an American University where one is expected to be at least fluent in this basic subject. Well, I am not. I struggle with the writing as well as with oral expression. I have difficulties when it comes to be elaborate in regards to vocabulary, to writing a paragraph on the go without having to think twice of each word placed on paper. I also have difficulties expressing myself orally, addressing my peers without the fear of sounding ridiculous! No need to say that the more these negative ideas go through my mind while trying to formulate a correct sentence the more I freeze; and the more I freeze the lower are the numbers of times where I do dare addressing others with this foreign language (which shouldn’t be so foreign any more after all!)
ReplyDeleteSo, to be more specific in regards to the problems I faced during this fall semester and that pertain (a new word I learnt not so long ago!) to writing, I could point out several difficulties. First, I must say ideas weren’t coming to me easily. Indeed, when one is thinking about things and issues in his mother language (in my case Arabic), and wishes to translate those in English for instance, weirdly enough, it just doesn’t seem that right! And to start thinking in English in order to avoid the translation fiasco, one has to be “familiar” with the language to say the least. Which brings me to the second problem: comprehension. One shameful thing I dare to admit is that I have troubles understanding texts fully. Eventhough texts we encounter in this course are straightforward and collected into one interesting book especially conceived or students’ usage, I still cannot say it is easy for me to comprehend a text with all the small details and the witty reflections that others would automatically and “effortlessly” get. Needless it is to hence highlight my difficulty in putting the proper words at their place, without sounding too “boring” on paper.
However, I do have some good news (at least to myself): I am indeed finding it easier to decipher all what this beautiful language contains! Practice makes wonders! Actually spending 2.5 hours per week listening to the teacher explain to the class and debate several topics with my classmates have made me grasp more and more words and expressions. I have become more and more familiar with it and the more I am exposed to it, the better I become at it. Needless to say that those many assignments we’ve had during the semester obliged me (not that I’m complaining or anything…!) to read loads of lines (sometimes more than once!) that made me both understand the meanings and