what I've Learned This Semester

Over this last semester in English 101 we really focused and became experts in taking two different sources, stripping them down to their main points, and using them to compare and contrast our own topic or thesis. After that we wrote detailed reflections on our essays. Looking back to the beginning of the semester I know there is no way I could have properly wrote a interpretive essay let along write a reflective paper on it. To start off we wrote some smaller papers comparing reality game shows with english class. From there we moved on to reading someone else's essays and interpreting them. This is where things became a little more difficult because it's real hard to not just give a recap of the text. Instead you have to put the story on the back burner and really focus on the main points. We spent quite a bit of time on this step because it was crucial to our final portfolio. After it appeared that most of the class had this process down, we moved on to reflecting on our interpretive essays. Just like before, when writing a reflective essay its extremely difficult and essential to not summarize the original work. Although you might do a great job of retelling the story, that is not what reflecting means. When writing these kinds of essays you want to get your main points across to the reader and in a deliberate or blunt fashion. The reader shouldn't have to reread a section, the main points should jump out of the page. All in all, I learned a lot from English 101, and truly believe I'm a better writer because I took this class.