M.+Course+Reflection

Goodbye English 11 thanks for the learning experiences and all the long nights of staying up writing papers and reading books. I do not regret you English 11 because I have improved as a person and as a writer and I would like to take the time to look back at the things I have done and how I have improved. Let us start off by discussing my strengths and weaknesses as a writer because they have most definitely changed since September of 2010. In the beginning of the year I absolutely despised writing, when I thought about having to write a paper I would cringe. I found myself struggling to make papers the appropriate length, where to put commas, and even what to talk about. I always struggled with fighting the temptation to use contractions all the time but I have finally broken that curse. Also, I have improved on writing thesis statements, which is a pivotal part of writing. One thing that I have always been good at is giving my papers a voice, I write them as if I am telling a story to someone rather them reading it on a piece of paper. I could go on for days on the things that I have improved on but I hope that you will see them throughout in my writing for proof. In the battle of wiki’s viruses’ paper portfolio’s wiki spaces will always win in my book. I think that wiki is a great idea for portfolio because there is no need to write papers out by hand. Paper portfolio’s waste paper in my eyes because once you mess up on the paper you have to throw it away and start all over again. Also with wiki if you are confused on what to write or what you need our teacher’s wiki space is just a click away so it helps out the people who are less responsible. The only thing that I can pick out that I do not like about wiki portfolio’s is that I did not like nor understand the annotated log. The log posed as a problem for me because time stamps change every time you update a piece on your wiki so once I edited my papers I did not have the original time stamp. But, to sum it all up I do enjoy using wiki for my portfolio and I also believe the upcoming juniors will enjoy it too. My favorite piece I have written was a narrative essay I wrote this year. The topic for this essay was “if you could talk to one person in the entire world who would it be and why”, and I chose a close friend who passed away named Joey Fonseca. This essay was a good way for me to just let out all my inner feelings that I could not say to anyone else. When I wrote the essay I felt as if I was directly speaking to Joey and it helped me as a person accept his death and move on. Another reason why this essay became my all time favorite is because I received a 100 on it from a teacher who never gives 100’s. I feel like this piece of writing really shows off all my strengths as a writer and I encourage everyone to go read it. If I could grade my writing at the beginning of the year I would say it was somewhere around a low C or a high D, but with the help of my English 11 class I think that now my writing is more of a high B or a low A. I have improved in so many ways and learned so many new things, and with that all being said, goodbye English 11.