Jennifer Huerta

10/11/2017
Professor Doutherd
English 5M

Achievement Summary

So far this class has been the challenge I needed. My current relationship with the class is
a love and hate. By love I mean being exposed to new writings formats for example rhetorical
analysis and by the hate part is not understanding some concepts and following up with writer's
block. In all honestly I have already benefited from this class as I too use your reading response
format for my GOVT 35 (world politics) reading responses and has helped me excel in those.
Besides tling tactics from your class I have also learned the many different strategies and
thinkings other writers use like in the Writing about Writing book. All the small passages you
make us do reading responses have opened my eyes and helped me format my writing in various
ways.
To be exact the assigned readings have been one of my biggest challenges because Im
not used to following certain rules and making sure I carefully analyze what needs to be
discussed so that was something new. I try to push myself and make sure I met my goals by
reading the prompt and coming up with claims and data that can help and although I stumble
through some I know that it's all apart of the learning experience. Throughout the first reading
response we were assigned to Brandt, Deborah Sponsors of Literacy, which helped develop a
new sense to how to think and properly analyze what the reading was about with no format yet
introduced. The first reading response was rather easy, easy because it was to simply read and
analyze without a proper structure or format which made it easy until we were introduced to the
our routine format that began with reading response number two through ten.
Furthermore, throughout the second response, as I was still so new to how the reading
responses were supposed to be formatted, we finally discussed the permanent format and
implemented it in the second response for Ferris, Dana. Multilingual Students and College
Writing. The reading response was easy at first but taking up a claim that would support your
full anayzes of the reading was something tricky and difficult. The directions for the new
template we were to follow was to have the name of text, a small summary, a claim (most
important part,) data to back up claim, and the final connection followed by a logical sequence
on why you choose your information with the addition of new vocabulary learned.
By the ninth reading response following the given template was easy but what still gave
me troubles was making the connection between my claim and the whole connection including
my data and the logic to why i choose it. Around this time I felt more comfortable than I did in
the beginning trials of these responses. I noticed that although I would still get criticized on what
I did incorrect, I also would receive positive feedback that helped y self esteem rise when
finishing the last couple of responses left of the semester.
At last, the final tenth reading response. The tenth reading response consisted of Stuart
Greenes Argument as Conversation: The Role of Inquiry in Writing a Researched Argument,
which was about the structure of arguments and how to properly formulate one. By this reading
response I had finally come to terms that effort is key to learning and I must admit that this was
all still a learning process for myself I found that I could write more about something and try to
make the connections as clear as i could so that the audience could understand and take away
from it.
In conclusion, this course has granted me with many new insightful ways I can improve
as a writer in this class and many others. Although the path can get a bit hard sometimes you
make sure we understand what's being asked and if not we have a whole classroom full of kids
that will. Overall the reading responses have been the biggest key factor that I have made sure to
implement into other courses. I can definitely see how adding the reading responses have made
me grow as a thinker, reader, writer and a better version of myself I would have not been able to
see before. Although I did not finish by having all perfect responses I can definitely point out
how much i have grown to analyze and comprehend as well as take criticism for the sake of my
education.

Overall, I can genuinely see my growth as a reader, writer, and thinker. I went from
having little high school writing skills (which let me tell you was not very much) to being able to
learn from my writing mistakes later demonstrating a transformation of understanding the
academic text. Aside from that, I had also developed a strategy to help me comprehend more as a
reader where I would write down ideas I merely connected with and then wrote it down on
multicolor sticky notes. I am well aware that I still need to continue to practice with my choice of
diction, but during the duration of the ten logs my analyzation, criticism, and responses to the
texts has increased my writing skills for future english composition courses