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Darnell Montejo

Professor Batty

English 101

29 May 2019

Reflective Essay

I have completed the spring semester of 2019 and the English 101 class has challenged

me with my writing, reading and critical thinking skills the most. I have learned so much this

semester about my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. I’ve learned of ways and techniques I

can use on writing assignments or any class that will require me to write essays in the future, this

classed has helped me immensely not just for now but for the future. The group activities with

my familias also helped me more with understanding the lessons or when we discussed the book

“Still Water Saints” by Alex Espinoza together as a class it helped me understand the book so

much better. I hope to continue improving as a writer especially because I felt like my

argumentative essays weren’t as strong as I hoped they would be. I will elaborate more in the

following paragraphs of a whole reflection on my English 101 class and my personal experience

with it.

I will explain what I’ve learned about writing, reading and critical thinking this semester

in my English 101 class. Let’s begin with what I’ve learned this semester in writing. So, with

writing I learned of a technique called the three-story thesis and this technique helps me compose

a much stronger thesis in my argumentative essays with much more information and makes my

thesis much clearer when writing an argumentative essay. Let’s move on to reading. In reading,

we read a book called “Still Water Saints” by Alex Espinoza and when reading the book we were

required to make and write a reading journal and while reading the book we had to write down
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quotes, themes or thoughts we had about the book. This reading journal helped a lot when

reading the book because I can write down the thoughts and ideas I had about reading the book

and I can also look back at the reading journal and use some of the quotes or ideas I wrote down

if I have to write an essay on the book. Finally, let’s discuss what I learn about critical thinking

in this class. With critical thinking, we sometimes had questions and discussions on the lessons

or the book we were reading and professor Batty would always ask us questions when we would

get in our familias and we would discuss about them with each other as a group and then after as

a class all together and this activity would help me think creatively and critically.

Now, I will explain what I’ve learned about myself as a writer, my strengths and

weaknesses as a writer, and which assignments and activities, etc. helped me learn things. First

off, let’s start off with the things I’ve learned about my self as a writer. I have learned that as a

writer I will not enjoy writing an essay or story if I am not invested in the topic so sometimes I

have to change my topic so many times until I choose the one that I am actually going to enjoy

writing. I will sometimes I will procrastinate to write the essay or story if I am not interested or

invested in the topic. Let’s discuss my strengths as a writer. My strengths as a writer are that

when I am invested or interested in a topic my brain just goes crazy with ideas and I can’t stop

writing and I don’t even want to be distracted because I have so much to write down. Let’s

discuss my weaknesses as writer. My weaknesses as a writer are that I sometimes don’t know

how to execute my ideas perfectly or clearly, I will sometimes sound out of order because I

forget to organize my ideas. My other weakness is that my thesis and my counter argument

aren’t always the best or they don’t come off as clear to the reader. Now, let’s discuss the

assignments and activities in the English 101 class that helped me learn things. Well let me begin

with saying that I enjoyed when we would get with our familias and answer questions and then
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discuss them all together as a class it helped me feel more integrated in the lesson were learning

that week and actually helped me retain all the things I was being taught. The other assignment

that helped me learn were the reading journals because they came in handy when we had to write

the essay because I already had quotes and I ideas I had written before.

Finally, lets discuss what I will hope to continue on improving on and how I will apply

what I have learned in the future, both in school and in my career. Let’s begin with what I will

hope to continue to improve on. I will hope to continue on improving on my time management

because I always procrastinate on writing essays and also use that time wisely on researching or

brainstorming before writing an essay. I will also try to improve on writing argument essays

because I have noticed that those are not my strong suits. Within the argument essays I will try to

improve my thesis statements and my counter arguments by making them much stronger and

clearer. Let’s continue on how I will apply what I have learned in the English 101 class in the

future, both in school and in my career. I will apply all the time management or writing skills I

have learned in class and apply it to the future, I feel like the three story thesis will definitely

help me in the future so will the brainstorming techniques for my essays in future classes or even

for applications when I start to apply for other colleges or jobs.

In conclusion, I discussed and reflected on the English 101 class and what I have learned

from it. I explained what I have learned about writing, reading, and critical thinking this

semester. In writing, reading and critical thinking I learned about the three-story thesis, reading

journal and class discussions. I learned as a writer I will not enjoy writing an essay if I am not

interested in the topic and my strength as a writer is when I enjoy a topic I cant stop writing but

my weaknesses are that I don’t know how to execute or organize my ideas as clear sometimes

and writing thesis or counter arguments. The assignments and activities that helped me learn
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things were the familia activities and the reading journals. I hope to continue on improving on

time management and writing argument essays. I will apply all I learned in this class for future

college essays and job applications. This class has challenged me with my writing, reading and

critical thinking skills and it helped me learn and prosper the most as a student and as a writer.
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