Throughout my life education has always been advocated as a way of bettering myself. I recall as a child always being told to go school and learn, yet I was never taught how to learn. Although I was exposed to various subjects and books filled with information about those subjects, I was never given a foundation to understand how I was to digest all that information. Before my 1S/T English pathway I considered annotating as highlighting text in a book and outlines consisted of random words on paper with no direction. I was taught to read and write, yet I wasn’t taught that becoming a better reader can help you become a better writer. Coming into pathway I felt like a hopeless soul, yet the foundation that I have now established has made the subject I dreaded the most is not half bad.
When I entered English 1A/S pathway my weaknesses as a writer were paragraph structure, grammar and comma splices. While I still struggle a bit in those areas, the growth I have shown over the 24 weeks in the course is extremely noticeable. One area that I have seen vast improvement is in the way I am able to construct sentences through the various tools Professor Fong has provided us. Before the 1S/T pathway I did not know how to properly combined sentences through the use of coordinators or sub coordinators thinking that a comma was all one needed. For example, in my essay “In the News We Trust” the skills I develop in the 1S/T pathway I was able to construct this sentence “In such a profit driven nation, it can be hard to do the right thing, for the right thing could ultimately cost someone their job, or worse, close down their business.” This sentence showcases how I was able to effectively use “for” as my coordinator to combined my sentences which is something I was not able to effectively do before. While this is a small sample of my use of coordinators when combining sentences, with reading the work provided in this portfolio you notice various sentences where I have applied that skill
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While every reading/writing workshop Professor Fong conducted was extremely effective, the Peer Response workshop for me helped the most. When a person writes, whether it be for personal or academic reasons it is usually intended for an audience. As a writer I have always had an anxiety when it came to having others read my work which then lead for me to avoid writing in general. The Peer Response workshop consisted of every student reading each other’s drafts and then we were to give each other constructive feedback in a polite and respect manner. This for me what something that really help me with the writing process, while it not only helped develop my critical reading and thinking skills, it helped with my anxieties that I associated with writing.
The English 1S/T pathway also made me a better reader which translating into my writing. In this pathway I was taught that there are many steps one must take when they are reading a particular text. A few steps that helped me with my transitions into becoming a better reader were proper annotation and analysis to synthesis. Before this pathway I would read a text and just highlight words or phrases that I felt were of importance which now I understand is just a small portion of was annotating really is. I learned than when reading a text, we should underline, highlight, make comments and act as If we were in a conversation with the author. When reading the text using post-it notes to write down comments or ask questions so we can later answer will help not only retain information, but keep us engaged in the text. That has been the key to my success in not only 1S/T class, but in all my classes. I understand now that being an active reader translates into being an active learner which leads to understanding the material. I also lacked the ability to analyze text which then lead to me not being able to see the similarities and differences among various text. Professor Fong created various discussions and group activities that allowed for us to develop the skills to analyzing various text so we could later showcase in our writing.
The work I have provided in this portfolio showcases how I have grown not only as a student, but as a person. Had someone asked me if I saw myself being an active member of the Foothill College community when I started my academic journey here 10 months ago the answer would have been NO! To my surprise I ended up being a very active member of the Foothill community. I joined the cycling club on campus, I was recommended to be a Foothill math tutor by one of my professors and most importantly I am succeeding academically. The skills that I have learned in the 1S/T pathway are skills that I can apply to various aspects of my life. Going forward in all my classes I am going to apply what I learned in this pathway to help me achieve my ultimate goal of receiving a bachelor’s degree. On the first day of our 1S class we were asked to make an analogy of how we felt about writing in which I said “Writing is like exercise, I hate it.” That is no longer the case, while I still hate exercise, writing has started to become an enjoyable part of learning.