I have learnt a lot from what has been
taught. Firstly, I become more aware of the basic grammar errors that I used to
make through all these years. Though I still make some grammar errors, the
amount of those errors is much smaller than that before.
Secondly, I learnt how to extract the main
point of a paragraph through summarizing practices. It is really helpful
because I can now have a general sense of what a passage is telling about. Instead
of reading a passage over and over again and having no idea what the main point
of it is, I will try to find the topic sentence of each paragraph and get the
whole structure of the essay first. This enhances my understanding against any
information and really fastens my reading speed.
Realizing the importance of an outline, I
learnt to structure my own essay using an outline. After brainstorm, I will
list all the topic sentences and figure out what thesis statement I want to
write. This gives me a clear flow of my essay and shortens my time writing an
essay. Once the outline is done, it is much easier to elaborate the outline
into a passage.
I learnt how to debate for my topic sentence
by introducing examples. I learnt that examples from personal life are not
good. We should use examples that are more solid like historical events or citation
of famous people. I also learnt a really useful skill, which is how to quote a
citation. I was not used to the concept of citation before. I used to think
that if I paraphrase the information I do not need a citation but now I know I
do.
I also learnt a lot from peers, their
assignments give me a lot of ideas that I have never thought about. It is quite
interesting and beneficial from reading peers’ assignments. Moreover, I widen
my content and knowledge by searching materials for my essay. I will encounter
different views, sometimes with totally different stands. This helps me to
think more objectively as I absorb ideas from both sides and get my own stand
after analyzing the two. I will add my own thoughts instead of accepting
everything that I have been fed.
I acquire writers’ point well due to the
practices of reader response. I learnt to find my own examples and write my own
elaborations. This forces me to think more beyond the writer and because of
that I will comprehend the writers’ points better because I need to go through
the writers’ points over and over again to make sure that my examples support
the view or disagree with it.
The audio feedback is very useful. It
really makes the marking comments easy to be understood. Though sometimes I
still feel confused with some of the written feedback, I can talk with the
teacher face to face and understand what my errors are and improve that part.
