12/9/2013

Dear Ms. Agosta, Throughout the entire semester Ive certainly noticed a huge improvement in my writing ability over the entire semester. I owe it much to the many things weve done in class like the many amount of social aspects of writing to the things I do on my own. The social aspects we had in class such as: peer review workshops, teacher-student conferences, and discussions in class have had a tremendous impact on my writing, without them I doubt it would have improved as much. As well as doing things on my own like revising and editing, and how to read texts and considering the ideas within different texts to incorporate them within my own writing, these things have too have aided my writing excessively. I consider this a great accomplishment seeing as I have never been too good of a writer. I think I owe the majority of the evolution of my writing to the many social aspects we conducted in class. Ive learned that without all of these workshops, conferences, and peer review sessions it would have not improved as much. When I first wrote my literacy narrative paper it was full of so many mistakes and errors that I never would have caught but my peers did. Thanks to them I was able to vastly enhance that paper before turning it in. I also learned from the mistakes that I had made and I applied that knowledge to everything else I would have to write in the future so I wouldnt make the same mistake twice. I honestly think that the teacherstudent conferences really helped clear up a lot of assignments here and there and I was able to go back and change anything that I may have misunderstood. Without those I would have turned in work that was completely different than everybody elses because of how I tried to interpret the assignment. One of those assignments was, again, the literacy narrative. I was completely confused on what to do and what literacy to pick but thanks to you I was able to get on the right track and turn in something exceptionally well written.

12/9/2013

Something Ive always had trouble with after writing something down was revising and editing it. I have always hated going over things that Ive already written, it was one of my weaknesses in my writing. I thought they were good enough after the first draft and I would only make some minor spelling changes here and there to make it seem like I had edited the whole thing. Now I understand that it is important to fully revise and edit all your drafts. So naturally, since I never revised and edited anything extensively as I have had to do this semester this really challenged me. All of this editing and revising helped me learn that even if you think your first draft is absolute perfection or the work of literary genius, there is always a way to make it better that you may have not used/seen when you first wrote it. A weakness in the past has become one my strengths in my written work now. Thats why I also think that my discourse communities ethnography is my best work in the class because of all the hard work I put into it including a few hours of outlining, gathering information, and revising + editing. It connects to my goals as a writer because as a writer Im always looking to improve and do better and this is one of the assignments where I did just that. Just by writing this letter I can see how much Ive changed as a writer just through one semester of English. Ive improved overall and gained an understanding in writing through the social aspects of the class and have turned a great weakness in my writing into one of my strengths in it through hard work and dedication. I can now truly appreciate the skill of the written word. I would like to thank you everything for everything youve made me realize and accomplish throughout this semester Ms. Agosta. Sincerely, Alejandro Benavides