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Maria Soto

Professor Batty

English 102

11 December 2019

My Journey

This was a good semester because I learned more and I got more English skills. At first it

was a bit hard because I didn’t understand the topics and didn’t know how to apply them to my

daily life or my writings. My professor Batty was a great help in the way that she helped me

understand the things that I had to write and how I had to apply the different topics that we

would talk in class. There were a lot of topic that Ms. Batty talked about in this semester such as

Poetry, Drama, Graphic Novel, Literature, Psychoanalytic Criticism, and Queer Theory.

Literature was the first subject that we talked about the first day of class I didn’t know the

meaning. Am not sure is because I don’t like reading and I really don’t know why, probably

because I haven’t found the book that gets my attention. One of the reasons that I don’t like

reading is because it makes me really sleepy. Ms. Batty gave the class some tip to help us

improve our reding by taking notes. She called it the 3- Pass Approach which are the Preview

which means to look at the title, author, picture, quote, summary and review. She explained that

by doing these things it was going to be more interesting to read because we would go dipper

into the book. Other things that are also important are to reflect and to do active reading /

annotate vocabulary with these 3 things it would be easier to read and understand literature. The

word literature means “things made from letters” there could be fiction and non-fiction.

Poetry was our next subject; the big question is How do you define poetry? Well poetry can

be rhythmic. Another thing about poetry arouses feelings and some time changes the way our
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minds think. There were a lot of good poems that were discussed in class, I enjoyed this topic

because there was some poem that were really deep. The first time was really interesting because

there were words that I didn’t understand when I researched the word, they had a different

meaning then what I thought it would be. Some of the ways to read poetry are to read carefully

and pay attention to every detail. The first time you read is to feel the experience, the second

time that we re-read is a good time to look for words that we might not understand, also read out

loud to best understand. This is another way to express your feelings it could also be done

through images.

Queer theory was another topic that we discussed in class we learned hoe there are different

binaries. Also, how there are gender identity, gender expression, biological sex, and sexual

orientation. This specific subject got my attention because now in day we are trying to change

the way that some people think and show that it fine to be different. the play that I got to read por

this topic was interesting in the way that as I kept reading a lot of things would happen. I also

had some problem in understanding some parts but would do some research to understand it

better. Another thing that I did was to watch the film in a way it was really addicting to watch

because I wanted to understand the play. Other than that, I liked discussing this topic.

A lot of things happened and I learned a lot of new things that will help me in my writing. I

thank my professor for explaining and giving the help when needed. This class made me see

Literature in a different way also in the way that now I know that literature is in everything and

every were. I feel that poetry in a great to read because it’s easy and it could be fun. As I had

already mentioned Ms. Batty teached us a lot of subjects that from one topic it developed into a

lot more and more specific and easy to understand. I enjoyed doing the poetry and the play

assignment it was something different but fun to do.