Prof. Jessica Penner | OL33 | Fall 2021

Kimberly Parra, Final Reflection, 1st Draft

After completing the work assigned in English 1121 taught by Professor Penner, I believe I have indeed changed as a writer and reader. Before this class, I wasn’t very familiar with the use of different genres and discourse communities. When starting the Unit 1 project, the class was asked what they believed discourse communities meant. This was a topic that wasn’t mentioned to me in English 1101. I was unsure of the meaning and when I was taught the meaning, I was not sure of what DC groups I was in. I was glad that Professor Penner gave us many low stakes assignments that allowed me to find three discourse communities I was a part of. I developed my writing when I wrote a speech about an issue in my discourse community for Unit 1. As a class we read speeches that showed me how important the delivery of a speech is. The speech that we read in class by Douglass was full of emotion and passion. It was clear to me I wanted my speech to have that same emotion since it was an issue in the community I was in. In my future, I know I will have to speak to an audience or share my opinion among others. By writing speeches in class, I was able to practice showing emotions in my words to then say out loud. I took a communication class before taking English 1121 and I believe now I have more practice with speeches. 

Throughout middle and high school, I did not have a good relationship with writing and reading. I was always assigned many essays that I never felt I wanted to write. This was due to not having interest in what I was writing. When I took English in college, I felt I began to enjoy writing since I was able to write about issues that interested me. I was also able to incorporate my opinion, which I thought was great. This allowed me to learn about annotated bibliographies, MLA formatting, and genre. I believe English 1121 has prepared me for my future because I have more practice with citing my documents in MLA. The annotated bibliography that our class did for Unit 2 was great practice for MLA citation. I had also done an annotated bibliography in English 1101 so it was familiar to me. It is important for me to know how to cite since in my further college studies. I know I will need to cite documents, videos, and articles in my future classes. For next semester, I am looking to take classes like modern art, and child psychology. These classes will definitely ask me to write papers about different types of arts or research papers. 

1 Comment

  1. Rabbi

    I enjoyed the detailed things about the author writing. The writer changed over the semester by learning new things like discourse community and also the writer gets to show her interest through writing which gives her motives to learn more. The writer can use skills in future for other classes as mentioned. I would say the writer can add one more paragraph and double space line to make it better,

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