Final Learning Blog

Throughout this semester in English 101 I have had many takeaways that I am sure will help me in my many years to come. Some of the takeaways that I will be highlighting are Peer Review/Feedback, Learning blogs, Group projects, Research designs/proposals, and genre constraints. All of these in some way helped me to better myself as well as be more open-minded, especially when it comes to writing papers.

Feedback is something that I don’t like getting all the time and something that I am reluctant about giving to others. Feedback is important because you might not see anything wrong with your work simply because you wrote it. This is where I learned how not to be skeptical to change. In this case change can bring about a better grade.

Peer review is something I really had to get used to. The first time around I wrote one word comments that weren’t very helpful. After I realized how important peer review can actually be I started to read my classmates work and give detailed comments to help them out. This was the outcome of reading an article about peer review in the Grassroots Writing Journal.

Example: I would put comments such as good, nice job, or I would just write I didn’t see anything that needed changing. After seeing the importance of peer review I made comments on things that I thought wasn’t clear and what things could be expanded on.

Reflecting on me was something I had trouble with during the beginning of this semester. I always found myself talking about how the class was structured instead of what problems I had and how I could fix them. By the end of the semester I was able to identify with what I was struggling with and better track what I have learned. I did this by taking more time on my learning blogs to actually track and explain my progress with concrete examples.

Group projects are my least favorite thing to do because I have had bad experiences with this. During Unit 2 I had a chance to enhance my communication skills. By communication skills I mean expressing my ideas clearly and being open to others’ ideas. This made the group project successful. So now I will have a strategy when I have to do other group projects.

Example: When our first group assignment was due we had to rush and finish it in class because no one in the group had talked to each other and no one did the assignment. After that mishap I started to open up and communicate so that we could divide the work and everything was clear.

 One of my biggest obstacles that I overcame would have to be completing the research designs and proposals for my project. This was a challenge to me because I had never done this before I usually just do the project; I don’t normally have to ask for permission on a topic and go into details as to why I chose what I did. From doing these research designs and proposals I learned how to be specific in explaining myself and also just what a research design and proposal entails.

Example: On the rough drafts of my research designs and proposals I had many comments saying that I wasn’t being specific enough. Reason being is that my instructor already knew what I was doing so I didn’t feel the need to go into great detail. During the revision stage I made sure that I went into enough detail so if anyone else besides my instructor was to read my paper they would understand it.

In conclusion, I have learned a great deal as stated in the paragraphs above. The most memorable concept that I have learned in this class would have to be the constraints that are put on certain genres. This was memorable to me because it gave me a chance to work with different genres and also break the rules of those genres. Working with different genres such as post-it notes, sidewalk chalk, and to-do list helped me learn that because something is said to have to be a certain way, doesn’t mean that you can’t put your own style to it. Also I learned that everything is not written the same each genre has its own rules.

Example: For the group project we changed the inside of a children’s book to have the content of a news article. When we showed the book to people they immediately acted as if we had done something wrong. They repeatedly said that it wasn’t supposed to be like that because no one had ever written them like that.