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Dominick Karmo

Professor Hankerson
English 1010
3 December 2015
Reflective Essay
My name is Dominick Karmo and I am a college student attending Wayne State
University. I am currently enrolled in an introductory English course to prepare for
English 1020. I have learned a lot of new things this semester, especially about African
American literacy and culture. I never knew how important African American literacy
influences the way we communicate today. I have learned many skills and writing styles
that will help me for future English courses to come. My reading and writing skills are
become better and English 1010 has taught me many strategies and tricks to reading
articles and writing essays. There are four major writing projects that we have been
working hard so hard on this semester and I know I will continue to work with these
styles of writing in future years to come.
Most of the projects that we worked on in this course all had a central focus of
African American literacy and culture. We have studied writing from various African
American authors and scholars and have had them as the main focus throughout our essay
projects. African American Literacy is important because its roots still influence the way
we speak today. Slaves that were brought to this country coming from many different
tribes and spoke different languages and learned English as a means of communicating
with each other. Throughout the years this dialect of English called Black English was
revered as a hip way to speak and it has influenced the common way we speak.

The first project that I was assigned was a literacy narrative. This was a personal
story about our transitions from high school to college and really focusing on learning a
new language. I have learned how to write about my personal life and use the right form
of speech for literacy narratives. This essay was a good way to reflect on myself and
understand the level of skill I have as a reader and writer.
The second project that I have worked on was the Informative Summary. This
style of writing is different from the first because in the literacy narrative I had to use our
own knowledge and experiences to write a story about myself. For this project I had to
take information from somebody elses writing and summarize and perceive them into
my own words. This project was difficult because when I tried reading the article at first
it was hard for me to really grasp what the author was saying, so I had to read the article a
few times to be able to really summarize and talk about what the author is trying to
convey. I learned how to summarize a piece of writing through a style of summarizing
mentioned in the Wayne Warrior called annotating. Annotating is reading a piece and
writing notes in ones own words throughout the piece.
The third project I worked on was the Media Analysis Essay, which I completed
with a peer from my class (Dylan Everett). This was similar to the informative summary
but it requires more concentration and insight. We looked at a blog post created by Patrice
Grell Yursik who calls herself Afrobella. She wrote a letter to everyone and everything
that revolves around hip hop and gave her opinions and proposal to this media article. To
really understand an authors words you have to put yourself in their shoes and
understand what they are trying to convey and where they are coming from so you can be
able to speak confidently about the authors ideas.

The last project, which I am currently working, is the Multimedia Reflective


Portfolio I have come a long way from the beginning of the semester and would not be
able to reflect on myself as a reader and writer without any improvement or learning
during this semester. I was lucky enough to learn so much about writing and the
important of African American Culture and I can now further grow in my writing and
reading abilities.
In conclusion, all of these different writing projects connect together and has
helped me become a more experienced reader and writer. All the skills I have learned this
semester really have helped me with my projects and will continue to help me in the next
English course. To really become a good writer and be able to respond to other peoples
work we must know how to perceive and understand writing and make sure to keep
having the desire to learn and improve. Authors create writing so that others can delight
and absorb what is being shown to them and it is my job as a college student to extend
my abilities and become proficient in reading and writing so that I can use these skills in
other courses and my future career.

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