Garcia 1

Jaime Garcia

Mrs. Litle

English 121001

2 May 2019

My Learning throughout This Semester

This spring semester, I started classes at this college thanks to an athletics scholarship.

This semester was full of experiences that I would never forget as well as tons of knowledge I

acquired from all my courses. I started in this class without knowing anything, just how to speak

and write in English. At first I thought my English would be enough but reality hit me hard. I

used to consider my English pretty solid but as the year was going I knew I would need extra

help. I wanted to have good grades, and as I write I think on how much I have improved my way

of writing and analyzing what I read. Comparing myself from now to 5 months back I feel like I

have double the knowledge I used to have.

Ethos, Pathos and Logos was the first subject I would consider I really learned. At first I

was confused about what this was because it was the first time I consider so many deeper

components to pay attention to when it comes to writing. It took me a lot of practice to dominate

this but I managed to learn it. We employed a lot of time in classes doing activities about this.

An example of this is that one day we saw a video of Barack Obama’s speech, which I recall

being on immigration, but I am not completely sure. In that activity we had to underline ethos,

pathos and logos. Within this speech ethos, pathos and logos could be clearly found throughout

the text. Eventually, the day of our first big paper arrived and I had to use what I learned about E,

P and L to talk about an image of my choice. This paper was a big challenge and I struggled
 Garcia 2

really hard the first time. I realized that I wrote too many run-on sentences and also I didn’t

separate and organize the information correctly. Unfortunately, I had to rewrite this paper but

with an extra help from a tutor. Due to this help I eventually learned from my first mistakes and I

did a way better job.

Writing in MLA format is something I cannot forget to mention. This is probably the

most basic thing to do but. When I came here I didn’t even know about MLA existence. Where I

come from, we often write in another format called APA, but it’s something similar to MLA, so

learning it wasn’t anything special. I had to write this format in every activity, homework or

paper I did for class. All the ten journals I wrote are a perfect example that I learned to write in

this format. In the 4 big papers I also had to write in this manner but in some of these papers

citations were a requirement. Even though at first I had problems with this, I assimilated it with

some time and practice. I learned this by putting in some extra effort to understand this style of

writing. An example for this is my paper 4 where I had to cite the authors of articles I used.

Through this process I had to make sure I quoted them right and accomplished following the

correct format.

In this semester, what I’m really proud of was learning how to summarize the

information from a reading or an article. Before coming I was pretty good at this, but in Spanish.

This was the biggest challenge for me and it was pretty obvious. My second big paper was all

about summarizing a long reading in my opinion. My first try was a total disaster but when I did

it again, I tried to read the information slower and more precisely. In my second try, I put in

practice what I learned in class about summarizing. I remembered all the activities we did

reading articles and then I tried to do the same. This second try was way better and this was easy

noticeable.
 Garcia 3

Another point that deserves to be mention is how well I developed my researching

abilities. I never knew about those tricks to search up in Google. I have been my whole life a guy

who knows about computers but this little secrets to improve how we search for certain

information in Google are really interesting. These tricks were really helpful for my third paper. I

had to do a lot of research and by putting these tricks in practice I reached the information I was

looking for in a much faster way. An important point I also learned is that I have to always look

for information that is not based in a personal opinion. Looking for information based on facts

it’s better to get real information about the topic is been doing research for. An example of these

would again be my third paper were my works cited were articles that based their information in

facts.

The last point I would like to highlight is how I have also learned how to give a proper

and reasonable personal opinion. In almost every big paper I have wrote for this course a

personal opinion has been a requirement. Giving my opinion has been something from me

everyday life seen I have memory. In this semester I learned how to properly use my words to

give a valid opinion. An example of this would be how I give mi opinion about the image I

talked about in paper 1 and my opinion about the article I read in paper 2.

This semester was a total adventure for me, full of ups and downs, academically and

athletically. I am proud that I managed to finish this semester the way I wanted, with good

grades and a good athletic performance. All this experience and knowledge acquired will never

be forget and will always remain as a good memory for what I lived and learned. I will never

stop being thankful to all the people that helped me here at OJC.
Garcia 4