English is the most challenging class for me because I am still learning the language and I often struggle to understand or formulate the sentences correctly. My first language is Spanish and I’ve been learning English for the past year and a few months. When I was in high school my teachers allowed me to use translators which helped me at the moment to be able to complete my assignments and learn new words and vocabulary but at the same time it harmed my ability to write without relying on google translate or even AI, so when I entered this course I was very frustrated by the fact that I might not be good enough to write in a college level English class, however I have to say that I’ve developed and improved my writing skills by a lot. Having the opportunity to do drafts that are not perfect to get feedback after from classmates and the professor, was one of the most helpful things in the course because it allowed me to be open for new ideas and ways to improve my writing without feeling judged or feeling like I am not meeting the expectations, it gave me room to grow without feeling not qualified.
Our first major writing assignment was doing an analysis essay about any topic in the psychology field that we were interested in. This assignment was one of the hardest for me because I was just starting to figure out how to properly structure it in the right way without any help from AI. This was definitely challenging. That assignment actually gave me the sense of my writing level skills but also allowed me to improve a lot by asking for help and support. Another important skill that I learned is to analyze a topic and transmit it in an easier way, so any audience could understand what the topic is about, giving context clues and using an understanding vocabulary. Also deciding what’s important or not to put on an essay when a topic is so vast and complex was an important skill I learned while doing this paper.
The second writing assignment was a personal statement essay about an experience or story in our life. At first I thought it was going to be easy because I could talk about any experience that has taught me something valuable. The harder part of this assignment for me was meeting the expectation for the essay to be 1000 words, because this implied to describe the story in a very detailed way including things like personal dialogue, maybe personal thoughts I had on the moment, my feelings, etc. in this assignment I learned how to structure and convey a story in a way that allows the reader to feel immersed and included, by describing every little detail, ones that might seem unnecessary at first, but ultimately make the reader experience the story vividly, as if they were living it alongside me.
The third assignment was the research essay on a controversial psychology topic. To be completely honest, this was my least favorite assignment because of how difficult it was for me to complete it. In this assignment we were required to include reliable peer review sources that could back up our essay with evidence, facts and other research results that were related to our own topic. As a result I was overwhelmed by all the actual research I had to do, for me to be able to do a good job. I did a lot of reading. There were some articles that at first appeared to be useful for the research but then it turned out not to be so good, this made me invest a lot of time in researching and reading a bunch of articles. After finding the perfect articles that could back up and support my argument in the essay, I had to implement it, in a way where the reader could see the name, author and date of the article, also explaining what the article was about and then explaining my point related to the article. For me this process was very tedious but It made me feel accomplished because once I completed it I saw it as if I had overcome a challenge. Ultimately, this essay was the most impactful for me in terms of improving my writing skills since it was a mix of the last two other assignments because we had to analyze but also put our personal touch on it. By doing so, I used the skillsI had learned on previous assignments while developing new ones.
In conclusion, I feel very self sufficient, and independent. Now I am able to transfer my thoughts to concrete ideas and transmit them in my writing. There’s times where I get stuck and feel very overwhelmed but I believe that’s part of the process of learning. I feel that I succeeded in the course because now I know how to implement sources, I know the difference between an analysis, a summary and an argument essay, and most importantly I know how to write them myself without AI assistance. I feel very accomplished and satisfied with my improvement on this course.
- Gather, interpret and assess information from a variety of sources and points of view.
This course definitely helped me to improve my skills in interpreting and gathering through different assignments and tasks such as writing an analysis of a specific topic, getting different perspectives and sources.
- Evaluate evidence and arguments critically or analytically:
This course helped me a lot to evaluate evidence and arguments critically by providing us information on how bias can be implemented in different kinds of text analysis depending on who wrote it, also by teaching what critical thinking is, how we can implement it and also to understand how to interpret a reliable source or a non reliable source.
- Produce well- reasoned written or oral arguments using evidence to support conclusions:
This course has helped to achieve that by demanding reliable sources and evidence at the time of making an argument. I definitely need to improve my skills in using evidence to support conclusions because most times my arguments were not based on evidence or facts but rather on information passed through people without any real proof or data that could back it up.
- Help to transition from high school to college writing style:
I must say this course is much more demanding than most English courses in high school so I found it hard to get through it, however thanks to this I have developed the ability to write my own papers without having to rely on IA. Also the fact that the professor was understanding and helpful was a great thing to make the transition smoother. So yes it definitely helped me to improve my writing skills.
4. An environment to further their analytic writing and critical thinking:
Yes by being able to listen to different perspectives and point of views in class and being espoused to different topics.
- Experience integrating sources into their essays following academic conventions:
Yes. Especially after the last big assignment where we had to write an analysis and research based on integrating sources.
- A learning community where the get to know and collaborate with peers and teachers:
Definitely yes, and more because of the welcome program, I loved the fact that we had the opportunity to be close to other students and have direct communication with professors.
