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Maria Alvarado
English 113B
Professor Ditch
7 May 2015
Learning experience
The first day in English 113B professor Ditch went over the syllabus and quizzed us the
next class meeting. My first thought was a quiz on the second day of class and I immediately
knew that she made everything a learning experience, because in the long run she knew it was
beneficial to know what awaited us in her class. From the beginning, professor made it clear that
late work was unacceptable. At first I was intimidated just thinking if I would be able to handle
the workload, but then I realized that her being strict motivated and pushed me to do my work. In
the past I have had laid back professors and because they were lenient with the workload or
accepted late work, I did not try my best or I did not worry about getting things done on time.
That is why I liked that she did not give us time to slack off and while they were times that I felt
like giving up, knowing how her grade system worked, I was able to complete her assignments .
Throughout the course I saw improvement in my writing, not only did I score higher on my
second essay, but I was able to understand the concepts and just overall had a better
understanding on how to write.
After several writing activities it finally came to the first paper that had to be four to five
pages long about a cultural space I took part of. I decided to write about college culture. in the
process of writing my paper I had peer reviews, rough drafts, and visits to the LRC that were

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helpful when it came to knowing what I was doing wrong or what I had to keep doing in order
for my paper to be effective. When I got my paper back I read the feedback that was given to me
and took it into consideration. Basically, my paper was lacking a thesis and needed to answer the
prompt question. After my visit to the learning resource center, the tutor advised me to reread the
prompt and connect my thesis more to the cultural space that I was talking about . After turning
in my final rough draft, my final grade was a high B. The feedback I received was descent and
understandable that I had to work on tackling the prompt and connecting back to the cultural
space of college. After the examples professor Ditch included I had a picture on how I wanted to
write my next paper.
After finishing project space, we had previously had been assigned a novel to read over
the summer. I had to write an argumentative essay based on the novel. After a presentation that
was done in class based on the novel as well, I found it easier to write an argumentative essay
because the presentation was also about introducing an argument and relating it to the passages
in the novel. I also had a visit to the LRC where the tutor suggested some articles that were
related to the topic of poverty/ social class. When the papers were graded and handed out, I was
surprised to see that I had received a 91% on my paper. I read the comments and was
complimented on how I connected and analyzed the articles to the novel. In this paper, I had
fewer mistakes to fix and one of them was to revise word tense, something that was easy to
correct. Whereas in my previous paper I had more things to work on and actually needed to
spend time revising it.

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In addition, books like Rhetorical for Radicals and They Say I Say were used as guidance
when it came to writing essay. The templates and tips that were on the book were helpful tools to
apply in my writing. Along with the professor feedback and the books I was able to take it into
consideration in order to produce descent papers. The grades just proved that my writing was
improving. In the process, I felt like it was easier to write because I knew what was wanted on
the paper and the structure it required. In the class I learned how to analyze, apply ethos, pathos
and logos, and connect articles to the essays.
Overall, I saw improvements from my first to the second one. Fewer mistakes, the
argument/thesis was understandable in my project text essay, and the syntax of my paper stayed
about the same. The activities that were assigned lead me to the papers that I have written in
class. For example, the dialectical journals helped me pick quotes and then analyze and connect
to my essays. That is why when it came to project text, choosing quotes form articles and then
analyzing and connecting to the novel was fairly passable. Professor Ditch taught me about the
importance of ethos, pathos, and logos and how to apply it in my papers. Her lesson of the usage
of colons, semi-colons, and comma splices was also helpful because it was a quick review/
reminder of how and when it is appropriate to use punctuation, because sometime I tend to place
commas in places where it is unnecessary and grammatically incorrect. Her class in general

was helpful when it came to writing and how she took the time to review concepts
for the class to improve their writing skills and prepare us for our future classes.