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Dennis J Rivas
Professor Lewis
English 113A
12/09/2015
Reflective Preface

Welcome to my portfolio in this section I will be addressing all the

issues and strengths as well as the improvements that I suffered through my
entire English course. After my first long and arduous semester working on
assignments, revising, and analyzing pieces of writing to improve my writing
and speaking skills. Through the beginning of my English course I have
overcome barriers that I used to be stuck with, one of them was my
punctuation marks this one was my main issue because every time I
received a paper back I would see comments from my professor pointing out
that my punctuation marks were misplaced, this was very disappointed for
me because every time I got a paper back I would have to realize that I need
some tutoring and office hours , on the other hand my grammar errors and
enunciation of some English words were very common mistakes, this stopped
me from speaking to my classmates during my first weeks at the classroom
but then after I sat down in multiple occasions with a tutor from the library, I
became a better speaker even though I was very pessimistic at first because
English was not my strength and nor my primary language and this lead me
to the conclusion that I was no going to be able to speak as well as some of
my classmates speak. My tutor will explain how to pronounce some words
and have the understanding of the differences of some terms that may

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sound the same but would have a different meaning. One thing I can
highlight as my bigger strength is my desire of learning new material and
dedication of always giving my best on the academic field. As a pure
example I can say think of my early first weeks at college I started to make
my own study guide to become more affluent on my writing, I decided that I
would pay more attention on class and have some after hour office meetings
with my professor so we could talk about how to improve my grammar and
speaking problems, those were unique moments because I would never
forget that every time I got out my professors office I would go home and
start rewriting my essays I remember that when I got to see my last essay of
the whole semester, which happened to be my favorite one of the whole
semester because we have to talk about how social media has shaped the
way how not just teenagers but adults in general have become less sociable
and started using this famous newest social applications such as Instagram,
Twitter and Snapchat. I realized how better I have become in my English
class and other classes as well, I did never expected to have such
improvement in just a semester my grammar errors were less noticeable and
my grammar mistakes were not that many then after I finished proofreading
my social media essay I smiled to my paper and understood that sometimes
English can seeing to be a very rigorous course but when you are faithful and
you are willing to work over any circumstance you will get better. My
transition from my native language Spanish was not easy I still have a
noticeable accent but when it comes to my writing skills I have improved in

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such a great way, thereby I want to thanks to my English professor and the
tutors that helped to overcome this particular obstacles and that now I can
finally say that I am ready for my English college level and this mission of
overcoming some of my weaknesses have been accomplished!