Dear Miss.

Eaker

As I look back on filling out a questionnaire at the beginning of the year, I remember thinking to myself English has never been a good subject to me. Reminiscing back on the first day of English 1102, it seems not too long ago; however, the insight gained seems abundant. As a child, English class always gave me trouble for a multitude of different reasons. I was never able to articulate my opinion to the point where I had it in my mind on a piece of paper. My brain always processed faster then my brain, thus creating un finished ideas and sentences. This class has helped me gain a lot of insight not only with my writing, but my researching and critical thinking methods. My portfolio is meant to exhibit to you, the reader, that I have gained an abundant of insight throughout this year not only through listening to lectures, but also the activities that were assigned. When looking at the daybook entries I picked, they might not look in-depth at first glance; however, the habits and knowledge I gained from there are indescribable. When looking at the daybook entry that deals with critical thinking, I chose the entry that required us to read about academic writing. This reading didnt only allow me to truly understand and differentiate pieces of writing into different categories, but it also helped me become open minded to a topic I thought was very specific. Something that also helped me gain insight was the question, what does it mean to be a critical thinker. One thing I liked about this daybook entry was that I was allowed to answer this question on my own, then converse about it fellow classmates and finish with Miss. Eakers

thoughts on the issue. This allows me to articulate my own ideas by including the ideas of others. Other entries that helped me gain more insight when looking at critical thinking was the ethos, pathos, and logos activity. It was simply..gorgeous. But, in all seriousness, this activity helped me understand how close minded society is when they cant identify the hidden message in advertisements that are meant to hit our ethos, pathos and logos in a way. By analyzing one commercial, and locating the hidden messages has now allowed me to analyze almost every advertisement and that can be directly contributed to the fact that Ive become a more developed thinker as this semester went on. The last entry that helped contribute to my critical thinking development was my questions regarding the annotated bibliography. This helped develop me as a critical thinker because it allowed me to look more in-depth into my line of inquiry, but also into other peoples annotated bibliography. This activity allowed me to look at the good, the bad, and the ugly ways to write a annotated bibliography, which helped me think more critical about the way I should write my own. Glancing at my favorite/ most stood out daybook entry might confuse you at first. Our job was to write down a couple different genres and describe how they are indeed genres. This daybook entry essentially describes a major part of my life. The life of messing simple assignments up and thinking in depth when given a simple task. I clearly did this daybook entry complete wrong, but it contributed to me truly understanding what a genre is. By messing up, and feeling embarrassed I am proud to say that I truly understand what type of genre you were asking and how it is shown. I essentially put myself through a trial and error situation. My issues with thinking too in depth could be

contributed to you, Miss. Eaker, solely because you created me to be a more in depth, critical thinker which clear led to my downfall on this assignment. My daybooks entries that are dealing with me developing more as a research and understanding/following the writing process coincide with one another. When looking at how I developed more as a research, it was apparent to me that the finding of my line of inquiry played as a contributor. This daybook entry required me to think in depth about topics that not only interest me, but also see myself research and writing a lot about. Not to mention it had to be argumentative. This entry required research to be done not specifically on Google, but in my head regarding what interested me at the time. This daybook writing played a pivotal role in me discovering my line of inquiry because it required me to think long and hard of something, intriguing, educational, and argumentative all at the same time. The next daybook entry I used to prove me to be a more developed research is essential a more in depth version of the previous entry. This entry required to look not only at my topic, but also specifically at the different aspects of my argument. The entries used to prove my development through the writing process would most definitely be revolving around the idea of me establishing a new definition of arguments and claims. These two entries helped me articulate a whole new definition for both terms. When looking at arguments, initially I only understood a elementary type of definition; however, because of the entry and the projects done over the year it has contributed to me furthering myself in the writing process because it now makes me articulate my ideas and thoughts in a whole new different way. The idea of identifying claims in itself shows a

further develop in the writing process because it shows I am now able to not only look at the first coating of a paper, rather the second and third. When looking at the revisions made on my final drafts for the research proposal it is evident that at first look not a lot has changed. When looking more specifically, this isnt the case. I have provided my outline of my research proposal and my first draft. When comparing these two drafts to my final draft, it is evident that change has been made. Not only does it show change has been made, but it also shows how I was able to articulate all my ideas into a paper. This is something I have always struggled with, as stated earlier in my paper, but have been improving on throughout the semester. The conventional errors were all accounted for and the unfinished ideas had all been fixed. When glancing at my first draft to my last, the change in my writing style, the difference in my approach, and in depth analysis surprised me. It makes me feel almost that if I were to go back to high school and middle school with these type of knowledge and insight, English would almost be a breeze. My changes werent drastic solely because I felt like I present my ideas well throughout my paper and that is the type of feedback I was given. When looking at the revisions done with my annotated bibliography, the same idea applies. The feedback I was given from my paper wasnt that my ideas werent present well, rather that I used to many direct quotations in my annotated bibliography. Seeing as though not a lot of revisions were made in my discussion section, I focused specifically on paraphrasing the direct questions I used in order to prove that I understand what I was reading and to also not put the reader asleep. When looking at the semester as whole, it is evident that this class was set up in a step-by-step process. Every single activity we complete contributed to the next and that

was on thing I enjoyed from this class. The daybook entries helped contribute to writing the papers, the papers helped contribute to creating the final drafts and projects. Everything that was completed in this class was intertwined with one another, and the reason for that was uncovered to me as I was putting together my portfolio. The challenges I faced from writing things too details, or over achieving, and even doing entire assignment incorrectly all contributed to my success in this class. My growth as a critical thinker, research and knowledge with the writing process has stuck and will continue to stick with my as I move on to upper levels of English. In conclusion, I can truthfully say this class has been one of my most favorite English classes because it is a self-driven class that requires work to be done that isnt tedious rather contributed to my better understand on English as a whole. I would like to thank you for being my professor for the past semester, and teaching me the insights and principles necessary for me to move to the next level of English. Sincerely, Sameer Aery