Dear Dr.

Sinha,

From the beginning of this course in English Composition Stretch, I did not
think I would be a great writer as I am now. By taking this class, it has helped me in so
many ways from where I did not care as much for office meetings or the critiques you
put on each essay for me to achieve a better score and putting those into my future
course work. Sometimes, I felt I would be either shy and just provided the basic or
minimum requirements for the essay paper and thought like whatever. As my first
semester started to come to a close, I knew for my second semester I needed to
improve in myself in self-confidence for writing and learning the basics of writing. As for
writing related, I had trouble with the skills of grammar, sentence structure, and
readings. For these reasons, English was not as a fun subject for me because it is
tough for me to read and then write with especially coming from a bilingual home.
Throughout the second semester, I started to improve little by little in my readings and
grammar, since Dr. Sinha was able to provide the help and assistance needed to focus
on my weaknesses during the first semester which I have taken them lightly than I am
now. I think as of now I feel like I am able to be more confident in my writings by setting
specific goals for myself to be organized in any kind of paper as well taking grammar as
a high priority for essays and writings. The elements that helped me develop to become
a better writer was to read articles, stories, and books so it can help me what the writer
or the author is actually structuring their sentences and organization of a topic or a
piece. As well as, meeting my professor more often, taking the comments from the
essays, and talking to myself for the sentences. By meeting my professor multiple
times, it was a pleasure because it has changed dramatically since my first semester
due to an increase of writing capabilities and talking one on one where I need to work
on and improve on my weaknesses and learning from my mistakes in writing. You have
told me to always make a proper rough draft because it will help me in the end rather
than not knowing what to do for the specific topic needed. For this reason, i think this
has helped me to become a better writer by giving myself more time and properly think
what things are necessary and what is junk.

The pieces that is in my portfolio are an immigration, research analytical paper, and
plagiarism essays. These essays topics are from “The Leavers”, “Plagiarism”, and
“Guns”. My favorite essay topic would have to be the Plagiarism essay because from
the beginning of this essay it was not the greatest. The topics that were involved with
what is plagiarism and the use of intellectual property. The hardest essay for me
personally would have to be the Guns, from being a argumentative paper then turning
into a research paper for me it was a difficult change to do since I did not know what a
research analytical paper was. For example, in my plagiarism essay I had to know what
is plagiarism, the use of intellectual property and its components, and finding a case
involving either of these. This piece for me was easy going because I had to research a
case specifically involving plagiarism of some kind to make it seem my point of view of
this was either neutral, good, or bad. One piece of this would be Melania Trump’s
Speech that she “borrowed” from Michelle Obama 11 years ago. I had to work on a
case given by my teacher of a play that someone used words to make a play without
that person noticing it til several years later. Therefore, I think the components of my
pieces was to build it together of where the two topics of intellectual property and
plagiarism had to come to a middle ground and where my stance was. In the end, I
thought it was good for me to do research on a topic that is easily accessible on the
wide web nowadays and has become a phenomenon in literature pieces. The one that I
had difficult was my Guns paper even though guns is heavily talked topic in today's
society. The components that were in my research paper was subheadings, historic
events, laws, future use, causes, effects, and statistics for today and in the past. Even
though I had received feedback what a research paper was, I had more time and
needed to organize my writing structure to know that it flows coherently like how past
gun laws are effective in today's gun laws and what the future holds for guns in general.
I think as it was coming to an end, I kinda enjoyed it since it is a heavily influenced idea
that people need to worry about in their daily lives.

The lessons that I learned from this class are not to ramble on as much on my
sentences and to start writing early. The graded assignments that my teach has given
me back has feedback that if I had prepared earlier, I would have gotten a better score
or put in better details to make it short and simple. After working with the first draft, I
knew I had issues that I tend to provide too much information that is not needed to be
there as well not leaving everything till the last minute. This process has helped me to
not overthink myself in writing and to give myself time and spending evaluations on my
recommendations on my work. I think this will help me in any kind of professional setting
because it will be nice to be clear and concise in speaking and writing involved so
people can understand than being illiterate. Therefore, these are the reasons why I feel
these are my biggest concerns that I have learned since the beginning of this course
and have exceeded upon them greatly.

During my journey in this course I learned how to better support my ideas by integrating
sources the best way I could do in my writing. With access to large sites on the media,
kt has allowed me to research and look upon writings and article and see their style of
writings is and speaking out loud as well. Throughout this class, I was able to take out
the sources that were irrelevant information and to mainly focus in my argument of
personal thoughts in my writing along with a perspective. Overall, I learned to improve
myself to become a better writer even if it is not as fast and taking steps at a time. I
would like to be better at quality than quantity in my writings. This portfolio not only
shows how I have progresses as a writer, but showing what I have learned from myself
as a writer and that mistakes are common. As a writer, I am glad that I have mistakes
by peer viewing it with another person since it shows what they know and what I do not
know and I can learn from them. Therefore, in this English Class, it has taught me to
overcome the fears I had for writing and working up my struggles in grammar and
sentence structures in the future to benefit in my other classes.