B.

Walker 1
Briana Walker
Professor Hankerson
English 1010
December 3, 2015
Reflective Essay
As a first year college student it has been hard for me to adjust to the college life at Wayne State.
Throughout this semester I have learned about myself as a student and a person. There has been many
assignments and activities that have forced me to think to my full potential. Also I have come encounter
with methods that helped with improving my papers. In English 1010 weve covered topics such as
African American literacy, literacy narratives and informative summaries.
During this course we learned about many African American people and their experiences of
literacy. Literacy means the ability to read and write. To accomplish that we used the African American
culture experiences of traditional modes of literacy. The African American literacy goes further, it relates
to the way one may speak, read, and write. For example Learning to Read and Write, by Fredrick
Douglass is a good example of a literacy narrative.
In project one it was required that you compose a literacy narrative. The task was to compose a
chronological literacy narrative where you describe the process in which you learned to read, write, and
speak or listened. As composing this I came into a little bump in the road. During the peer edit process a
few of my peers gave me feedback that I was not meeting the requirement of the paper. This caused me to
go back in an edit my paper, as a helpful resource I used the rubric which helped me out big time.
Additionally I learned the process of conducting an informative summary. During this process I
was able to capture the main idea of the summary. In doing this it helped me develop the understanding of
summarized information for various audiences and purposes. Plus it expanded the understanding of
linguistic conventions and genres. I chose to do my informative summary on Coming to An Awareness
of Language by Malcolm X. While doing X piece I was able to grasp the concept of his piece and
understand the meaning of it.

B. Walker 2
Finally, it was time for the media analysis in which we analyzed media messages .While doing
this we had the opportunity to work alone or with a partner. I was able to work with a partner during this
process. For our media analysis wed chosen the Afrobella piece to do our research on using a Prezi as a
visual. As we did this we used pathos, logos, and ethos to interpret things in the piece. Learning those
thought us how many people interpret a picture or lyric differently regarding the little things that stick out
to them.
As some may know writing is not one of my strongest points but I feel as though I have improved
a lot in this class .Throughout English 1010 I can honestly say I grasped on to a lot of useful tools for the
near future. I was taught that it was ok to mess up on a paper but as long as you fixed the mistake is
whats important. This class opened my eyes to different prospective and thinking others may have. Being
able to say I learned three ways of writing is a huge accomplishment for me. If I put in the time and effort
as I did for this class I know English 1020 can also be a success for me too.