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Melissa Aguilar
Professor Adler
STACC English 1A #32474
25 April 2016
Practice Makes Better
This semester has been the most I have ever worked and put effort in for an English class.
Learning from my pervious semester if I wanted to get good grades on my essay I would need to
put the effort to achieve the grades I wanted. English was never my strong subject but now I feel
that I am a strong enough writer to write strong essays. Three works that I am proud of is my
first in-class essay discussing the topic of Metacognition, then a Rhetorical Analysis for Bacas
book Singing at the Gates which I titled It is a Good Day, and a Discourse Community
Ethnography paper which I titled The American College of Veterinary Surgeons. I struggled
with all of these essays but the struggles are what made me a stronger writer and helped me to
improve my writing.
The beginning of a new semester and my English class starts off with an in-class essay.
The in-class essay was to write about Metacognition thinking about thinking and analyzing
how and why authors write the way they do. Given time to prepare for the essay I procrastinated
and didnt prepare as well as I could have which made me struggle when writing the essay in
class. I always struggle when beginning any essay so my strategy was to begin a rough draft by
freewriting and seeing any and all ideas I have pour out into the paper. When time came to start
the essay I looked at my freewriting journal to see what I can start off with and this helped me
begin my essay. Learning to freewrite has helped with my essays because before I filter my
ideas before even writing them down because I didnt think they would be good topics, but by

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freewriting I was able to write any ideas that came into my mind and later choose which ones fit
into the essay.
I was proud of my first in-class essay because I used new strategies in my writing that I
would never do, like freewriting for an essay and by taking my time to format my essay and have
points to support my thesis. For this particular essay we had to incorporate Mary Piphers book
Writing to Change the World and Dwecks concept of growth/fixed mindset. When reading and
analyzing their writing I would annotate and mark things that seemed important or things that
made me question their writing. By doing this I was able to remember certain quotes to help
support my thesis. When I would read things I would have to reread a certain section three or
more times because I would forget what I wrote but by annotating I was able to understand the
readings and I ever needed to refer back to a quote I would easily be able to find it because of the
markings I made. Annotating helped me with my in-class essay because I had valid quotes to
support my thesis instead of she said he said references.
The Rhetorical Analysis paper was an essay to analyze a poem from Jimmy Santiagos
book Singing at the Gates. I choose I Turn My Little Fan On to analyze because it was a poem
I was able to connect and really understand. Analyzing this poem came quick for me because I
understood it in a way that no one really saw it. When analyzing I really looked in-between the
lines because in his poem he talks about how he could be anyone and be anywhere but he cant
because hes in prison. When he said this I felt that he was trying to blame someone but I
couldnt figure out who. He then writes about how he set a wild animal free but the animal
seemed ungrateful and I saw this as his guardian angel because he helped his guardian angel in
some way and his guardian angel repays him back by making him end up in prison.

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Before when I mentioned how this semester was the semester that I put my most effort
and work into this English class is true because I would have never read a poem and think it to
mean anything this significant. I really opened my mind to allowing myself to think of anything
this poem could be about. This essay was not easy to write because when analyzing a poem, the
ideas are endless. For this essay I did something to help improve my paper and that was to ask
for help. I rarely ask for help so if something was unclear I would just push through without
knowing what I was supposed to be doing. This made me to get lower scores on my essays
because I was doing the assignment wrong the whole time, but when I asked for help I was able
to get feedback on my essay and answer any questions I had. This overall situation of asking for
help has made me a strong learner because I accepted the fact that asking for help does not make
you a dumb student, it makes you a smarter student.
My Discourse Community Ethnography titled The American College of Veterinary
Surgeons is one of my proudest works but was also the one I struggled the most with, because a
Discourse Community is a community where a group has a common goal and must follow
Swales 6 categories to make the group into a discourse community. In the paper I had to show
how The American College of Veterinary Surgeons fit into the discourse community by
showing that it followed Swales 6 categories. By doing this I had to research The American
College of Veterinary Surgeons and prove that it follows the 6 categories.
I thought the research was going to be the hardest part because I would need to find
books or articles that this group would read and talk about. I found a book where different
veterinarians have published their works and I was able to analyze that. Analyzing was the hard
part because I am not part of that community so understanding the reading was difficult. I
needed to research many procedures they talked about and I had to look up words they were

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using but this helped with my writing because I was analyzing the procedures and I would
explain why the procedure was necessary same thing when I looked up the definition of words
they would use.
This is one of my proudest works because this particular discourse community is the field
I am trying to peruse and by researching it I was able to get into the world of the veterinarians
and see what I will be doing one day. This essay was fun to write I would look forward to doing
more research and analyzing experiments that veterinarians would publish. I put a lot of time
into this paper by again asking questions when things were unclear and by looking over my essay
to see if I had made any silly mistakes. I would never reread my work because I was afraid that I
would not like what I wrote and have to change everything over again, but this time I didnt let
that bother me instead I used that to my advantage if I really didnt like how something turned
out then I would just change it. Theres nothing bad about having to edit your work because you
can change it into something better.
This semester was one of my hardest because I put so much effort into my classes
especially for my English class. I have seen an improvement in my writing in the way I write
and how I write. As a reader I now write in anything I read especially if I come across a word I
dont know I circle it so I can look up the definition and continue with my reading. My future
goals for writing are to continue freewriting and by doing this I want to accomplish being able to
write more freely to be open to letting ideas fall into the paper. I dont plan on writing anything
big like a book but I want to be able to write in a proper way if I ever come across having to
email or write a letter to someone important I want to be able to sound mature and professional.
These are goals that I hope to keep and by keeping them I will not lose what I have learned in
this English 1A class.