15) Student Choice: 500 words or 5-minute video. You author content that includes a title, category, and a reflection about your experiences in this class. Consider specific assignments, specific readings/films, specific conversations, and/or specific processes that helped you learn and grow. On the scale of one to ten, I would give this English Composition I by Professor Mangini to ten. There are few reasons why. “College Level” English made me nervous and worry if I could catch up the course as English is my second language. At the first day of class, I was surprised because the classroom is full of computers unlike other traditional classes! We did not need any textbook for this course but instead he provided his own digital portfolio as a source for this course. He also allowed us to build our own digital portfolios for the entire semester. On the portfolio, we posted blogs as our informal assignments, designed our pages, and gave comments on each other blogs. I think it is really innovative approach to get more attention from the students. Moreover, every classes were meaningful, and we never got bored. This is because we were in the process of writing. At first two or three weeks, he gave multiple short texts about writing process to read while other classes got one thick book to read. From the multiple texts, we could see all the good writers made “shitty” drafts before finals. Thus, instead of handing in the assignment and getting the grades back, we reviewed more drafts which developed our writing process.
Once we got the flow of this course, we started working on life choice: making connection. Every week, we read a short story about life choice and discussed it in the class. After getting the knowledge from the assignments, we were asked to recall the time when we made major decisions and put them into our informal assignments. Finally, it came the time to write a formal assignment, “Life Choice Memoir”. Since we had already got the rhythm of writing process, it was not that difficult to do a formal assignment. Plus, he encouraged us to revise more drafts as we all knew that the more we revise our work, the better drafts we will get. Besides, we scheduled one to one conference to discuss about the assignments and give helpful comments for individuals. We also watched “Where to Invade Next" documentary, summarized the film, made short arguments, searched the relevant sources and coauthored the titles for the research paper. This approach changed my perspective on research paper. I thought writing a research paper is a scary dream. But since we had already got what we needed for the paper, all we had to do was following the guide line of how to write the thesis statement and research paper structure provided by our Professor Mangini. How convenience it was! All other teachers from the English classes I had taken before never gave the detailed explanation and lecture about the research paper. Furthermore, he also provided the game shows and gave the meaningful prizes like extending the due dates or eliminating some blog posts in the class. This was a wonderful part of this class. To conclude, this English Composition I by Professor Mangini gave the meaningful time and experiences that I can apply them in the future. Again, I would recommend all the students to take this class.
0 Comments
14) Student Choice: 500 words or 5-minute video. You author content that includes a title, category, and a reflection about your experiences in this class. Consider specific assignments, specific readings/films, specific conversations, and/or specific processes that helped you learn and grow. In this post, I am going to reflect the time when Professor Mangini explained how to write the thesis statement and structure for the research paper. It was the most precious time for me that solved all the mystery about research paper. Plus, it is also knowledgeable to share to other people.
Thesis statement is crucial for the research paper because it inform the brief introduction about our whole research paper. Thus, knowing how to write the research paper is the most important and hardest one to do so. At first, I was lost since from beginning when writing the research paper. Once I get this information, I became to realize what to do with the thesis statement. Professor Mangini said that like GPS (Global Positioning System) which inform the location or time anywhere on the Earth or near the Earth, TPS (Topic, Position, Support) define the thesis statement. When writing the thesis statement, our topic should say about our paper, position is what we want to say about the topic, and support is to show the evidence for our position. He also gave an example that universal health care should apply in America because it will save lives, save money and save our humanity. In that example, we can see the overall paper of the writer's topic: universal health care, position: should apply in America and support: how the writer will defend his position. For the research paper structure, there are three portions: Introduction, Body, Conclusion. Each portion should be linked to each other to result stronger argument. In this paragraph, I am going to summarize how he described to us. First of all, introduction should provide information about the background, content and exigent matter of the paper. The main purpose of the research paper is to make the argument and persuade the readers to our claim. It is key to grab the attention from the readers to convince our arguments. How can we get them? Putting quotes and opening Annerdote about the topic we are going to make in the paper can help to get the interest. Once we get the attention, we can bridge to our thesis statement. After that, we move to the body paragraph. The first step to start a body is writing the topic sentence. Topic sentence should include the focus point of the paragraph. Once we gained it, we can jump right into the claim our opinions. Whenever we make the claim, we have to prove with the evidences. Evidences came from our research. And then, reconnect back to the thesis to notice the whole of the paper. Finally, there are some ways to conclude. As a first step of the conclusion, we can review the content in the body or review the thesis or make full circle of the process. Subsequently, we can put "closing quotes" or "question and answer" or "prediction for the future", that is the end the paper. Indeed, writing a research paper is a scary dream before we know how to write it. I do really thank to our Professor Mangini for his lecture. In the future, for English Composition II or whatever classes, we can apply this knowledge in writing the research paper. 13) Student Choice: 500 words or 5-minute video. You author content that includes a title, category, and a reflection about your experiences in this class. Consider specific assignments, specific readings/films, specific conversations, and/or specific processes that helped you learn and grow. I wanted to forget the past moments of my life when I had the inconvenient situations. But, start from the third week of semester, we were asked to think about the time when I made an important choice to challenge the status quo or refuse to obey an authority figure after reading My Name is Margaret (Maya Angelou). It is about the black girl who is being oppressed by her racist boss. Hence, I had no choice to do so. I had to give so much time to find the time inside the brain system, recall the scattered memory and rearrange it into words. When I was in seventh grade, I got a new friend, smart little girl, transferred from another school. We used to hang out and study together. She was clever enough to get the first place in that seventh grade but mine was on average. One day, she bad-mouthed about me that I am a stupid mixed blood girl. At that time, I challenged her words and I thought I won. After breaking up the friendship with her, I became an unfriendly person and only made two or three friends because I couldn’t trust other people to talk about me and I was over worried that they would bad-mouthed me. But now, I realized I lost her and my friends.
Mark Twain said, “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” In the podcast, What You Don't Know (Lulu Wang), all the entire family lied to their grandma about her health, stage 4 lung cancer. They believed that her life was prolonged because she didn’t know the truth. After listening to that story, we were asked to write about the time I made an important choice to tell someone a difficult truth or lie. I found myself in the past, I told the truth to my parents about my relationship, but all I got was the blame. Thus, I decided not to tell the truth next time about my relationship. From the bitter to the sweet, there is something more that I can learn from that moment. When I become a parent in the future, I will never ever blame my children for telling the truth. In the Hills Like White Elephants (Ernest Hemingway), the girl got the dilemma whether keep the baby or take the abortion. Hemingway didn’t provide the final choice of the girl. The story made us think about the time to leave or stay. For me, there was a time I failed my junior year at university and lost my dream. Thus, I was in the situation to retry the stupid education system or leave to the better place. Now, I have been in America and restart my dream. I found out that the things we take from the failure can lead to later success. The last assignment about life-choice is to break away or follow the cultural tradition that we share with our family or friends. I believe not all the cultural traditions are right to follow. After going back to the painful moments that I wanted to forget, I now realized that I should not forget but instead, learn from them. This life-choice assignment not only encouraged me to take a look to the past and discover what I was wrong but also made me mature enough to correct what I did wrong. Here are the links to the life-choice blog posts. Life Choice: Is That My Tradition? Life Choice: Should I Stay or Should I Go? Life Choice: To Tell The Truth? Life Choice: The Powers That Be? |
Zun Phyu ThantOn this blog, I will explore concepts in my English class and the world. Archives
December 2017
Categories
All
|