¶ … admit I entered the classroom on the first day of the semester with great trepidation. English is my second language. I was uncertain of my grasp of the basics of English grammar: how could I also be creative and expressive in my second language? However, over the course of the semester, I was able to face my fears and rise to the challenges posed by various assignments. I am glad I was required to take this class because it enabled me to improve upon the different styles of writing (documented, creative, and persuasive) that I will use over the rest of my academic career. I tried to learn something new with every new assignment, and build upon my previous knowledge.

I enjoyed being in a class where I was encouraged to express my personal thoughts. This class helped me use English more effectively even outside of the classroom. I feel that I gained a better sense of how to engage in 'prewriting' before beginning an essay, and using techniques such as outlining the structure of the essay, creating a thesis statement, and gathering a good variety of primary and secondary sources enabled me to better organize and refine my thinking process. Learning how to evaluate information sources has improved the quality of my research in all of my subjects and made me a more critical consumer of the media in my personal life.

Simply being in this class made me more comfortable using the English language and better able to use clear and concise language when writing a paper. I hope that my ability to learn from the classroom environment and the contribution I made to the class as someone still becoming comfortable with the writing process in English will be taken into account. I hope my demonstrated improvement over the course of the semester will enable me to obtain a good grade. Everyone's mastery of the skill and art of writing is always a work in progress.