Midterm Assignment

Dear Sean,

You asked me what classes was I taking this semester and I told you about them, but when you asked me which was the most interesting I really did not know at the time. However, among them I can say that my English class is one of the very interesting ones. I know it sounds unbelievable to think that an English class would be one of the most interesting classes because of how boring we thought it was in both Middle and High School. Furthermore, when you get to college, it’s on another level. The English class that I am taking right now is English 1102, which is the second level of English. In this class we kind of back off from the standard way of writing as we were taught in grade school. You know the regular way that teachers always structured our papers and stuff “introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and concluding paragraph”. It seems as though in this class, as well as another English class that you’ll take in college, instead of focusing broadly on the paragraphs as a whole we focus in on the individual component of the paragraphs and the paper as a whole. I know you probably like “What do you mean individual components? It’s just writing. But, nope man its way more to it than that. There are even different terms for the things that we focused on the most when we used to write papers back then. In this course man I’ve learned how to pick a topic to write about, which is called an inquiry, more thoroughly. I’ve also developed the habit of creating a concept map for my writing. A concept map is basically an outline of your whole writing process. It includes things such as your inquiry, inquiry question (the question that you’re answering about your topic), the drafting stage of your writing and the self, peer and teacher revisions done on it, and last but not least, your actual product which is the final draft of your paper. I know it probably sounds crazy that we have to do all this just to write a paper, but man in the end it really is helpful. Of course you know you could give or take a few steps but all of them are essential I the process towards having a successful and valid paper to present to your target audience (the audience to whom you  are writing your paper. Another thing I’ve learned about is this special type of bibliography called an Annotated bibliography. You should already know what the word Annotated means since we both had to annotate a reading our sophomore year in High School, which we both know we did not like doing at all. Also, I know you already remember what a bibliography is because we’ve been hearing that word since we were in the sixth grade. Basically, it’s putting both of those terms together and writing about the sources in your bibliography. I thought it was going to be a hassle at first because of all the different ways you have to site things, which is kind of  a lot but not really. But most recently I learned what a claim was in literary terms. A claim is connected to the inquiry question, but it’s like the second half to it because you’re answering the question. I also learned the different types of claims and everything but I’ll have to tell you about them in person because I know you’re going to have a lot of questions to ask and I have to get the rest of this work done. But alright man, I just wanted to keep you informed on my studies since you always ask me what school is like and how is it going. Talk to you later.

Sincerely,

Ty’kei

Primarily, I wrote the “What’s Like to Be You” assignment because it was for class and I also thought that it was very interesting since that’s a question that people usually don’t care to as. I actually that question was a very good and insightful one. I got most of my ideas for the assignment from my life experiences, relationships I have or have had in life, and the memories of things that are significant to me and my life. I would have to say that the audience of the assignment could be anyone. I say this because when I was doing the assignment I wrote my response as if I was talking to a stranger. I thought that would be significant way to respond to the question because you never the people who you may come across in life and because you never know who may ask you any question, especially, one of that stature. I try to make any and every response to any question as specific and understandable as possible and I’m always open to questions of interpretation. I say this because different people take different responses to questions many different ways. I learned several skills while doing this assignment but two mains skills that stand out to me while doing it and in the paper are complete honesty and self – value of your writing. I say complete honesty because we all know that we are not 100% percent honest in most of the things we write unless it’s a personal entry. This assignment was a personal entry, but, it was also one to be read and heard by other individuals at any given time. I say self-value because I fell that most of the time when we write we just care about what we write for the moment that we are writing and after we’ve finished with it and/or turned it in for a grade, we don’t care about receiving it back or keeping because we just want to know whether we got a good grade or not or we have other things on our minds that we want to keep instead. Personally, I could say that this entry is one that I put myself out there with and that I would value to have back and keep. The piece was fairly easy to write since I liked the question and writing a response, rather than saying it aloud was something new. I took the risk of letting other’s know who I am outside the classroom or school area in this assignment. I would have to say the reasons why I did the assignment were the things that influenced me. I learned even more in depth that writing is a very analytical and mind training process. I would have to say that I’ve learned who I was a little better through this assignment. The reader of this piece will learn who I am and how my responses to interpersonal questions are reflected through writing. When revising the piece, I may restructure the order of the things I say in my response to the question.

I think that the Peace, Butter, and Jelly book is a good one and an aid to the start of the semester. I say this because in this class we learn to express ourselves and our thought processes more through our writing and that is what’s done in the book. I also think that using the book at the beginning of the semester is good because it takes a different approach to an English class with providing a prototype of the writing over the semester and providing room for building relationships within the class and a little bit of fun activities to create memories in the class.

We learn by each class

To be one with what we write

Time to state your claim