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The most regretful and unfortunate thing is that I had to rush this project. Therefore, all tasks were completed within a week before the deadline. While I know I had to document the dates in which I reflected on what I had learnt from completing the tasks, all reflections were done on the same day. Thus, any documentation of expression of learning was done 3/4 August 2017, and I have no wish to change as my learning points have remained unchanged over one week.

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Has given me so much joy. I am absolutely overjoyed at having finished this assessments. That has cost me late nights for an entire week leading up to the submission dates. My worst nightmare is finally going away, and the happiness I feel is palpable. I buy a few hours worth of time at the cost of a dollar every day at the school canteen. But I can tell it has detrimental effects on my health, because drinking coffee and staying up late until morning is obviously not good for me. I have eye bags now and get tired in the day and night but yes it's finally over my life is complete. Thank you EL department for planning this sweet project! In spite of me hating this incredible exhaustion I can't help but think it is part and parcel of every Singapore student's life. So thanks it was a fun project and I would rather stay up late doing this than say doing a Chinese version of this project late at night.

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In April 2017, I was not confident about writing a biography of my own. I doubted my skills as a biographer, and as a writer.
Now, not only have I written my own biography without aid from anyone, I have learnt a lot from completing all the tasks as indicated above. My goal was to become a competent writer and biographer. I wanted to make my biography more engaging for readers. After completing these tasks, I have learnt how to make my biography more engaging, and have applied my learning into my work. I believe that I have done my best to achieve my goal, and I have done this by reading, and studying the language use of other good biographies, as well as conducting in-depth research on my subject before writing.

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This task did not make any influence on my goal, but it was compulsory.

When completing this task, I was miserable. Although I had read all the excerpts in reader 1, and then some, in reader 2, I could hardly recall any appropriate ones to use for any of the superordinate expressions. It was horrible and I started reading all the excerpts again in desperation, trying to force out a superordinate expression from each one I read. However, I realised it was not working out. I then calmed down and reasoned that if the setters set 5 different superordinate expressions, it must mean that each one did have enough evidence. I decided to just settle on the first superordinate expression, and then reread all the excerpts for subordinate evidence for the superordinate expression.

I suddenly realised that Helen Keller’s story was a perfect example of Superordinate Expression A. Encouraged by my 1/3 success, I read the rest of reader 1 furiously. When I was done, I’d decided that there wasn’t any specific evidence anywhere else, but then I thought that Excerpt 11 might just pass. After my 2/3 success, I felt a sense of accomplishment. Because of my small handwriting, I misread excerpt 17 as excerpt 1, and decided that there had to be a pattern in this. So I went to read excerpt 21, and when it didn’t work, I skipped again to excerpt 31. I was overjoyed to find that the excerpt I kept missing when scanning reader 2 contained the perfect evidence for superordinate expression A.

I would never have done this task if it weren’t compulsory, because I was greatly daunted by the seemingly complication of the task. However, now that I have finished this, I recognize that my critical reading skills have been tried and found, incredibly, wanting.

Perhaps, if choosing my goal had been more of a 'need' thing than a 'want' thing, I would have had to choose 'Critical Production' instead. Although I had been too much of a coward and shied from it this project round, hopefully I will get better at critical reading soon.

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Doing this task gave me joy. It helped me to understand how I should best organise my biographical excerpt. Through this task, I learnt that I should explore different methods to make my message resonate more with readers, and choose the best one to use.
It has improved my work, I hope, by making it more engaging.

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This task was certainly enjoyable and helped me in my growth as a user of the English Language.
It helped me to learn about an important linguistic feature in language use.

I incorporated the linguistic feature of looking back in time in my own biographical piece. I think that it makes my biography more interesting and engaging, as it would bring readers to observe the past from the past, instead of looking back at something that happened to my mother from the viewpoint of the present. The latter would, I think, make the reader feel more detached, and detached is not what any good biographer would want their readers to feel when reading any biography they might write.

Hence, Task 3 helped the improve my biography excerpt by making it more engaging, bringing me yet another step closer to my Goal.

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This task has not given my a joyful learning experience, although it has been helpful to my growth as a user of the English Language. It has widened my vocabulary, and I am now about to read Excerpt 8 with more profound understanding. The author has chosen to use thought-invoking words so as to paint a more detailed and colourful portrayal of Aung San Suu Kyi. I now understand the important and significance of using more appropriate and apt vocabulary in writing, and have tried to incorporate this in my own work.
This will improve my biography by making it more engaging and thought-invoking, bringing me yet another step closer to my GOAL.

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This task gave me joy because it was simple yet profound. Through answering the discussion questions about language use for excerpt 1, I found that the use of different types of past tense made the piece more interesting. Talking about events happening in different times might be confusing at times, and I paid close attention how I use my tenses in my own biographical piece.

This will improve my biography by making it more fluent and easier to understand, bringing me closer to my goal.

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I did task 11 for fun, at first. It was an interesting task and gave me great joy in completing it.
However, I learnt a lot from this task, too.

I had analysed Excerpt 5, Mr Lee's Red Box by Minister Heng Swee Keat, for Task 11.
I had read this biographical excerpt 2 years ago on the Straits Times. However, I remembered this article a lot more clearly than any other article I’d read about Mr Lee, when he passed away in March 2015. When I saw this excerpt in the reader, I immediately remembered the gist of what Minister Heng had wrote, and what I had read, 2 years ago.
I was impressed at how the use of an artefact important to the subject in a biography could successfully create such a deep and long-lasting impression on me, that I had remembered it clearly after 2 years.

I decided that I wanted the biography that I wrote to give a deep and long-lasting impression on my readers, too. While I knew my biography would not create the same effect, I wanted to give it a try, at least. I asked my subject for an artefact of great importance to her. Unfortunately, she could not give anything. Based on my everyday observations of her, I, too, could not think of anything.

However, it was through Task 11 that I realised that even though I did not have an artefact to write of, I could use something else to give the piece a strong theme, just like Excerpt 5. It was from there that I got the idea to write my biographical excerpt centred around the theme of religion - a big part of my subject's life. It is in my opinion that this task helped to improve my final biographical excerpt quite a bit, indirectly, as now it has a main focus and clear theme.

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I realised that I was not too clear with the materials, however, and the biographical excerpt then was rather confusing. Hence, I decided to complete Task 8 to get a clearer picture and better understanding of my mother's life.
Through completing this task, I have learnt that it is important for a biographer to be very familiar about the life of his subject before he can create a good biography.

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I did Task 7 first.
It is necessary to do it for me to start writing my biographical excerpt, after all.
And of course, it was compulsory.
Following which, I wrote a draft. However, I lost the transcript, so I re-did Task 7 and Task 24.
For the sake of convenience I will not make anymore references to my poorly-written first draft, with my grandmother as subject, because I re-did the entire process once more.

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Following which, I wrote  draft. That, for reasons already explained earlier, was not submitted before 17 July 2017.

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In April 2017, I was not confident about writing a biography on my own. I doubted my skills as a biographer, and as a writer. My goal is to become a competent writer and biographer with an engaging biography. I will do this by reading, and studying the language use of other good biographies, as well as conduct in-depth research on my subject before writing.

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I did Task 7 first.
It is necessary to do it for me to start writing my biographical excerpt, after all.
And of course, it was compulsory.
As it was done with my mother, it was not too formal, and I did not have to probe too much as she is willing to talk freely to her daughter.