Writing texts

Learning Portfolio

Layi Sugei Barrios Castillo

December 15th, 2020

Main Objectives                 

·         General Objective

·         Specific objective

Portfolio Evidence of learning topics       

Reflections                                                                                                                                  

Conclusion                                                                                                                                  

Recommendations                                                                                                                   

General Objective

The general objective of this portfolio, course and the written assignments was to improve our research, communication and writing skills. Many of us struggle with our thoughts; we do not know where to start or how to end the essay but all the brainstorming we did helped to sort through our thoughts. Research helped us think outside the box, understand the topic in depth, digest background information and discover new knowledge.

Specific objectives

·         Persuade a friend with recommendations to help him understand the perspective of others, set aside his point of view and how realize how others feel about dark humor.

·         The news article was written to make people aware about the suffering and persecution of the victims (Jews) and how they lived a traumatic experience during the brutal holocaust. 

The most interesting part of these two assignments was researching the topic further. I discovered new things, it made me think and gather as much information as I could. I had to open more than 6 websites to get inspiration and a full understanding of the topic. 

Eventually, there is also a difficult stage that we undergo when we write: accepting the fact that we have to write new types of texts. All I wanted to do was postpone the assignment for later. We were all so used to the normal essays such as comparison and contrast, persuasive, demonstrative essay but never to a newspaper article. It was quite a challenge to write the newspaper article because I have never lived a traumatic experience like the Holocaust but since I have a creative mind, I started imagining the scenes, playing a movie on my head until I could get emotionally involved. 

So far, I have a better knowledge know of the essay structure. From introduction, thesis statement, body paragraphs, conclusion and apa references, they all play an important role in essays. It follows a sequence, guiding the reader to comprehend and understand my arguments. 

I had several takeaways from these assignments but the most important one that I learned is that I have to be very clear when stating my point of view, support it with evidence or reasons. Topic sentences need to be clear, easy to read. 

When we write an essay, we shouldn’t be that hard on ourselves. We should enjoy writing and have fun while we are at it. I listened to music, stood up, took several breaks and even ate some popcorn to find ideas and start typing. Ideas started to flow naturally through my mind.

The only way to improve our writing skills is to write. Youki Terada wrote “The process of writing also improves a student’s ability to recall information, make connections between different concepts, and synthesize information in new ways.”

Even if we start off with several ideas and they are all over the place, we have to type all we can think about and connect all of those ideas later to make the essay coherent.

 

Recommendations

More than 1 example of the essays we will be writing. Examples are powerful ways to broaden and deepen student learning.

I would love to share more ideas in class and be given advice on how to start a new paragraph and shift to the other one. The usage of connector words is important and many of us don’t know how to use them.