Damiela Thomas 

College Hall 251

New Paltz, NY 12561

20 April 2022

JFT 714

SUNY New Paltz, NY 12561

Dear e-portfolio reader, 

In the process of completing this course, I have improved in numerous areas such as writing, reading, researching, critical thinking and more. I felt as though I was sitting in the driver’s seat with only my permit in my hand. My permit had the skills, knowledge and writing strategies on it from ENG 160 with a dash of writing skills from high school. Before this course, I knew that it would be a lot of writing. I felt nervous yet excited about Writing and Rhetoric. I was nervous because I was all alone in the driver’s seat. But I was excited because it was something and seeing myself move up to the next level in English. I told myself the first day of class that I am going to pass this course no matter what it takes. 

             Although I was alone in the driver’s seat, I had my professor as my instructor, Dakota Rose, beside me. He taught and showed me the way throughout the course. One thing I learned was development in body paragraphs. In high school, I was taught to have a closing sentence in my body paragraphs that wraps up my ideas. A topic sentence will then be written to introduce what that body paragraph will be addressing. However, Rose stresses that a sentence must be written at the end of my body paragraphs to indicate what my next paragraph is going to be discussing. He showed me that doing so makes the transition in each body paragraph run smoothly. For example, in my movie argumentative paper, I needed to make it clear to my readers that I am transitioning between paragraphs. So, I will sum up one idea about one claim and flawlessly shift into the upcoming paragraph. Critical reading and thinking practice were developed throughout the course in various ways. One way was in articles that were done in class or an assignment. The articles given by Rose were focused on disability, but I had to synthesize them. I had to identify the thesis, claims, the six elements of rhetoric and answer challenging questions that expanded my thinking. Another way was by finding sources through the library debates for my research paper. I had to seek out articles on my own that are related to my research question. One of the challenging parts of this paper was making sure that all four sources form a conversation with one another. My career path is in childhood education to become an English teacher. These skills as part of effective writing will be useful because I will have to get my students to think outside of the box. This helps them to make better decisions and choices and opens a door for them to increase their knowledge and vocabulary.

Critical reading skills and comprehension along with writing skills are utilized in my other courses such as Math 140. When reading in Writing and Rhetoric I have annotated the text given and developed an understanding of it before answering questions. This is also being done in word problems in my math class. I must underline and circle significant details that will further help me answer the question given. First, I must make sure I have a complete understanding of what is going on in the problem before proceeding to solve it. My writing skill is then developed when I solve the problem step by step. Some word problems would ask for me to give an explanation where I will write out the procedure, I took to find that answer.  

The reading in college I would say is intense. I had to always try to keep up with the readings on the syllabus which was challenging. Every night there was a reading that had to be read before the next class. As a first-year student, my reading load is higher than what I would read in high school. In high school, most of the reading was done in class as a group. The class would each take turns reading a paragraph from the reading and then discussing it. However, this is not the case in college. There are two textbooks required for the class; so, there would be days where two sections had to be read for one night or just one section from the textbook. I learned the rhetorical elements when reading articles. The acronym, the more you read; the better writer you become, significantly applies in college. Therefore, the more I read articles and section(s) from the textbooks given, it improves my writing ability. Furthermore, the writing process is different based on the type of paper the author is writing. For example, my podcast review paper has a different style from the research paper. My writing process is a long process I would say. I mostly do my brainstorming for my introduction. I always have difficulty coming up with a hook and how to stare into what my entire paper will be about. This is what I would say makes my writing process become long.  I do not complete the outlining step because it takes up too much time and I do not often follow the ideas I put in my outline. So, I would skip that part. But for my research paper, it was well needed because of the number of sources I had to discuss in my paper. I needed to jot down notes from each source so that it is easier to write my paper. When I write my drafts my main problem is my mindset is perfect, but unfortunately that is not the right way to go. When editing, my main problem was grammar, especially commas and passive voice. I like to revise because I am able to correct my mistakes and the feedback from what Rose often gives. 

I am a strong believer that understanding my writing strengths and weaknesses will help me improve my writing skills and become a great writer. One of my writing strengths is in-text citations. At the beginning, I would get confused and put the wrong thing in the place. For example, in my podcast review draft I placed the speaker’s name and the time stamp in the parentheses. But I now know that only the timestamp belongs in parentheses followed by punctuation. This was needed throughout my papers so I slowly developed the accurate way of doing in-text citation. On the other hand, the area that I need more growth in is development within a paragraph. I mainly need to become better at forming my conclusion. It is hard going from something I spent years learning in high school and suddenly have to change it. In high school, I was thought to restate my thesis in my conclusion and wrapped up everything that was stated from my introduction to conclusion. In college writing, I must not copy and paste my thesis in my conclusion. Rose always mentions to think about what I want to leave my readers with after they read the entire essay. This is what I have to keep in mind when writing my conclusion. Do I want my readers to take action in something, persuade them to do something or educate my readers on a topic? This depends on what I am trying to get my readers to do or think about after reading my papers. Upon completion of this course, my attitude towards writing changed because every paper is different whether it is formal or informal. I was unfamiliar with these types of papers because in high school it was mostly argumentative essays I wrote. It is important to know how to go about it and how to write it, especially the correct way.

Sincerely,

Damiela Thomas

 

THOMAS’S COVER LETTER (2)