Learning Letter Creation Process - Essay Example

Learning Letter Learning is a process and as such, I take any of my learning as a process to gain knowledge and to evolve myself personally. When it comes to learning, the values that I hold most central and important to how I approach it are creativity, innovations, self respect and flexibility. And when it comes to instrumental values, I hold dependability and trust very close to my heart. I highly value these structures I set for myself in terms of my career aspirations and my personal growth. I firmly believe that these are the value structures which are adopted by people in the field which I aspire. I also believe that personal development is the key to improve self-knowledge, identity, talents as well as enhancing the quality of life. Without personal development realizing one’s dreams and aspirations are not possible. I continually thrive to achieve personal development through inspirations and small things in life. Accepting the things we cannot change and appreciating the things that we are have are critical for personal growth in my experience. I also believe that one has to do the things that he/she love in order to succeed in anything. Without the passion for doing things, it cannot be a success. I always try my best to believe in myself and to give my all when I am engaged to a particular work. I believe that I have grown so much through this class, both personally and academically. It was not an easy process for me, but I managed to stay my course through my hard work and dedication to my course.   I took IB English during high school, and I thought things would be so much easier in university. However, I was wrong. Other than the heavy workload, English is my third language after Indonesian and Chinese. Often times I used to feel like I will get the lowest grade in this class, as most of the students here are primarily English speaker. This thought often makes me feel like I am not capable of doing it, but then my desire to succeed drives me to work even harder. Looking at the syllabus given, I knew from the start that out of the four pillars of the course objectives, “Process” would be the most difficult part for me as I am not a big fan of writing margin notes for people. Writing margin notes is basically correcting grammar, sentence structure, and flow of sentences. At first, it took me hours to write margin notes for my first peer review draft.  However, after a few workshop sessions and practice I finally got the gist of it. After some practice it became easier for me to see what was missing and what was out of place. Through this peer review group, I got a lot of helpful insights of what I needed to work on in order to make my essay better. I took in all the critiques as much as possible and applied them on my writing as I believe that learning is a process. The critique and the practices were extremely helpful as it helped me to understand the format. I can really see how each of the techniques makes a difference in my writing.   As I have mentioned before, for me the process is the most difficult but yet important part of an essay. To be frank, this is my second time taking this class, since I failed my first. It was such a traumatic experience as it took me a year to retake this class. But, on the other hand it made me familiar with most of the materials given in this course; especially the importance of adopting a style appropriate to my writing situation. I learnt that audience is really important, and me as an author has to be relatable to my audience. I am writing not only to one audience (which is me), but to many audiences. I have to try putting myself in their position, questioning myself as an audience, and asked my first draft of creative nonfiction lacked of adopting the style appropriate to my audience and also my purpose. I assumed the readers have the same background as me, and know exactly what I was talking about. I pour out everything I have in mind so the essay was disorganized and each of the paragraphs didn’t flow very well.  But, I learned from my mistake and I am now able to develop an organized articulate clearly to my audiences. From the four pillars in the syllabus, each of the courses helped me hone my writing and reading skills in different ways. The course objective “Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing” helped me to evaluate the different element of rhetorical situations. It also hones my creative thinking and helped me to analyze a literary piece with ease. Before this class I can honestly say that I was not able to identify the voice, tone and other figurative languages in any writings. When we first began this course objective I was thrilled as I felt that it will help me to connect with books much better. And the course does not disappoint me as I am now able to identify persuasive evidence, concepts and arguments in any essay. This is a big step for me as it helps me to read between the lines and it makes reading much simpler. Critical thinking, reading and writing sharpens my ability to use reading and writing as tools for acquiring knowledge. Critical thinking allows me to monitor my understanding as I read and it helped me realize that I must read each text on its own merit and not imposing my prior knowledge or review on it. At first, I struggled a bit with Critical thinking, as it pushed me to think and analyze a text on my own. But, after a lot trial and error, I find that it is a much desirable way of reading a book as it helps me to understand texts better. The course objectives “Rhetorical Knowledge” and “Knowledge of Conventions” are the two learning objectives which assist me to understating writing formats better. At first I was fascinated and at the same time intimidated by these two course objectives, but eventually after sitting through the classes and taking notes, I began to understand their importance and how they can assist me to become a better writer. Writing used to be tough area for me, as like most students I was not able to clearly articulate my thoughts through writing.  I used to blame it on the fact that English is not my first language, but I now know that it is not the language barrier but my limited understanding of the writing process and my lack of writing practice. Through determination, hard work and the courses I can now confidently say that I am a better writer and a reader. With the help of the classes I have evolved to understand the pivotal steps of writing through Rhetorical Knowledge and Knowledge of Conventions. I believe that a persisting and positive motivation can be best measured through progress from work engagement. And as such, I have proved to myself that I am able to be engaged and willing to devote my time and energy on my work. This can be seen from my improvements from this class. I do believe that I have motivations to achieve my goals, but on the other hand, I would like it to be much stronger. However, I do hope that after my course here, I will have a stronger motivation to get more out of life. Read More