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Nichole Buchanan

Professor Jan Rieman

English 1103

December 6, 2010

Final Reflection

Wow, this semester has definitely flown by! It feels like my first day of college

was just yesterday. I walked into this class with the fear high school teachers instilled in

me, not exactly knowing what to expect. I felt as if my reading and writing skills were

not up to par with the hopes of college professors. Fortunately, this class wasn’t nearly

what past teachers had told me college English would be like. Like I said in my mid-term

reflection, it definitely demanded a lot of work and commitment, but it was all worth it.

This course has enabled me to approach writing and reading differently than I had done

in the past. I entered college with a strong dislike of reading because of years and years of

being forced to read books I would never, ever consider picking up and reading for fun. I

was also so sick of writing formal papers. The context never even mattered to my past

teachers. What they considered revising was picking out every little grammatical error

instead of appreciating its actual context.

Dr. Rieman has been unlike any English teacher I’ve ever had. She was more

concerned with what our papers said versus minor imperfections. Through the course of

this class I learned how to use peer editing to my advantage and my writing has shown

tremendous improvement because of it. I’ve learned that peer workshop isn’t about

pointing out every flaw in the writer’s paper, but to aid them in making their meaning

clear, and give constructive advice on how to improve the matter. I also remember how
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much of a challenge reading academic articles were, but my comprehension has

improved greatly. I found those articles to be very interesting and they helped me view

reading and writing in a different light. I now understand that both are productive

processes in which we construct meaning. Both processes also go hand in hand and are

very much related to one another. I prove this in my inquiry paper, which I dreaded

writing all semester. That paper took a lot of time, effort and revision after revision, but I

am very pleased with the outcome. The hardest part was getting started, but after that the

rest came easily to me. Through the process of conducting research and writing my

inquiry paper, I found that reading and writing are indeed linked and assist in the learning

of English as a second language.

I’ve learned so much from this class that I can’t possibly include everything

without this being at least 4 pages long, so I’ll make this short and sweet. I’ve enjoyed

taking this course and I’m so glad to have had Dr. Rieman as a professor. Sadly the

semester has come to an end, but this is definitely not the end of my writing career. This

class has changed my bitter feelings of reading and writing around and I will take what I

have learned and only continue to improve my skills, since there is no end to

improvement. I walked into this class afraid and nervous, and I will walk out of this class

with confidence in my newly improved skills and knowledge.