Course Reading Reflection

Ryan Liu

RWS 1301

Suresh Lohani

The University of Texas at El Paso

 I expected the course to be run the way it would with the exception of the way classes

were going held. I thought that there would be classes each day but instead we were assigned

readings which I appreciated more I would have normal classes. The assignment readings helped

me change the expectations I had of normal classes to the new system that we use. Some of the

main ideas that we read about this semester were about discourse communities and ethos, logos,

and pathos. I hope to develop my strategy as a writer along with improving many areas that I still

lack the knowledge for such, grammar, transitioning words, and comma splicing.

The reading related heavily to our major assignments for the class by effectively making

us write about the topics and articles that we read. This also helped us a lot when it came to

learning the topic and it made it easier to understand. The approach I had to reading different

articles were mostly the same throughout. I would slowly read through the whole article at least

once to understand the topic of the article and then reread most of the important parts in order to

get a better understanding as to why the author chose that topic. The readings that stood out the

most was the article about discourse communities although the author had a very straightforward

way of writing which made it a bit hard to read at first however, I began to learn more and more

about a discourse community. For example, they all have a certain goal that they all come

together to accomplish and the way they relate to each other. This positively impacted me

because I was able to learn something new, something that I had no idea even existed along with

the fact that all humans one way of another are part of a discourse community.

Everything that I read this semester interested me and made me want to learn more about

the topic so I didn’t really have a least favorite reading but, if I were to make a choice it would

also be the article about discourse communities. It was a great read with new information about a

topic I never knew about however, the author’s set of vocabulary is so much greater than mine so
I had to search up the definition to many of the words that he used. In the end all the articles we

read thought me about so many things I never knew about and I hope to read more interesting

topics in the future.