...What has shaped you as a writer? This question was challenging for me to answer. When asked questions like this I have always had a hard time answering them. I know what my strengths and weaknesses are but to answer the who are you questions will always be challenging. I believe people have different experiences throughout one's lifetime and these experiences are what contribute to who they are. People continue to change and evolve ultimately becoming different versions of themselves. I have never considered myself to be a great writer and with time, this opinion has not changed. I was raised in a small town and educated in an even smaller school. Being educated in a small school there are limited resources, and this is something I believe has impacted me. I have always lacked the confidence in myself and this is one of my weaknesses. This weakness has impacted me as a writer. I have always struggled with the proper use of grammar and to this day continue to struggle. This challenge started when I was younger. As a child and teenager, you are discovering who you are and are very impressionable. When a teacher or peer talks negatively about something such as your writing ability this can impact your confidence....
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...Writing and Myself | Matthew McMahonUNIV104-1402B-18: Academic and Career SuccessJune 22, 2014 | When I first enrolled into this course, I felt all different kinds of emotions and wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from UNIV104. I would have thoughts in my head leading up to this class spinning in my head every night before the first day. Some thoughts like, “Maybe this will be my best class!” and “This class will be easy because I love writing!” were good thoughts that helped me boost my confidence about my college course. Other thoughts loomed in my head as well such as, “Do I really belong in this class?”, and “I’m probably going to fail this class with just one assignment!” Such thoughts as these brought my spirits and gave me a pessimistic outlook on this class. But now that I am done with this class, I find myself to be more at ease with myself and have a newfound confidence in the way that write. Writing has been an important form of expression for me. I find myself to be very soft spoken and speaking verbally is usually difficult for me because I can’t always seem to find the right words to say. This has led me to be very shy in class. With writing, I feel that I am more expressive and have more control over what I want to say. Writing is therapeutic for me, whatever I cannot say directly I can just pour out my heart and soul. I have been keeping a journal for the past eight years and it has done wonders for me. I find myself not only...
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...Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to get this huge growth spurt in my writing in one day and just magically turn into an award-winning writer overnight, but huge growth spurts in writing never happen overnight so that thought is probably unrealistic. Growing as a writer happens over time and through many trial-and-error pieces of work. No good writer has started out at their best, but instead, they grow into it because they learn new things in the course of their writing career. Over the course of this semester, I have grown more as a writer than I did in the first three years of high school combined, so yes, I did have a growth spurt as a writer, but it didn’t happen all at once and I am not finished growing. This semester, I have had to write...
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...I learned about writing and myself. In terms of writing I learned that formatting and presentation is extremely important. I found it very easy to write the text of this piece, but harder to present it in a format that made it accessible and reader friendly. Additionally, I had to make sure that as a writer I was explaining everything thoroughly, because not everyone will have the same background information on the topic of the State of Israel as I. In learning about myself I had to make sure I was not expressing my own bias when writing about things that could be deemed controversial. Additionally, I reconfirmed my passion for Israel and really enjoyed sharing factual informational about the state with readers of my text. While composing my essay I used the following strategies: planning, drafting, revising, and editing. In planning my essay I first compiled a list of topics I could write about and subcategories to make those ideas more specific. I then compiled my first draft, adding more text and pictures to express the facts I wanted to convey. Then I revised my text two times with my peers and professor in class. I shorted the list of original ideas so that I could focus more on making the ones I had more substantial. I made sure I was conveying information in a non-biased manner and in simple...
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...Which Essay is Better: A Narrative or A Descriptive? Ever read a story and say to yourself, “What’s happening?” Whenever I read a descriptive essay, that’s what I would say. In this essay I would be comparing and contrasting two types of essays, a narrative and descriptive. I have chosen “Are the rich happy?” by Stephen Leacock 1916 and “Sister Flowers” by Maya Angelou, n.d. By writing my essay, I want to give my views on each and decide which I would rather write. Narrative Essay A narrative essay reflects a personal opinion that is based on your own experiences. This helps you bring a reader into your very own mind and shows him/her the topic you’re writing about through your eyes. Telling a story or event the way it happened for you. It also could provide a sort of lesson or moral to be learned from the outcome of the story as well as what the writer did that contributed to it or not. It’s more on a personal level that any one reading could say that happened to them or that they learned from the story by not doing whatever it was that the writer did. In Stephen Leacock’s “Are the Rich Happy?” the author writes about his experiences with his friends, with of modest income. Most of it, all in his opinion, points out the problems or troubles those with an existential amount of funds in their bank accounts. He goes on to give some examples that he encountered several of his friends going through. “A friend of mine who has ten thousand dollars a year told me the other...
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...had discovered early on in my academic career that I was a decent writer; I could establish main points and a theme as well as apply proper grammar. It speaks for my writing that I was agitable to misusers of “there, their, and they’re” to say the least. The only criticism on writing prompts I would get were technical ones, like using apostrophes incorrectly or writing the number rather than spelling it. Yet, marked in red at the top of my first paper junior year was something I had not expected, nor seen before-- “Where is your voice?” My voice? I was not mute, so what kind of question was that? I thought about it all class period and looked for the flaw within the paper. All i had to work with was that obscure note and I thought about the question again and again-- I even began...
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...my family has giving up on me because they said that there is nothing good that can come out of me. As I entered Montgomery College, I told myself that I will make something good out of myself. I have managed to complete ESL classes, which many people doubted. I feel that through my experience of this English course, I have gained the knowledge and confidence it takes to step out into the real world. My writing strength is the ability to use rhetorical strategies in a narrative essay to develop an academic prompt, but I still need to polish on how to demonstrate the facilities like improve my tone, how to persuade my reader, and how to organize...
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... |Themes, authors, primary texts |Critical reading | |Feb 8 |Introductions | | |Feb 15 |The Puritan Imagination I |IAS: “New Founde Land” | | |From: Mary Rowlandson: The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. |CHLUS: “Jonathan Edwards […] and the Great Awakening | | |From: John Winthrop: A Model of Christian Charity. | | | |From: Jonathan Edwards: Personal Narrative. | | |Feb 22 |The Puritan Imagination II. |IAS: “New Founde Land” | | |Anne Bradstreet: “The Author to Her Book,” “The Prologue,” “Upon the |CHAP: “Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor” | | |Burning…,” “To My Dear…” | | | |Edward Taylor: “Huswifery,” “Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold,” | | |...
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...Roen−Glau−Maid: The McGraw−Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, 2/e II. Using What You’ve Learned to Share Information The McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, Second Edition 4. Writing to Share Experience © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2011 13 Reading, Inquiry, and Research ■ PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information 57 TANYA BARRIENTOS Se Habla Español MEMOIR he man on the other end of the phone line is 1 Tanya Maria telling me the classes I’ve called about are firstBarrientos has rate: native speakers in charge, no more than six stuwritten for the dents per group. Philadelphia “Conbersaychunal,” he says, allowing the fat vow- 2 Inquirer for more than els of his accented English to collide with the sawedtwenty years. off consonants. I tell him that will be fi ne, that I’m familiar with 3 Barrientos was born in Guatethe conversational setup, and yes, I’ve studied a bit mala and raised of Spanish in the past. He asks for my name and I in El Paso, Texas. Her first novel, Frontera Street, was supply it, rolling the double r in Barrientos like a pro. published in 2002, and her second, That’s when I hear the silent snag, the momentary Family Resemblance, was pubhesitation I’ve come to expect at this part of the exlished in 2003. Her column “Unchange. Should I go into it again? Should I explain, conventional Wisdom” runs every the way I have to half a dozen others, that I am Guaweek in the Inquirer...
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...Describe the genre of Slave Narrative in his essentials on the basis of an example. What was the role of the genre for the abolitionist movement? Anti-slavery literature was very important for the abolitionists` fight against slavery. The Slave Narratives took a special importance because of the fact that slaves reported from the personal perspective. They described autobiographically how the life in captivity looked like. Consequently, they disputed the description of slave keeper, which were played down and romanticized. Frederick Douglass, one of the former slaves, wrote his story on his own, whereas some who couldn´t write and read (who were illiterate), dictated their stories to abolitionists. Those wrote and published these stories. Moreover, the Slave Narratives always were authenticated in preface and epilogues from whiteness. In the following part, I will quote many a time from the autobiography of the mentioned Frederick Douglass‘ “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass“ “Master, however, was not a humane slaveholder. It required extraordinary barbarity on the part of an overseer to affect him. He was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of slaveholding. He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers...
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...strategies used to come to this conclusion, the most important of them being able to discuss and revise in depth the context of my own work. Often times, I rush to get assignments completed that I lack the simple yet forgotten tactic of rereading my work. Maneuvering with words and ideas within our circle has become an efficient way of improving the way we elaborate and expand in our writing. College courses are over-all quite the transition from the typical high school setting, I have noticed that here the instructor is a lot more open to our feedback and the essays have less of a structure giving the student the freedom to write in a way they feel comfortable sharing with their classmates. I had never considered myself to be an avid writer, as described in my narrative essay. I was well aware of the struggle a college English course would bring, I noticed that these past couple of weeks haven’t been easy but I like the direction I’m heading. The way my writing has developed in this short amount of time has been tremendous progress as opposed to the previous strategies I was being imposed to. Expanding my ideas has perhaps been what I have battled with the most, in exchange; I believe being in groups has helped enormously. This gives each one of us the opportunity to give our own perspective as well as considering other different people’s opinions and given the chance to intertwine both concepts to create a more descriptive and rich idea. I tried to narrow down the strategies...
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...Running head: INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE Final Paper Ashford University Introduction to Literature ENG 125 Submitted: Final Paper Whether reading a short story or a poem, there is always a story to be found within. The authors of these scripts are able to capture readers with the utilization of characterization, rhythm, or a fairytale setting throughout their narrative. It is imagination that sanctions the reader of these literary forms to be able to mentally visualize what the author would like the reader to visually perceive by use of symbolism or descriptive wording. In the poem “The Road Not Taken” or short stories “A Worn Path” or “Used To Live Here Once” – There is a prevalent theme. No matter what solitary journey we find ourselves on, ‘we’ determine how the journey ends. The solitary journey that each of these literary pieces share is presented differently in each inditing. Robert Frost designed “The Road Not Taken” with specific designs in the narrative that revealed for me as the reader that there was a forthcoming journey. Frost also utilized the word “I” many times, which sanctioned me to imagine him alone. Comparative to this example let us compare “A Worn Path” where Welty utilized the word “she” throughout the writing piece. The linguistic choice inspired my imagination to visualize a woman walking alone. This visualization was reinforced in other places of the writing when the character spoke to animals to get out of her way:...
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...Africa through Theatre This paper sets out to explore how processes of theatre making employed by The Mothertongue project, provide spaces for women to remap their personal narratives. Mothertongue works from the premise that the development and subsequent performance of stories in theatrical processes affords women the opportunity to re-write and remap their personal narratives and in so doing insert their voices into the landscape of South African Theatre. In an attempt to redress the gender imbalances and androcentricism prevalent in post-apartheid theatre, this paper speaks to the relationship between theatre, liminality and communitas. I am interested in unpacking how collaborative processes of theatre-making provide spaces for women to remap their personal narratives. Remapping in this instance refers to processes of transforming lived experience through story. I address how, through engaging in ritual activities that are central to the stories performed, actors, audiences and the owners of the source stories are invited to physically participate in remapping and transforming lived experience. Linked to this is the choice of form(s) and how this affects or impacts on the performed stories as well as on the construction of performed rituals and ultimately on the processes of remapping personal narratives. I focus specifically on Mothertongue’s 2004 production, Uhambo: pieces of a dream. The production was an integration of theatre and visual art in the form of performances...
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...When school started back up this past September i walked in as a senior with a set of skills that i had already, only looking to improve from there on. I thought to myself that i already was a great writer and that i didn’t need to improve on much. I was oh so wrong, there was a lot that needed to be improved on and thankfully through the course of this semester i have been able to improve on those things. The improvements came about from the different type of essays that we had to write and it brought a whole lot of strengths from it. Although in the past years we have learned on how to write a lot of these papers this year we dove a little more into them. We took different approaches to them to get more out of them than we had before, such as the personal narrative. I have written a personal narrative in the past but this time it helped me improve because i could not just be basic. I learned that i would have to write more in detail for it be a quality paper, that i couldn’t just get away with writing it like a 9th grader any more. The improvement was just as small as having to do with the intro and getting better with my attention getters. It benefitted me because we have to write intos in all of our papers and if you write an intro that can’t grab the attention, no one...
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...north, and calling for action against the cruel institution of slavery. Employed as a teacher by Pace University in 1968, Jean Fagan Yellin wrote and published her dissertation. While re-reading Incidents in the 1970s as part of the project and to educate herself in the use of gender as a category of analysis, Yellin became interested in the question of the text's true authorship. Over the next six-years, Yellin found and used historical documents including the Amy Post papers at the University of Rochester (Post was a close friend of Jacobs), state and local historical societies, and the Horniblow and Norcum papers at the North Carolina state archives, to establish both that Harriet Jacobs was the true author of Incidents, and that the narrative was her autobiography. Her edition...
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