Reflective Portfolio Letter

An important discourse community that was a part of my life was my volleyball team during my four years of high school. I started playing my first year going into high school and continued until I graduated. Until now I wasn’t even aware that would even be considered a discourse community, but it fits all of the qualifications of Swales’ definition of a discourse community.

In Tony Mirabelli’s writing, “Learning to Serve”, Mirabelli completes an ethnographic study of the service industry. Mirabelli writes on a topic he is quite familiar with, being a waiter. Mirabelli discusses the complexity of being a waiter, although most of these complexities are unknown to people outside of the discourse community. Mirabelli uses his ethnographic study to undermine criticism towards waiters. The main critique Mirabelli rebuts in his writing is that being a waiter does not require skill. Mirabelli uses examples from his own experiences, as well as his research to show that this claim is not true. Through his writing, he displays the communication skills and knowledge it takes to be a waiter. Mirabelli is also able to portray

Creations, like most things in life, are improvable. Ideas and theories are always evolving into different ideas or more sophisticated ones. Discourse communities is a term that has been debated over the years. Three of those debaters are James Paul Gee, James P. Porter, and John Swales. In this essay I will analyze what each of these writers see as the definition of a discourse community while comparing specific points that each of them have regarding their personal view on the subject. It is also important to keep in mind that these authors published each of their articles within a 3-year period. That is important because Swales was the first of the three to publish his paper, everyone who wrote about discourse communities after him, already

In the article "The Concept of a Discourse Community" by John Swales (1990). He aimed to define the meaning of a discourse community; then he carefully deconstructs discourse community into six fundamental attributes that are important for recognizing a discourse community.

Literacy has applied over the course of my education and my life. As an education major, I believed that literacy was an ability to learn how to read and write. Furthermore, literacy has been a part of my education. I have come to an understanding that literacy is a lot more than what it seems. It’s about expressing yourself that includes your opinions and feelings. As a college student, I still feel like my literacy is evolving with every essay I write. But, through my literacy autobiography and literacy experiences. I have gained through the process of “growing up” as an educator. I 'd like to capture the hearts and minds of readers through my journey and experiences with literacy. As I take you back into the past of how literacy has grown inside me. I would one day like to show how these experiences will influence my teaching strategies.

The first organized game was played in Hoboken, New Jersey, on June 19, 1846. The Knickerbockers faced a team called the New York Nines, who won the game 23 to 1.The baseball we play today still follows many of the rules Cartwright thought up in 1845. (Creative Classroom April/May 1990)

First I want to say welcome to New York, the city of my birth. You are going to experience NYC like never before. I also want to say welcome to LaGuardia, a school that has done nothing, but give me a great college experience. Like most students, many of us has had to take English 101 and I will tell you firsthand how valuable this class is. You won’t learn about how to be a good writer, but how to become a great one. In this class I’ve transformed my writing from novice to expert and I am very proud to say that. Most importantly above all you will learn about yourself in ways that you never thought. That’s through the writings and projects we’ve done on others identity. The writings that shape our own identity were through blogs we’d have

Teaching the lesson on characters viewpoint, I used the bottom-top approach to help students understand what they were looking for when describing the viewpoint of a character. When starting the lesson, I had the student explain to me what is a character and how can the reader know who is the main character. Once students were able to define a character, we changed the discussion to thinking of how every character is different. Students were able to successfully describe to why characters in a story each character is acts or thinks different. The next step was going over how to describe students viewpoints by focusing on the characters actions, how they feel, and what they see through the story. When reading the book, I insured to make pauses

Over the course of the semester, my main goal was to become a more precise writer and develop my identity as a writer. According too, the Portfolio Letter assignment sheet, becoming a better writer consists of precise planning, draft and revising. It also includes understanding a variety of academic genres by examining the basic characteristics that defines each type. In order too efficiently meet my goal of becoming a better writer, it was very important to have my work evaluated by others and myself as well. The use of rhetorical knowledge, critical thinking, reading and writing all are the important aspects in this course. All of which helped tremendously with becoming a more precise writer and developing my identity as a writer.

Writing essays and other types of posts has always been difficult for me. But, throughout this composition class, I have learned many interesting and new things about the different types of writing styles. When starting this class, I considered myself to be an average writer with run-of-the-mill vocabulary, ordinary sentence structure and typical finished products. This class has helped me greatly improve my writing skills in a variety of ways. I have learned multiple things by taking this class, such as new ways to approach writing and that there is much that I still need to learn about composition.

In previous courses, my writing skills have been mediocre or just enough to pass the class. Throughout the duration of this course, I have written a variety of papers using different techniques and skills. Previously I would write assuming that the only audience would be my instructor. This course has helped me realize that there are many steps and skills involved with writing a well-organized and easy to comprehend essay. My expectations coming into the course were high and remained high throughout the duration of the course. The essays I wrote in the class really challenged me to progress in my writing skills.

I promised myself that I will learn a new skill this year. I resolve to learn how to write with purpose. My mission is to figure out how to express myself with conviction. I refuse to write limp sentences but instead I will write sentences that pack a punch. I find other people’s writing impressive. I want to write impressively as well. Most of all, I want to write sentences that make me proud to have penned them. Nowadays every one is a writer. We write on social media every day, we send emails and short messages. However, we are not all great writers, this is the reserve of the few that put in effort and can cleverly coin a phrase.

Writing allowed me to be able to release all of my inner thoughts on to a piece of paper. Starting at a young age, I loved writing. I loved that writing allowed me to be able to put all the feelings and thoughts that were flowing through my head onto a piece of paper. Growing up, my love for writing began to fade. All this love that once appeared in my writing, gone. It disappeared. Then in seventh grade, I started to hate writing, it felt more like a task then as to express my thoughts and feelings. In eighth grade, I was afraid of people judging my paper. I started to feel that no matter how much time and effort I put in my writing will never good enough. Today I hope to be able to get my confidence back in my writing. I hope to gain reading skills and grammar

I started this class with the goal to further develop abilities in the essentials of university-level academic writing.

Author E.M. Forster once said, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”(Forster). Academic writing has the ability to reveal the students inscribed thoughts and opinions in ways that may surprise even them. The better get at writing analytically, the easier it is for them to apply those skills to other aspects of their life. People who write in journals often find it a useful form of exploring self-awareness (Ribeiro 2015). By writing down student ideas and perspectives in essays, even in non-academic disciplines, they hone their own expression skills, identify patterns, observed events and consider possible solutions. The skills we are learn for college and university can help us in career, as well. Reports for office jobs, essays for scientific journals and many other careers require us to know academic writing. Learning it early and getting lots of practice is a good way to get ahead in our